I had. It was on an email I’d seen in Robert Zaid’s study.

‘Is that what this place is called?’

But he didn’t seem to have heard me.

‘Isaac?’

He wrapped his hands around the knife handle.

‘Isaac?’

‘Shit,’ he said softly, fresh blood spilling out of his wound.

He moved the blade in his stomach, crying out, and then shifted against the tree again, pushing himself away from the bark. As he did, he staggered slightly, almost losing his footing. Once he’d recovered, he used the gun again, gesturing at the notebook in my hands, and said, ‘You finished there?’

I looked down at my notes and then back to him.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Have I?’

‘Throw me over the notebook.’

I looked at him, uncertain what was going on.

‘Throw over the notebook,’ he shouted.

I did as he asked and he caught it with his spare hand. Once he’d wriggled it back into his coat pocket, he raised the gun and said, ‘We’re going to start walking in that direction.’

He looked at the forest behind me, at the same spot as earlier.

‘What’s in there?’ I asked.

I tried not to sound panicked, but it was hard.

‘Isaac?’

‘Shut up.’

‘Isaac, where are we going?’

‘Shut up,’ he spat. ‘It’s over.’

He looked at me, sorrow carved into his face.

‘This is the end for you now.’

66

The forest closed in around us.

‘Isaac, you don’t have to do this.’

‘Don’t speak, don’t turn around.’

As we walked, Mills trailed behind me, the gun out in front of him, telling me where to head. It all looked the same in front, the ground frozen, the branches reaching out, the canopy preventing much in the way of sunlight from hitting the forest floor. Whenever I looked over my shoulder, Mills would wave me forward with the gun, but his legs were barely carrying him now and the crimson bloom around the knife wound was expanding, crawling away from his stomach towards his hip, down to his groin, up to his chest. He stumbled a couple of times and quickly reset himself, but he couldn’t go on like this. Even if the knife hadn’t hit his organs, he’d still been stabbed. He was losing blood, he was in shock, his skin was greying and his breathing was getting shallower.

I just had to wait for the right moment.

About twenty minutes later, we hit a small clearing, a wooden shack at one edge, next to a stream. The shack was padlocked from the outside, a pitchfork and shovel propped next to the door, and what looked like a plastic groundsheet beside those. The pitchfork and shovel had mud caked on them.