Simon Ross knew what was being photographed in that wood. He also had never seen anything like it. But then he’d never seen anything like the remains of his colleague in the kitchen either. ‘I’ll report it to Staff Sergeant Becker right now, and get someone to go back and get it.’

‘Uh-huh.’

The young man left McGee with an embarrassed lowering of the eyes, and left him alone on the step. The photographer finished up and walked very quickly to the kitchen door.

‘Don’t mind telling you, sir, I was pretty glad when you joined me just then. I was kinda getting the creeps out there, know what I mean?’

Craig nodded, as kindly as he could. Sure he knew what he meant. In fact he knew exactly what he meant when the man walked past him and into the kitchen and left him alone in the dark snowy night. Inside, someone laughed. The public would throw up their hands at that if they knew. A man lying in his own blood, excrement and entrails, ripped open and mutilated, and men are laughing round his corpse. But right then Craig felt like laughing too. Was there an animal near Joe’s corpse? They’d never know. They hadn’t checked. And why should they? It wasn’t usual to check for an animal who might have witnessed the crimes of the century, then collapsed at the scene of the murder.

He’d had a tail on Hunt all last night and today. That was something. Maybe he could rule him out of the picture. But somehow, although he couldn’t say how or why, he knew Hunt was part of something. What the fuck went on in that wood yesterday? A man blacks out, a deer dies and a kid gets killed by something that leaves no trace. What the fuck was going on, full stop?

He was weary with unexpressed grief, and his mind was clouded with it. He heard a commotion in the kitchen, and the voice of Ernest Becker cutting through it.

‘Keep them on the highway. On no account let them up here, do you understand? Now move it.’

So now the bored constable had his job back for sure and would be happily stringing striped incident tape from the trunk of one tree to another. Craig wished he could tape it across their goddamn mouths. He hated the media.

He remembered that woman, the one from, where was it, News International, that had been in Daniel’s car. It might be useless, but he was going to pull her in. She might know something. Anything. He tried to remember her name but it wasn’t there any more. That was weird. He always remembered names and licence plates. And she had made a big deal about saying her name to him. Come to think of it, he could hardly remember her face either.