I didn’t even hear the man approach. One moment I was alone and the next I was tumbling sideways; a leathery hand across my mouth and a leg intertwined between mine, tugging me down into the wet grass. It was as if the earth had suddenly taken on human form. The shout of surprise and alarm caught in my throat as a finger and thumb closed my nostrils. He was much stronger than me and from what I could feel of his outline he was absolutely solid with muscle. I tried to squirm from his grasp, eyes wide and white as the moon overhead and he released me for just long enough for me to turn my head and see his face: eyeball to eyeball with me. He had blood and dirt all down one side of his face and a great swelling around the orbit of his eye, but there was no mistaking the man from the train; the same man who I’d left to die on a country road.

He pushed my face down to the ground, his lips to my ear. He spoke so quietly that it felt more like a thought than the words of a stranger.

‘If you make a sound, you’re going to die.’

I felt the pain come in waves as he shifted his weight, my mangled ribs blazing with fire. I couldn’t breathe for the hand at my mouth and my eyes were full of tears and dirt. His eyeball, an inch from my own, looked into me as if trying to read my very soul. He was waiting for me to promise him that I would obey. He wanted my vow that I would not scream.

I blinked. Managed to give the tiniest fraction of a nod. Slowly, moving his hand away in tiny increments, he let the air flood into my lungs. I wanted to suck in a great desperate lungful but I knew it would only make me burst into a fit of coughing so I forced myself to suck in small, gentle breaths, my eyes locked on his, watching through the mist of tears and pain as he raised his gloved hand to his face and put his finger to his lips.

There was a sound from nearby: a soft rustle, as if an incongruous gust of wind were moving through the undergrowth. Something passed between the man and me, some insinuation of shared destiny, of entangled fate. I didn’t even see him move. I closed my eyes for just an instant and it was enough time for him to spring soundlessly from the earth and to thud back down to the ground, a man in his arms, his hands behind his back; a great curve of bloody death carved into his belly and another opening an astonished mouth in his windpipe.