‘What are we doing, Arthur?’ Florence called in answer.

‘Looking.’

‘Yes. For what?’

‘A load of nothing, hopefully.’

‘So far, so good,’ she said to Charlie.

There was quiet for a moment. His pulse beat thickly in his neck. Next thing, he heard the trudge of Mr Mayhood in the dark, a clanking sound. And then an urgent ‘Oi! You two! Get over here!’ They ran round with their lanterns shaking. Mr Mayhood was now on his haunches by the wheel. ‘Do you see what’s on that tyre?’

Florence stooped, passing her light across it. ‘Mud.’

‘Exactly. And it’s on the wheel arch, too, look – streaks of it. The hubcap, there. But Hollis never moved this thing. I know that for a fact. I should’ve spotted it before.’

Charlie knelt down for a closer view. ‘He’s right. It’s caked into the treads, all round the edge. Somebody’s moved it. And not long ago.’ He could make out scuffed impressions in the earth below, dried up and frosted.

‘Well, if they did, they put it right back where they found it,’ Mr Mayhood said.

He went towards the other end. There was a little wheel there underneath the towbar and he walked a path from it downhill, inspecting every inch of ground along the way by lantern light. Charlie followed, seeing for himself. The wheels had left a phantom trail, bending the meadowgrass in three straight lines, going ten feet down the slope, no further. Where no weeds or grass could smother them, impressions of the tyres marked the dirt.

‘What do you reckon, Charlie?’ Mr Mayhood said. ‘You know her best.’

‘I’m not sure what you’re asking me,’ he answered.

Mr Mayhood stared up at the caravan and started walking back. ‘I think you do. But never mind for now.’ As he brushed past, he gripped him by the shoulder for a second, then let go. ‘Come on. You’ll need to help me push it forward. I don’t have your sister’s strength.’

‘She can’t have done this on her own. She isn’t capable.’ There was no doubt in his mind she could’ve towed the caravan ten feet or more, but it was harder to accept the rest. To prise the teeth from a man’s jaw and keep them in a box – that was an act of evil. She’d always been a liar, a thief, a disappointment, but she had no cruelty in her heart, and no amount of rage would bring that sort of violence from her. He was certain of that much. But Mr Mayhood tramped on through the dark without a word.

It took the three of them to shift it from its pitch. Florence heaved the towbar, guided them, while he and Mr Mayhood leaned their backs into the other end. They had to budge the wheels out of their footings first with all their weight, then it began to roll more easily and gained momentum from the incline, until Florence called, ‘Stop there! That’s it!’ She put the handbrake on. For a moment, he and Mr Mayhood were bent double, steadying their breath. He’d felt the mud beneath his boots as they’d been edging forward, a new softness to the earth, and when he fetched his lantern, raising it above the empty space the caravan had left, the light revealed a difference in the dirt. There was a woozy oblong where the soil had been turned over and then patted down. A soil of deeper colour than the land around it – dense like clay. Their bootprints were pressed in it now, clean through its middle.