He glanced irritably at his watch. It showed less than a couple of minutes’ advance since the last time he’d checked it.

‘Christ,’ he muttered.

A couple of times, he’d tried to get himself comfortable on one of the old chairs set up yesterday afternoon by Sister Cassie’s weird congregation. But most were broken or lopsided, and those that weren’t sank into the grime when he applied his weight to them. He couldn’t even sit on the ground. God alone knew what he might discover if he did that: broken glass, a nail, a syringe, at the very least slimy filth.

So he had to keep walking, plodding around the outside of the incident tape. But it wasn’t a big area they’d cordoned off, forty yards by forty, and he could pull an entire circuit only to find that he’d be back where he’d started in less than half a minute. He tried to figure out how many circuits he’d have to make before his relief showed up, but that was impossible given that he didn’t know exactly when his relief was due. It was supposed to be sometime around five o’clock, but it could just as easily be half-past five or half-past six. Everything depended on what these big events taking place on the division actually were.

‘They’d better be bloody big,’ he mumbled.

Once or twice he thought he heard something and stopped to listen. Usually, it was the screech of a hunting owl, or the distant rattling crash of a night train. But occasionally it was harder to pin down.

The first time, it was a heavy, hollow clatter, like some large metal drum being overturned. It echoed across the desolate ridges of the landfill, but it was loud, indicating that it hadn’t originated far away. Peabody stood rigid by the incident tape, wondering who might be so close. It was only to be expected that there’d be scavengers around. There was little here that looked to be of value, but tip-pickers were a breed, and they were more likely to come at night, because technically they were committing theft. The second time, it was slightly more sinister: what sounded like a rasping, snickering laugh. That time, Peabody turned his Maglite on and swept it up and down the slopes of refuse. He saw nothing odd, but there’d been something determined and intentional about that laugh – as if he’d been supposed to hear it, or as if whoever it was hadn’t cared whether he’d heard it or not.