Then the second thing happened. Which was that the trailer door crashed violently open. But instead of Jamie McGlashan bursting out through it as Ben had been half-expecting moments earlier, what emerged were two large men. Both dressed the same, in black quilted winter jackets and black woollen beanie hats and black leather gloves and black combat trousers tucked into military boots. Neither of them looked remotely like a benefits scrounger and part-time poacher disturbed from his slumber by unexpected visitors. They looked exactly like two men who’d just been interrupted in the act of doing something very nasty and violent to a helpless victim. Their faces, the fronts of their jackets, their hands and forearms were spattered and glistening with blood. So was the long knife that each of them was clutching as they leaped down the steps from the trailer entrance. And Ben had a pretty good idea whose blood it was.

He sized the situation up in a flash. First, the fact that there were no vehicles parked nearby except for McGlashan’s blue Subaru and his own. Which meant these two guys had made their way here on foot, although he was betting their car or van wasn’t far away behind the trees that backed onto the eastern edge of the field. Then there was the lack of snow on the Subaru’s windscreen and the recent tracks on the ground, showing it hadn’t been parked there long. If McGlashan was inside the trailer, and if that was his blood, then it meant he’d only just arrived home and these two guys had been here waiting for him, knives ready to move in for a quick, dirty and silent kill.

But knives weren’t all that they had brought with them. As the first guy to reach the bottom of the steps took to his heels and ran, the second guy threw down his blade and ripped a large black pistol from his jacket. With an angry snarl on his face he pointed the gun towards Ben and Grace and opened fire, fast and wild.

Grace yelled out in alarm and threw herself on the ground behind the Mercedes as gunfire raked the screen and punched holes in the bodywork. Ben ducked behind the open driver’s door. Which wasn’t a safe place to be, because anything flimsier than an armoured limousine door skin could offer scant protection from pistol bullets. He managed to thrust an arm between the front seats and grab his bag from the rear before the shooter redirected his aim away from Grace and the driver’s window burst apart and a shower of glass fragments rained down over his head and shoulders.

Ben dived to the ground and rolled and scrabbled under the bottom door sill as more bullets smacked and ricocheted and blew up puffs of snow inches away. Still the guy kept firing, BLAM-BLAM-BLAM, filling the air with noise.