He stood and walked in, letting the door swing shut behind him with a bang. It was almost black inside with the door shut. Black and cold. The only window was completely blocked by snow and the light coming through the gaps in the logs was negligible. But Saul knew the layout of McEwan’s cabin. The table was in the centre of the room, where the engineer would sit and hold court, and Saul knew there would be a candle and matches there. The least he could do would be to light Mr McEwan’s stove for him, whether he was here or not. No one let their stove go out in Siding Twenty-three unless they wanted to freeze to death in the night. He walked carefully across the dim room towards the dark shape of the table. The floor seemed sticky and icy. Saul placed the dish on the wooden surface and felt around for a candle, withdrawing his arm suddenly when his hand touched something soft and cold. It felt pulpy and unpleasant and Saul recoiled at its contact.

The experience stopped him wanting to feel around on that table any further, and leaving the soup there, he retraced his steps to the door, to prop it open and let in the thin grey daylight.

The floor was definitely sticky, and there was the unmistakable crunching of thin ice on a puddle, as if something wet was down there that had partially frozen. Saul’s senses started to alert him to something he could not place, and did not wish to. He fumbled for the wooden latch, finding himself panic slightly when he failed to locate it first time, then breathing hard with relief when his fingers found the big hinged slat that opened the door. He pulled it up, threw the door open and blinked in the light, narrowing his eyes to peer into the newly-illuminated interior.

It was a full thirty seconds before he screamed. Thirty seconds in which Saul Campbell realized many things. The first thing he realized was that the cold object he had touched on the table was a piece of meat. A large piece of white-skinned, fatty, bloody meat, about seven or eight pounds in weight, his cook’s eye told him, and meat that had pieces of fabric sticking to it.

The second thing he realized was that the silvery-grey wooden floor of McEwan’s cabin was indeed stained with huge splashed patches of something dark. Something wet and sticky and half-frozen.