They’d be looking for her. She didn’t know how long it had been, but she knew her absence would set alarm bells ringing. Laura had taken two sick days in her entire career and both times she had rang in to make her excuses. If she’d been unconscious so long that a whole night had passed, Bridget would know she hadn’t come home. And Ray had been expecting to see her at dinner.

Laura pulled her flimsy summer cardigan tight around her body. She was freezing cold. The shock and the head wound weren’t helping her body temperature, though at least the sugar was dealing somewhat with the former.

They’ll find you, she reassured herself.

But her inner fears wouldn’t stay silent.

How can they find you, when they don’t even know where to look? Who would make the leap that you did? She hadn’t even taken it seriously herself – that’s why she’d come out to the house so casually, on her own, fearful of nothing. Even when the little niggling doubt that she might have acted in haste crept in – she hadn’t entertained it the way she should have. She hadn’t even had her sidearm primed. Laura’s hand moved to her hip, as it had the first time she’d woken. Of course it was gone. He wasn’t stupid.

Despair was tightening its grip. She hugged her knees to her chest and started rocking backward and forward, as much to stay warm as to provide comfort.

She heard a noise. Footsteps moving quickly overhead. She’d positioned herself on the stairs in case there was somebody in the cellar with her, but she’d forgotten that the real horror was above her.

The trapdoor was flung open and a blinding light filled her eyes. She’d barely time to react and descend more than one or two steps before he grabbed her under her arms and hoisted her up into the room overhead.

‘You’re coming with me,’ he growled, while Laura kicked and screamed.

He was far too strong for her. Even as she was fighting for her life the thought crossed her mind that it wouldn’t have been any bother to him to carry his victims through Glendalough and down to his burial site.

‘Please,’ she cried, the image of the five graves filling her head. She didn’t want to die. ‘Please, no!’

The man behind her clamped his hand over her mouth and brought his lips close to her ear. She could smell saltiness on his breath, a musky scent on his body – the smell of the outdoors.

‘I don’t want to do this,’ he whispered, as gently as a lover. ‘I tried to stop. You were meant to stop me. I dug the last one up so you’d find them. My sleeping beauties.’