His eyes were wild, terrifying – even though I was the one with the gun – his fingers wriggling at the grip of the knife he was still holding. He finally stood, but then rocked forward on the balls of his feet, unbalanced, wincing, trying not to show me that he was hurt. But the chest wound was bad: against his coat it seemed almost black, the shape of it spreading like a charred flower. He staggered to a stop six feet from me and looked up.

‘That fucking prick Mills,’ he said, dots of blood on his face, saliva foaming at the corner of his mouth like a rabid dog. ‘Mills!’ he screamed into the forest, and I looked beyond him, realizing now that Vale wasn’t the one who’d opened the hatch. Mills was. Vale had been preparing for it, which was why I’d seen him loading his rifle – he’d been getting ready to finally put me down – but Mills had got there first.

Mills was here.

I looked out into the forest again, then behind me, into the emptiness of the house, and as I turned back Vale moved, staring at his chest wound, at the blood spilling over his fingers, as if the injury were Isaac Mills’s fault, not mine.

‘He was so persuasive about keeping you alive,’ he said, wiping his face. He must have been talking about the night at the cottage, about Mills warning me off rather than cutting me down. Vale was the one who’d torn our investigation from the walls. He was the one on the phone who’d listened in to Mills and me talking.

‘Where are the people from Black Gale, Adrian?’

He didn’t respond, dropping to his knees again.

Frozen grass crunched as he hit the ground, and then his eyes swept across the vastness of the forest, his expression almost serene.

‘Are they buried out there?’

He swayed.

‘Adrian?’

‘No,’ he said.

He was suddenly different now, as if he could feel the end coming.

‘So where are they?’

‘I never buried them.’

He said it quietly, matter-of-factly.

‘You mean, you just left them where you killed them?’

He didn’t even look like he’d heard the question. I stared at the colossal sweep of the forest. Where the hell did I even start to search?

‘You just left them where you killed them?’ I repeated.

He nodded. ‘No one’s going to find them here.’

My whole body sank: I’d known it was coming, I’d known that there was little chance any of them would still be alive – but hearing it was different from imagining it.