He could do it. He could reach out and snap Lizbet’s neck like a twig; it would only take moments. His mother, who had called him dirty and monstrous, had died in seconds too, and then she had mouldered away inside the ice house, her doughy flesh turning into brown sticks. But Lizbet was smiling at him, her eyes full of a knowledge she shouldn’t have, and the moment passed.

‘Take the baby up by the stream,’ he said eventually, not looking at either of them. ‘The sound of the water there makes it peaceful. That might calm her down.’

38

It was, Heather had to admit, a beautiful stretch of land. Gentle hills in the distance, clumps of wild, dark trees held apart by empty fields, alive with the movement of long grasses. In the summer, she imagined it was magnificent – and at this end of the year, with most of the red and gold leaves around their ankles rather than on the trees, there was a pleasing bleakness to it all. And there was the silence. If it weren’t for the constant calling of the birds, it might even have been possible for her to put aside the feeling that she was haunted – the sense that far from escaping the ghosts and horrors of her mother’s house, that she had simply brought it all with her.

I’m getting closer, though. It was easier to put her worries to one side when the truth about her mother – and the Red Wolf – felt like it was just around the corner.

‘Here, what’s that?’

They had reached one of the little country lanes and on the corner of a turn-off there was, standing half hidden in a bush, a strange figure of twisted metal. Heather and Nikki wandered over for a closer look.

‘I didn’t expect to see something like this up here. I mean, wandering down Peckham Road, you’re falling over stuff like this, but here?’

It was about five feet tall, and made of graceful twists of silver and copper-coloured metal. The figure stood with its hands held out in front of it, each curving finger like a melting knife.

‘Look, there’s a sign.’ Nikki reached out and tapped the palm of the left hand: there was a small metal tag there, letters neatly pressed into it. She read it out loud. ‘The Shifting Man, a work by Harry Bozen-Smith. Commissions accepted. Follow the signs to my studio.’

Heather straightened up and looked down the turning. The road there was narrower, the bare trees crowding in on either side, but she could already see the next ‘sign’ – another figure of metal, this one with its arms raised and body bent, like a ballerina stretching.

‘Let’s go and have a look.’