‘The thing that scares you,’ Mills said, using his foot to turn the man on to his back, ‘is the thought of your work being cut short. All that the missing bring to your life, the comfort you find in the search, the way they hauled you free of your grief and helped you survive. It keeps you sane. Being forced to stop would be worse than any bullet. Being contained, walled in, being in a situation where you had no control over your life, where you have no agency any more and, worse, no freedom, it would kill you. So you want to know what your pressure point is, Raker?’

At my feet, the man moaned again, his beard specked with saliva, his lip split, his shaved scalp matted with blood.

‘It’s your fear of going to prison.’

36

On the floor, Healy tried to move.

His wrists were tied in front of him. The cut above his eyebrow had reopened. His nose looked busted, the straight line of the bridge puffy, the skin purple where he’d been struck. But while he was obviously dazed and half-conscious, his stunted actions and soft, continual moaning was coming from something more than just his injuries.

He’d been drugged too.

He must have fought, which was exactly why Mills had been forced to give him a sedative: he’d been surprised by Healy, by his will to survive, to resist. As I dropped to my haunches, placing a hand against Healy’s arm, I felt him flinch. When I told him it was me, there was a fractional delay, and then he frowned and started repeating my name. His voice crackled with the pain of his injuries and the first swells of a fever.

I looked up at Isaac Mills.

‘You need to stop,’ he said again.

‘Where are they?’

‘Who?’

I stood up again, facing him down.

‘The villagers. The people from Black Gale.’

He sighed, closing his eyes for a second.

‘Just tell me what happened to them.’

Mills shook his head, as if he were dealing with a child, and then he turned the shotgun – moving it in an arc – so that the barrel was pointed at Healy’s chest.

‘Haven’t you been listening to me, Raker?’

‘Was it to do with what Patrick Perry was looking into?’

Mills didn’t respond.

‘Was it something to do with Beatrix Steards?’

This time, he glanced at the phone, still recording our conversation from the living-room table, and then – when his eyes switched back to me – something was in them, something different: a hint of definition, as if they’d coloured at the mention of Beatrix Steards’s name.

‘Mills?’

‘Shut up.’

‘Was it something to do with Beatrix?’

‘Shut your mouth.’

I watched him for a second, but whatever had been in his eyes was gone now. I tried a different angle: ‘Why is Randolph and Emiline’s camper van missing?’