He was about to turn back when he heard what sounded like a stifled scream coming from behind the stables. He ran round the squat cluster of buildings, looked in all directions and saw nothing. ‘Hello?’ he called out. ‘Anyone there?’ This time he heard a giggle, and walked in the direction it had come from. He’d taken only a few paces forward when something that felt like hard netting pushed him back. A fence, as high as his waist. ‘Fuck,’ he muttered. More giggles followed. Then he spotted something that stood out because, unlike everything else around him, it wasn’t dark: three small orange dots that seemed to be attached to a mass of trees nearby. The glowing ends of cigarettes.

Keeping his eye on them, Simon made his way over to the trees. When he was still too far away to see faces, he heard a voice. ‘Oh, man, sir, we’re really, really sorry. We totally know there’s no way we’re not going to be in, like, pure trouble . . .’

‘I think you should punish us?’ another girl said, making the statement sound like a question. ‘That way we won’t make the same mistake again?’ A fit of giggles followed this unlikely sounding assertion.

‘I’m not a teacher,’ Simon told the disembodied voices. ‘I’m police. Smoke yourselves stupid for all I care.’

‘No way! Oh, man! What’s, like, a policeman doing creeping round Villy in the dead of night?’

‘This is outrageous,’ said the third girl.

Now Simon was closer and could see their faces. They looked about sixteen, and were wearing pyjamas with nothing over them, no coats or anything. They shivered in between fits of hysterical laughter. ‘I’m looking for Garstead Cottage,’ he told them.

‘What are you doing over here, then?’ one of the girls said scornfully.

‘He’s better off over here. You don’t want to go to Scary Mary’s, Mister Policey-man.’

‘Tasha!’

‘What? He doesn’t. She’s, like, a pure nightmare.’

‘You’re talking about Mary Trelease,’ said Simon.

‘Oh my God, she’s probably his girlfriend or something!’

‘Maybe he’s come to, like, arrest her?’

‘Where’s the cottage?’ he tried again. ‘Can one of you show me?’

A peal of scandalised giggles greeted this suggestion. ‘Yeah, right! Like we wouldn’t be so dead if our house master caught us wandering round at night in our jarmies.’

‘She’s frightened of Scary Mary. I’ll take you, soon as I’ve finished my ciggie.’

‘Flavia, you’re such a liar! Like you wouldn’t be totally too scared.’

‘Right back at you, babes.’

‘What’s there to be scared of?’ Simon asked, hoping Neil Dunning wouldn’t choose now to arrive with his warrant and find Simon lurking amid the trees with three scantily clad teenage girls.

‘Oh my God—he doesn’t know!’

‘You, like, so won’t believe us if we tell you?’