The barn doors weren’t fully closed. Maybe the wood had swelled in the snow, preventing Caldwell from securing them properly. The snow had melted since, exposing wheel-rutted mud. Wada pulled the doors open. Ohara’s car was a tight fit inside. Caldwell had collided with a pile of paint-pots while driving it in. The pots were jumbled and jammed between the car and the wall. There was a big pool of white paint extending beneath the vehicle. Wada had to hop over it to reach the driver’s door.

The first question to answer was whether Caldwell had left the key in the ignition, or taken it into the house. It was dark inside the barn and even darker inside the car, but stretching in, Wada located the key, still plugged into the ignition. She clambered into the seat and slammed the door behind her.

She turned the key. There was a different sound from the sputter of the engine in George’s car. It was more of a whimper, a mechanical moan. There was no burst of ignition. The engine was dead. She knew that even without trying again, though she did try again, of course.

Her second attempt told her what the problem was. Caldwell hadn’t turned the key all the way off. She saw then that the stalk beside the steering wheel was adjusted to the headlights-on position. They weren’t on now, though they probably had been for most of the past two days, draining the battery.

An empty fuel tank and a dead battery. She sat staring into the darkness at the back of the barn, trying very hard not to be overwhelmed by her situation. She had the use of two cars, neither of which was going anywhere. Unless …

She jumped out of the car and hurried round to the rear. She raised the tailgate and peered into the storage compartment, hoping Ohara might have been carrying a set of jump leads. She had no experience whatever of using such things to start a flat battery, but she’d give it her best shot.

Nothing. It was a hire car, supplied with the bare minimum of tools: a jack, a pump, a tyre lever. No jump leads.

She let the tailgate fall shut under its own momentum, turned round and leant back against it. All she could see around her, beyond the roofline of the farmhouse, was a bleak and empty landscape. She had no means of navigating her way across it. Following the road out on foot was a daunting prospect. She wasn’t sure she had the stamina to walk as far as she might need to. She couldn’t actually remember how far along the road the last habitation was that they’d passed.