It had a flat tyre. Vlad must have stuck his knife into it when he and Igor arrived. I couldn’t help thinking about the old quarries and mine workings there were roundabout, all the places my body might have been dumped, never to be found again. I phoned Nick’s number, unlocking the van door and tossing my bag inside whilst I paced fretfully, willing him to answer.

‘Nick, are you all right?’ I blurted as soon as he picked up.

‘Is Juno?’ he asked. ‘Yes, yes, I’m fine.’

‘Vlad and Igor—’ I began.

‘Who?’

‘Your friends …’

‘No need to shout! I see them this morning. We talk. We come to arrangement. Everything is all right now. They go home.’

‘I … I don’t understand …’ I said stupidly. ‘You’ve seen them?’

‘We friends again,’ he told me happily.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. ‘Friends?’ I shouted down the phone at him. ‘They just tried to kill me!’

‘No, no, Juno …’ Nick began soothingly, before the phone was obviously snatched out of his hand.

‘Juno, where are you?’ It was Paul’s voice.

‘I’m up on the moor,’ I told him.

‘Are you all right?’

‘I am now.’ I gabbled an account of what had just happened to me, ending with the flat tyre.

‘I’ll come and get you. Tell me exactly where you are.’

I told him where I was. ‘But it’s all right, I can manage, I’ve got a spare.’

‘I’ll be there in about half an hour. You sit tight.’ And he rang off before I could argue any further.

Suddenly drained of energy, I sat in the van, and rested my head against the steering wheel. After a few minutes, a car pulled up beside me, blue light flashing, and I started nervously. It was a police car with two officers inside. The driver wound down his window and gazed at me from pale-blue eyes. ‘You all right, miss?’

‘Yes, I’m fine, Officer,’ I lied, trying to sound bright, as he climbed out of his vehicle. ‘I’ve just got a flat tyre.’

The other officer also got out and together they walked around, making a great business, it seemed to me, of surveying the van. ‘So you have,’ he remarked pleasantly. ‘Have you been sitting here long?’

‘I’m waiting for the AA.’

‘Ah!’ The driver glanced at his colleague. ‘It’s just we had a rather strange report about twenty minutes ago. A call came in from a gentleman birdwatching up there.’ He pointed towards a distant tor. ‘He was using powerful binoculars. He said he’d seen something strange going on, a woman being chased by two men, a woman with long red hair,’ he added, scrutinising me with eyes narrowed, ‘like yourself.’

‘Really?’ I gazed at him, all innocence, raking a hand through the tangled mass of my curls and pulling out a frond of bracken.