If there was one thing Peabody really didn’t like it was anything he couldn’t figure out – and this was completely unexplainable. No doubt he’d laugh about it tomorrow, but before then, he’d be wondering, for however long it took for his relief to arrive, where this hideous scarecrow had come from. He stepped back, raised his right foot and struck the mannequin’s midriff. It was a lightweight thing and went bouncing and rolling down the slope. Still in one piece, but at least, when he returned to the tent, it would be out of his eyeline.

‘Good fucking riddance.’ He stumped back down into the depression, trying not to wonder if whoever had set it up there had been the person he’d heard laughing.

The one good thing, of course, was the gradual lightening of the sky in the east. Now it was even having an effect down on this lower ground. Both the tape and the tent were clearly visible. Peabody kept his light on anyway, prowling in no particular direction, zigzagging around the central pit, still trying to work out what had just happened. The tent’s material, meanwhile, rattled and rustled in the breeze, until it reached the point where it distracted him. He stopped in his tracks and turned to look at it, wondering how strange it was that he hadn’t heard such sounds earlier, and how even stranger that he couldn’t feel any breeze.

A very ugly realisation struck him.

‘Oh … crap,’ he breathed.

He went through the entryway in the tape as silently as possible, though inevitably he stepped on twigs, crisp wrappers and other bric-a-brac. It was hardly a real issue. Whoever it was, they already knew that he was here.

‘All right, enough’s enough!’ he said sternly, stabbing his light-beam at the flimsy structure. Nothing happened, except that the rustling of movement inside it continued. He yanked the flap back and went in, blasting his torchlight in front of him. ‘What in Christ’s name are—’

The sentence died instantly.

What seemed like a thousand pin-prick eyes had turned to face him. From all around the dog-pit, not just on its carnage-strewn edges but halfway down and even in the depths of it. Then, with frantic squeals, the rats evacuated, exploding up and out in a volcanic tide of mouldy fur, bloody whiskers and bared buck-teeth. They bolted every which way, under the sides of the tent or out via the exit flap. Peabody could only stand stock-still as they squirmed over and around his shoes, lashing his legs with their tails.

‘God …’ he breathed, sickened to his core. ‘Oh, Jeeesus …’

It seemed to take an age for the last of them to leave, and before it did, it stopped in the torchlight, hunched and hissing like a demonic, deformed imp, its eyes glimmering, before scurrying out of sight.