She glared at Landa, at everyone else, a whole floor’s worth of eyes burning a hole in her.

And then she grabbed her jacket and walked out.

Part Four

THE ENVELOPE

32

I was still awake at 2 a.m.

Since the case at Christmas, I’d consistently failed to sleep well. The echoes of that, of how personal it had been, of how close I’d come to completely losing my grip, all still reverberated, feeding and massaging my fears. Some nights, like this night, the fear was so completely overwhelming, all I could see as I stared up into the darkness was defeat – all the questions I had no answers to, all the things I’d failed to figure out.

All the ways in which I’d never solve Black Gale.

I flipped back the covers and sat up.

Through the window, I could see cows in the field opposite, gathered along the fence, creamy streaks against the dark. Somewhere else, an owl hooted, the night so still that the sound carried undisturbed, as clearly and distinctly as if the bird were inside the room with me. I finished the water next to my bed and went to fill it again.

And then paused.

Was there something else out there?

I stayed where I was, the carafe at an angle in front of me. My gaze switched from the roof of my car – just about visible from where I was sitting up – to the fence hemming in the paddock. It was so dark on the farm that I couldn’t see much further, or much more, than that: in the far distance was a dim glow from the main road, maybe three quarters of a mile away; beyond that, there were tiny pinpricks of amber from the nearest village; then, finally, there was an outside lamp on the main house, two hundred feet up the track from me. It was sallow, a weak half-circle of orange light extending about four feet from the property, framing the porch and part of the lawn.

Putting down the carafe, I got up.

At the window, using the curtains as cover, I looked down at my car, checked the glass and doors were still intact, and then watched as a few of the cows – who’d strayed out from the barn – continued to graze at the spot across from me. They looked undisturbed, unworried.

So was it just them I’d seen moving?

I grabbed a pair of tracksuit trousers, slipped on a T-shirt and headed down to the living room. There was the faintest of carry from the lamp on the main house, a low-level grey that allowed me to make out the corners of the furniture around me, and then a hint of the papers and photographs I’d mounted on the wall.