He climbs the wall slowly, the equipment strapped to his back working with gravity to pull him down to the pavement below. When he reaches the top, he pauses for a moment, sweat on his brow mingling with rainwater before trickling down his neck. A car swings around the corner, its headlights threatening to pick him out. He flicks left leg after right, launches himself into a free fall, and drops like a stone into the silent garden below.

He crouches in the flower bed and waits for his heartbeat to slow. There are no cameras here. No lights other than from the street beyond the wall, and the odd yellow square of a window in the row of terraced houses beyond the tree line. Sheffield is far from being “The City That Never Sleeps,” but it is still a city. He consoles himself with the thought that if he gets caught, the penalties won’t be all that harsh. Not from the police anyway.

He moves through the dark of the Botanical Gardens, staying clear of the more open spaces, hugging the walls and darting from tree to tree. The rain begins to ease, which is a bonus. As long as the clouds don’t dissipate; the last thing he needs is an almost full moon to pick him out. There’s still a faint whiff of smoke in the air from the bonfire parties and firework displays that took place earlier in the evening, in spite of the weather.

When he reaches the smaller, walled rose garden he hesitates, his eyes flicking toward the houses now clearly visible beyond the park boundary. This area is more overlooked than the rest of the Gardens but it’s where he needs to be. He has a job to do. He reaches up and takes hold of the strap cutting across his shoulder. The metal detector is light enough but it’s still a relief to lift it from his back. He slips on the headphones and hears the sharp whine of the machine as he switches it on. Time to go to work.

The detector arcs across the ground in long sweeps, its black plastic coil turning over fallen leaves and parting the stems of plants. The wind whips at his jacket and makes him shiver as it cools the sweat on his back. He listens carefully to the background hum of the detector’s negative response, his eyes focused on the digital control box. The glow from the display is small but it could be seen. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s been caught, thrown off some irate farmer’s property or given a telling-off by a poorly paid security guard. Some people threaten to call the police or let the dogs loose, and once, an old man came out of his house and fired a shotgun over his head. But these are the hazards of the trade. He’s a Nighthawker, after all. A trespasser. A thief. He chuckles to himself.

He works for more than an hour, quartering the area, stopping to dig occasionally at the wet earth when he gets a reading, uncovering small items that for the most part will turn out to be worthless and shoving them into his backpack to examine later.

The clock ticks on. Four o’clock. Four-thirty. It won’t be long before lights begin to flick on in bedroom windows and early morning workers glance out to check the weather for the day ahead. He digs carefully, trying not to leave too much evidence in case he has to come back. Again. For this isn’t the first time he’s been here and each time he worries about the traces he leaves behind. Footprints in the flower beds, broken branches, flattened stems.

The wind is bitingly cold now the rain has stopped and he starts to lose the feeling in his nose and toes. His back is aching. He checks his watch again. Almost five. Perhaps one last sweep toward the wall and then call it a night. It’s disappointing, but it’s better than being caught.

He’s halfway to the wall when the detector screeches and he stumbles to a halt, desperate not to lose the reading. He backtracks, checks the display for confirmation—32. A midtone. Too high for aluminum or iron, too low for silver. The sweet spot for gold. But also the sweet spot for bottle caps, pull tabs, other low-conducting metals. He sweeps the ground a couple more times, triangulating the exact location, then he puts down the detector and begins to dig.

The soft wet earth of the flower bed parts easily and he’s down inches in mere seconds; the soil here is freshly dug. And then he hits something. Is this it? He changes the angle and digs down again, finds the same stiff resistance. It’s something, but is it what he’s looking for? He can’t tell anything with the trowel and despite the city light pollution, he still can’t see much. He uses his hands now, his fingers sinking into the mud and feeling their way along and around the squishy protuberances. There are several of them. Thin tree roots, perhaps? Gnarled and sticky with some kind of sap. He grabs hold and pulls.

The hand emerges from the mud with the quiet pop of something snapping.

He lets go and falls backward, stifling a small cry, his own hands sinking into the muddy earth behind him, grateful to be washed clean of the contamination of rotting human flesh. He pants into the darkness, feeling the adrenaline flooding his weary limbs. He glances left, and right, suddenly sure there must be someone else here, someone watching him in the night.

He looks back at the hand lying flat on the ground before him, an arm bone trailing back to the hole he pulled it from. The whole thing is little more than a skeleton but there are remnants of tatty skin still visible that hang loosely around the bones like a torn glove. Around the middle finger of the hand is a thin gold ring. That must be what the detector registered. It looks as though the body it belongs to has begun to crawl its way from slumber. Because there is a body, there has to be. There was that slight resistance as he pulled. That small sound, more of a vibration really, that traveled along the bones and up through his arm. He shivers.

The smell hits him now. A curiously sweet scent mixed with the fetid earthiness of the soil. Rotting meat. The bile rises in his throat even as he realizes he can’t allow himself to be sick. He can’t leave behind any DNA. Assuming he hasn’t already.

He needs to go, but he still hasn’t got what he came for and now there’s zero chance he can come back. A light flicks on in the nearest house beyond the wall. He can make out the garden in its entirety now, the bushes, the wall, the entranceway he slipped through a couple of hours ago. He can hear traffic beginning to build outside. Passing cars, every few seconds or so, making it so much harder to escape undetected. He hesitates, making new plans, discarding them, trying to work out how this development changes things. But then another light comes on somewhere. And another.

With a small cry of frustration, the nighthawker grabs the metal detector and runs.