I lay on the ground without a sound. Listened to the sound of blood pouring onto the dark earth and the fluttering kicks of a life coming to an end. Then there was silence, and he was in front of me again, the smell of blood and sweat and cigarettes filling my nostrils. He lay down next to me, close as if we were lovers. Then he gave a little nod and reached past me to pick up the rifle. He placed it between us. He held a knife in his right hand and he wiped the blade on his trouser leg before sliding it back into the waist of his sodden, mud-spattered trousers.

I didn’t know whether he was my death note or my saviour. I swear, I could have started sobbing there and then and felt no shame for it. Instead I just closed my eyes and lay as still as death. If I tried to move he could take me down in a moment. I felt him roll away from me. Heard the soft, damp little echoes of a body being searched. Then the ground shifted a little and he was back beside me, his lips again at my ear.

‘I don’t think you and I have got off to the best of starts,’ he whispered, and his accent was no longer Scottish. He must have seen something in how I reacted to his words as the slyest of smiles creased his bloodied, pug-like features. ‘Apologies for the deception, Mrs Hemlock. None of us are ever entirely what we appear to be, wouldn’t you agree?’

I swallowed. Chose my words carefully as the cold seeped into my bones. ‘I thought you were dead.’

‘Thick skull, thankfully,’ he whispered, and his lower lip tickled my cheek. ‘The farmer must have thought I was Lazarus.’

Questions lined up in my mind. I felt as though I’d done nothing but fumble around in the dark, making a fool of myself and getting further away from whoever it was I used to be. Inside thirty-six hours I’d somehow become complicit in something far beyond my comprehension, and with potentially catastrophic consequences.

‘What’s he doing?’ I asked, my voice cracking. ‘Walt. I don’t know what he’s doing or what he wants from me.’

He smiled again, a little of the tension seeping out of his body. ‘Nobody ever really knows what Walt’s doing except for Walt. But you very nearly messed it up for everybody.’

‘Me? I don’t even know why I’m here!’