Robin reached out and traced the side of the hill with his fingers. The light was failing—Sally had been right about that. The sun was visible through the tree trunks. Soon they’d have to work by flashlight. “Shoot.”

“Why do you trust McConnell? How do you know he’s not lying about this phone call with your wife?”

“I know,” Robin said, looking the hill wall up and down.

“Yes, but how?”

Robin sighed. “There was something that he couldn’t possibly know. Something that Sam must have told him.”

“What was it?”

“He said ‘Clatteridges. 7:30 p.m. 18th August 1996.’ It was something I never wrote about in the book. Something hardly anyone knows.”

“What happened?”

Robin considered it, and then said, “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

“Okay, then,” Sally said, but not as flippantly as the words suggested. She sounded content to let it go, and Robin was thankful to her for that.

They continued quietly. Robin watched the hill, seeing nothing of note. Just a steep hillside. As impenetrable as it was unremarkable.

They carried on for another twenty minutes or so, as the sun dipped and then started to disappear. Robin got his phone out, casting its light through the undergrowth.

“McConnell give you anything to go on,” Sally said, getting her own phone out, doing the same, “except Clatteridges?”

Robin smiled to himself. It was kinda dumb. “Nothing concrete, except...” He shifted his weight, so he could get into his backpack. He reached in and pulled out the notebook. With one hand, he awkwardly shuffled the notebook to the page and tapped Sally on the shoulder. She shone the flashlight at him and took the open notebook. She stopped to look at it, and Robin took over in front.

Robin watched her, before going back to the search. “He said that Sam said something about a black hound and a horse head.”

“A horse head?” Sally said, behind him.

“That mean something to you?” Robin said, raising his flashlight to look up the hillside and then down. The hill became bare, divulging into a rock face. The undergrowth was incredibly thick here, and...

His flashlight hit on something.

“No,” Sally said, but Robin didn’t hear. He was too busy ripping through the bare thin branches, trying to see what was on the rock face, right at the base. It was a stack of wet cardboard, stuck to the rock face. He battled with the plant life and reached for it. He pulled it away, and shone the torch into the gap.

“Sally.”

He looked back.

“Sally.”

She was still looking at the notebook, and she muttered something. Something that Robin would probably have recognized as “A horse head...” if he was listening.

“Sally,” he shouted, and she looked up.

Robin smiled, as he pulled away the cardboard and shone the torch at what he’d found behind it.