Motion attracts, she kept telling herself. If you stay completely still, they don’t see you, even if you’re right out in the open. It’s movement that the eyes notice. The instincts of an animal. Motion attracts.

For two minutes, nothing seemed to happen. Fry tried to take in as many details as she could. Four men, she counted. Camouflage jackets, black balaclavas, only their eyes showing, like bank robbers anxious to avoid security cameras. But there were no cameras out here, no witnesses to identify them later. Only her.

Though it was broad daylight, and the woods couldn’t be more different from the back streets of Birmingham, her mind overlaid the scene with memories of a dark night. She felt as though she could sense other bodies, further back in the woods, watching, laughing, waiting eagerly for what would happen next. Voices murmuring and coughing in the darkness.

Something had stirred up the images that she always tried to keep buried. Today, once again, those dark forms seemed to loom around her, smudges of silhouettes that crept ever nearer, reaching out towards her. They merged with the trees, like creatures that had risen from the undergrowth.

She remembered the movements that crept and rustled closer, the reek of booze and violence. She was waiting for the taunting laughter, for that familiar voice to break into her mind, coarse and slurring in its Birmingham accent. ‘She’s a copper.’

Some form of communication seemed to take place between the men around her. One of them stared at her keenly, as if he knew her, or would know her again if he saw her.

And then they slipped away through the trees as quickly as they’d come. Fry breathed a sigh of relief, and realized that her hand was starting to cramp where it had been gripping the handle of her ASP.

She thought of calling in the incident. The group had been armed with baseball bats and pickaxe handles, after all. But her reluctance stemmed from her fear of being a bad witness, a dread of expending her colleagues’ time and effort for no worthwhile result.

She also knew she’d recognized the first man, just as he’d recognized her. She felt sure he was the same hunt steward who had stared at her on Tuesday as she’d waited for the hunt to go by.

But there was a difference. On Tuesday, she hadn’t been able to recall where she knew him from. Her powers of recognition had failed her.

This time, she knew exactly who he was.

‘Diane?’ The voice was Cooper’s, instantly reassuring.

‘I’m here.’

‘Are you all right?’

‘Did you see them?’ she said. ‘The hunt stewards?’

‘No,’ said Cooper.

She stared at him, not sure whether she could believe him. Whose side was he on, after all? The realization that she had no one she could trust made her suddenly, irrationally angry.