Heather looked at it for a long time before slipping the phone back into her pocket. She got off the bus when she caught sight of another pub, a peeling and battered sign painted with a red lion. It was a murky little place, with sticky floors and a handful of stunted old men in corners nursing pints of bitter. The landlady, who was short and brassy, gave her a pinched look as she came in, but didn’t hesitate to pour the drink she ordered. Heather took her glass and a packet of crisps, and set up at a small round table as far from the wide-screen TV as possible, recognizing it as a beacon for men who enjoyed standing in groups making sudden loud honking and hooting noises at some sports-related nonsense.

The rum was good and dark. With each sip she felt the sharp edges of her shock grow a little fuzzy, although she still couldn’t help returning to the strange bouquet of wild flowers, and the note in the bathroom cabinet, with its little flurry of starling feathers as it fell into the sink. Then there was the trapped bird, flying around the landing crashing into walls, and the figure she thought she had seen standing on the edge of her mother’s property – except hadn’t Lillian seen it too? She had asked about gentlemen callers, after all.

She downed the rest of the rum and ordered a Coke. Her stomach was too empty for any more alcohol.

Perhaps the note in the cabinet really was from her mother. Perhaps Colleen had sent the flowers too, arranging for them before she ended her own life. Was that even possible? If you paid the florist enough, if you had a pretty good idea where your predictable daughter would have your funeral, if you had clearly stipulated in your will that you wanted to be cremated. Heather might not know her mother as well as she’d thought – indeed, every day seemed to take her further away from who she thought her mother had been – but doing something like that would take a level of cruelty she couldn’t quite believe her mother had. Had she been cold? Certainly. But malicious?

‘This is insane.’ A pair of old men at the table next to her looked up at her, and she turned away from them. At the centre of everything was the biscuit tin full of letters, a little time bomb full of unanswerable mysteries and terrible shadows. She thought of Michael Reave and his scarred hands, calmly telling her about wolves and women who ate raw flesh.

She got up to get another soft drink. On her way back to her seat, the news alert app on her phone beeped at her, and before she could look away, she caught the headline: ‘THE LEGACY OF THE RED WOLF – SERIAL MURDERER INSPIRES NEW KILLINGS’.