Tonight, however, it did not seem mystical. The girl shivered and wondered how somewhere that she loved so much could suddenly feel so threatening.

She paused and looked along the long straight track that was the seabank. The black outline of the old pumping station looked stark and menacing against the paler, indigo night sky. She should be able to see him by now. He always used a powerful lantern with a red shield to set up the Newtonian Reflector telescope on its mount, and get it aligned on the heavens.

But she could see nothing, and something about that darkness bothered her. So did the fact that he had sent her a text. It was so out of character. He liked to talk, not send electronic messages. In fact, he was the only person she knew that owned a fountain pen and used ink from a bottle.

From the moment that she received his message, she had felt puzzled. Earlier, as she pulled on her rambling boots, she had wondered about the uncharacteristic secrecy. It just wasn’t his way. He would visit her, or ring if pushed. He’d blurt out something about the tilt of Saturn’s rings, or he’d got some brilliant new lens and some deep-sky viewing would be showing some glorious double stars that she just couldn’t miss. She knew that most people considered him a freak, but where they saw an anorak, she saw someone driven by passion, and that was something she could relate to.

She stopped and tried to ring him, but his phone was switched off. Her anxiety increased. If she took the message at face value, he had seemed desperate that she meet him. But where was he? And where was his dog? It almost always followed him out to the marsh. Something was wrong. She shivered, and then a scary thought crossed her mind. There were no stars tonight.

Fear flooded through her. Oh God! She had been a fool, and now she needed to get off the marsh. If he wanted to see her, he could damn well …

Something far darker than the night was roughly pulled over her head, and an arm snaked around her throat, forcing her neck backwards and her throat to close. She jerked her arms and legs frantically, kicking and beating uselessly at her unseen assailant, then a rushing noise filled her ears and bright lights exploded behind her eyelids. Abruptly, the roaring sound became everything, and she felt her legs stop their dancing and her arms fell uselessly to her sides. Her fight for air became almost impossible, and she slipped from the iron grasp, to fall silently into darkness.

CHAPTER THREE

NIKKI KNEW THE superintendent was looking for her but, suspecting yet another bollocking, managed to evade him for most of the day. Now she had run out of excuses, and found herself grudgingly making her way to his office.