Alec remembered that he and his late father had enjoyed the same tour as everyone else. There had been nothing much to see, apart from a few mutts in cages smoking thirty cigarettes a day to test whether smoking really was bad for humans, and some sad-looking baboons in full makeup, who were not wearing it just to look their best for visitors. In those days, this appalling exploitation of animals had been legal and, regrettably, the good people of the region were satisfied.

Alec shook his head, dragging his thoughts back from the past, and waved halfheartedly at his neighbor, now trundling off down the dusty track in his battered old Jeep, pulling the trailer full of sheep behind him. If Alec had realized that, deep down, he did possess a conscience, he would have understood that the uneasy roiling in his guts was guilt, not indigestion, and no matter how much he drank to dull his senses, it showed no sign of going away.

That’s that, then, he thought to himself, feeling as old and dried-up as an empty corn husk. Sighing deeply, he swung his leg awkwardly over the five-bar gate, wincing at the click of his artificial hip.

Alec’s melancholy was rudely interrupted by a volley of barks, startling him, making him lose his balance and topple off the gate into an untidy heap. He looked up in astonishment as Gypsy, his elderly Welsh collie, stood before him, the hackles rippling and bristling at the back of her neck.

He struggled to his feet. “What the …?” he began irritably. He squinted in the direction of the farmhouse to see what had upset her. There were no strange cars as far as he could see, but Gypsy shot off toward the courtyard in a black-and-white blur, her body low to the floor, ears flattened against her skull. Alec Tate had a bad feeling about this, but then, like most people who are unlucky enough to be born pessimists, he had bad feelings about most things.

Instinctively, he pushed himself close to the side of the house, trying to keep up with the collie as she crawled her way, commando-like, across the front garden. If someone had rung the bell, Ophelia, his wife, wouldn’t have heard it from the attic, where she was packing away three decades’ worth of junk.

Alec reached the front of the house, starting to feel a bit daft. There was no one there. Now Gypsy had drawn herself up to full height and was looking quizzically at the front door.

“You must be getting old timers’ disease,” he chuckled to Gypsy. The old dog lay down on the porch with a slightly embarrassed expression on her graying muzzle.