Standing, he pulled her up, sliding one arm around her waist and protecting her damaged face with his other hand. They took the spiral staircase at a snail’s pace, with Ava gripping the wall on one side and Callanach’s hand in front of her as if she were on a ship in a squall, pausing every few steps. He pulled her into one of the tiny but secure side rooms to rest before taking a look at her leg.

By the time they reached the ground, she was shaking so badly, Callanach was worried she might pass out.

‘Let me carry you. It’s flat from here.’

She looked up at him, her grey eyes huge in her ashen face, her hair bloody and flattened against her head.

‘Like hell you will,’ she managed with the smallest of smiles.

He laughed, loud and hard, the tension leaving his body in fierce waves that left him nauseous and breathless.

‘We need to get you warmed up,’ he said when he could finally speak again.

Finally, they staggered in through the visitor centre door, making the uniformed officer posted there jump up and grab for his ASP baton.

‘It’s all right,’ Callanach reassured him. ‘There was an accident, not an incident.’

‘Shall I call an ambulance for you, ma’am?’ the young man asked, keeping his distance from them as if they might be contagious.

‘No, I’m fine. Nothing a couple of paracetamol won’t fix,’ Ava said. ‘Lock up behind us then report back to your station, Constable. Would you mind being discreet about this? I don’t want anyone thinking DI Callanach and I had a fist fight.’ She did her best to smile, but her face was losing its numbness and redefining the definition of pain.

‘Absolutely, ma’am, you can count on it,’ he said stoically, opening the door for them to exit towards the car park.

‘One thing,’ Ava said, looking at the castle employee who was staring at her as if she’d just landed in an alien spacecraft. ‘If you did get trapped inside the castle walls at night, is there any way at all you might get out? I mean, if it was something like a life-or-death situation.’

Kevin, his name badge proclaimed, snapped to remarkably quickly.

‘Two options,’ he mused, rubbing his greying bread and glancing back up towards the castle as if he could see the answers. ‘If you were slim and wanted to badly enough, even an adult could maybe climb through one of the bomb holes then get out down the banks of the moat. Alternatively, if the tide was out, you could clamber down the rocks to the sea and walk along to the section of the beach from where it’s possible to get back up. You’d have to be fit, though. Uninjured and strong. I wouldn’t want to try it.’