A few days later, armed with the information that Quinn had given her, she started looking into Black Gale, the disappearance of Patrick Perry and eight other people in the same village, and then the names associated with the Beatrix Steards case, trying to find the links between those two and Adrian Vale; between everything she had and the deaths of Gabriel Wilzon and Donald Klein. And that was when she stumbled across Robert Zaid, captured within a few, solitary photographs.

Except the moment she saw his face, she knew.

It wasn’t Robert Zaid at all.

Inside an hour, she’d booked a flight to London.

63

I went to the very edge of the veranda, the adrenalin washing out of me, woozy from the cold. Vale was completely still, only the grass moving faintly around him.

Turning, I looked back at the house.

‘Isaac?’

Out in the forest, it was silent too.

‘Isaac, are you here? It’s Raker.’

I headed back to the house, moving along the hallway and into the living room. Even though the fire had died out, it was still warm, and – as I paused in the doorway – I took it all in for the first time. There was hardly any furniture, just the sofa bed, a rickety wardrobe, and a bookcase filled with old paperbacks.

And another mattress.

Off to my left, I could see the rear door that Vale had used in order to come back around on me. It was moving slightly, massaged by the wind.

Mills has made a run for it.

I quickly went to the wardrobe and yanked it open.

Men’s clothes were on hangers – coats, woollen jumpers, trousers – and there were T-shirts in an untidy pile at the bottom, alongside summer and winter shoes. I grabbed a jumper, some trousers and some socks, and then levered my freezing feet into a pair of hiking boots. Nothing fitted, but all of it was warmer and more comfortable than anything I’d been dressed in since waking up in the black of Vale’s prison.

I grabbed the rifle and headed for the rear door.

It opened on to a small porch with steps that led directly to a narrow mud path ringing the property. The path was totally hemmed in on one side by the forest. I was literally on the edge of the trees, staring into the shadows beyond.

There was no sign of movement anywhere.

I moved around the building in the direction of the veranda, keeping my eyes on the trees, then stopped on the parcel of grass where Vale’s body still lay. His eyes were open and his blood had washed the frost-flecked grass a pale pink.

A noise.