“This is impossible,” Ramsay said irritably. “The car could be anywhere behind those bushes. We’ll need to look on foot.”

Hunter drove on, unsure of what the inspector wanted him to do.

“Stop,” Ramsay said suddenly. “Stop here. Something’s wrong. We must find Mary Raven.” He felt that they had been deceived.

They got out of the car and stood in the frosty silence. Hunter shut the car doors and the noise was loud and shocking.

“Where do we start?” Hunter asked. He had none of Ramsay’s sense of foreboding. “They could be anywhere.” He imagined them lying together in some hollow in the dunes, a pornographic fantasy of sex in the open air. He stood in the moonlight and grinned at the idea.

“You cross the dunes to the beach,” Ramsay said. “I’ll walk back to her car.”

“What do you want me to do if I see her?”

“Nothing,” Ramsay said sharply. “ Not if she’s on her own. Wait until he finds her.”

“Shall I radio for help?”

“No,” Ramsay said. “I’ll do it. But by the time they all get here it’ll be too late.”

The first scream surprised them both. Hunter was only a few yards from the car. He began to run through the dunes towards the beach, swearing at the spikes of marram grass that scratched his hands and the sand that filled his shoes. Ramsay stood and listened, then walked quickly back towards the carpark entrance, his shadow long behind him.

When Mary Raven hurtled down the sand bank and into his arms, he felt only relief. He held her, trying to calm her as she sobbed, awkward at first, then remembering what it was like to hold a woman in his arms. At first she was hysterical in her terror. She tried to pull away from him, tearing at his face with her fingernails and kicking his legs with her heavy boots. Then she recognised him.

“He tried to kill me,” she sobbed. “He had a knife and he tried to kill me. It couldn’t have been Max. Max would never have done a thing like that.”

“No,” Ramsay said, his arms still around her shoulder, trying to stop her trembling. “ It wasn’t Max.”

From the main road they heard the sirens of police cars coming to assist them, and as they came to the end of the track, Hunter emerged from the nearest dune, his hand bleeding, his face triumphant, with his prisoner.

“Too late as usual,” he said, nodding towards the flashing blue lights. It would do no harm, this, he thought. It might mean a promotion if Ramsay didn’t take all the credit.

“Where’s the knife?” Ramsay asked.

“He dropped it in the dunes.” He looked towards the reinforcements. “ They’ll find it.”

“Well, then,” Ramsay said. “You’d better get him back to Otterbridge.”