Of course, he knew the mud only looked red because the soil here was clay when you got a few inches down. It was so unusual for this part of Derbyshire that he’d noticed it as soon as he started digging. Clay and mud, tons of crushed brick and corroded iron. It had been a nightmare of a job, almost impossible for his spade to deal with. Jamie’s rational mind told him that the colour was only because of the clay. And if the stuff on his boots looked too red, too dark, too wet … well, that was just his imagination, wasn’t it?

Jamie Ward thought he had plenty of common sense. He was educated, after all – not like most of the other lads on the crew. He would never be a victim of superstition and ignorance. He wasn’t even particularly religious – he didn’t cross himself when they passed a church, or hang a statue of the Virgin Mary over the dashboard of the van, the way Nikolai did.

But this mud was so sticky, and so smelly. It stank as though it had been rotting for centuries. Now, when Jamie finally straightened up, he saw a thick gob slide from his boot on to the ground. It formed a sort of oozing coil, like the dropping of some slimy creature that had been living on the old farm, left to itself when the owners moved out and the cattle disappeared. He pictured something that only came out at night to feed on carrion, scavenging among the ruins of pigsties before slinking back into a dark, damp corner between those abandoned silage bags.

‘Damned fool. Kretyn.’

He remembered the way Nikolai’s fist had gripped his jacket, the feel of the older man’s face pushed against his, rain glistening in his thick eyebrows and on his moustache. Jamie couldn’t believe how angry Nikolai had been, not over something like this. The foreman had tolerated his bungling and his ignorance of the building trade with raucous good humour – until now. Yet suddenly this morning he’d been a different man, a wild thing, dangerously on the verge of violence. And all over a muddy hole.