A deep silence lay across the land. Only the birds could be heard greeting the return of the sun. The road was deserted, stretching emptily away towards a belt of trees. Beyond them the spire of a village church rose sharply against the clearing sky. Bannerman had walked nearly two kilometres from where the Bruges–Kortrijk bus had dropped him on the main road. In that time he had not seen a single vehicle or a single human being. The small town of Torhout lay somewhere to the east, but whatever town or village lay beyond the belt of trees, it was not important enough to appear on the Michelin map.

The house was set on its own, surrounded by a few gnarled trees, leafless and black, their branches crusted with white. The track that led off the road across half a kilometre of open field to the house was obliterated by snow. Only two crooked wooden gateposts gave clues to its existence. A crow sat one-legged on the faraway post, grooming black feathers beneath its wings. It stopped and watched suspiciously as Bannerman approached. It had seen him coming for some time, waiting until he was within a few metres before taking clumsily to the air with a loud caw-cawing. Somewhere across the fields another crow answered its call, and then silence descended again.

Bannerman paused for a moment before turning on to the track and ploughing through snow that had drifted two to three feet deep along the ridge. It took him nearly ten minutes to reach the house. It was a long, narrow building with a steeply sloped red-tiled roof. A greying whitewash flaked off the walls and the green of the shutters had faded and cracked. A rusted rone pipe had stained the wall blood-red down one side where it ran from the guttering. It was an old house, a survivor of the last war, and it bore the scars of neglect.

Against the north wall the snow had drifted several feet deep, and on the protected south side weeds poked up through the patchy skin of snow that covered the gravel path. In summer it would be a fine place to live. Bannerman stood staring up at it, listening to the quiet. Sunlight fell at an oblique angle through the trees, dappling the south wall. All the shutters were closed tight and the storm doors locked.