The day stretched out in front of them, followed by another night. The dogs held no moral scruples, this was always going to be about survival. Their owner just hadn’t realised it yet. On the floor, the hourglass leaked red sand from the top glass through to the bottom. He estimated there were one or two days of sand still to go and meanwhile, he and his dogs were keeping an uneasy truce. The cold store was now smelling putrid. He’d had to add his own excrement to the dogs’ smaller piles. He’d noticed neither dog had passed urine since the previous day, and just now when he’d managed a meagre piss, his own urine was dark, almost brown. His phone had run out of battery just as dawn broke, so he had to guess the time at around 12:00, give or take a few hours. He’d been suffering with cramp during the night and even now his body ached in a way he’d never experienced before. His lips had started to crack – he’d tried licking them to provide some respite to the dreadful thirst he was experiencing but there was no saliva left in his mouth.

He watched the egg timer, red sand still trickling at an almost imperceptible rate from one side to the other. He’d come to associate the timer with whatever time was left to him, judging that at the rate it emptied he had one day left. Unless he’d lost track of the days, that took him to Thursday when he’d be missed at Inverness Sheriff Court for sure. He just had to survive until then. An inscription he hadn’t noticed before caught his eye as the sun made a welcome intrusion into the room. Words were carved around the base of the hourglass – Children Suffer. He felt as if his heart had been gripped in an ice-cold fist. One hand went to his chest, willing his heart to not give up now, the other turned the base around to reveal more of the inscription – The Little. The Little Children Suffer. Was it a message from whoever had trapped him in here?