I went to the front door and looked out at my car, and then both ways along the track. There was no one out there. I rubbed at an eye, tired suddenly, trying to think of the last time I’d been in a place like this, one that was so soundless and dark. I’d spent pretty much my entire adult life in London, and after so many years there I hardly noticed the noise and light any more; there was no escape from it – even in the dead of night – and it had become so written into me now that, in a place bereft of both those things, I felt unsettled.

I made my way back upstairs, my bones aching from exhaustion, and perched on the edge of the bed. I took off my T-shirt and finished a third glass of water. Fully awake now, my mind started moving, rewinding through the things I’d read before bed: the death of Adrian Vale; the interview DS Smoulter had conducted with him after Beatrix disappeared; and Vale’s connection to Jacob Pierce, the man who ran Seiger and Sten.

And then, in the field opposite, I really did see something.

One of the cows to my right, close to the barn and barely visible in its shadow, had turned away from the fence and had suddenly broken into a run. Seconds later, another did the same.

Something was spooking them.

Or someone.

33

Grabbing my shirt and a coat, I hurried downstairs.

At the side of the cottage was a series of footprints.

They were freshly fossilized in the mud and moved past the front of my car, on to the track and across to the fence: a clump of daffodils was now lying flat to the grass, where they’d been trampled upon.

I looked left, up the track to the main house. The security lamp was on but there were no internal lights. The farmer, his wife and their kids were still asleep.

The footprints didn’t belong to them.

I clicked the door shut behind me and stepped on to the track. Stones gently crunched under the soles of my boots. I saw they were unlaced and dropped to one knee to do them up – and, as I did, I heard the low of the cattle in the barn.

The cows were responding to something.

I followed the direction of the footprints. They went to the fence and then transferred to the slats themselves: wet mud stained the posts where someone had climbed over into the field.