Dead Scared

THE SUPPER PARTY at which I’d been invited to be Evi’s guest was in the middle of nowhere. Or, if you want to be picky, a tiny hamlet called Endicott, between two villages called Burwell and Waterbeach, some eight miles north-east of Cambridge. I was well and truly in the Fens now. I had a feeling that, had it been a clear night, the view would have been un-interrupted until the North Sea. I’ve spent my life in cities and I was finding the vastness of the East Anglian landscape disturbing. There was just too much of it somehow, too much emptiness. No place to hide.

Mind you, the sunset that evening as Joesbury and I had driven back had been awe-inspiring. There had been plenty of cloud cover all afternoon, and as the sun went down the wind picked up and the heavens began to swirl with endless shades of orange, crimson and gold. If someone had told me the sky was on fire, I might just have believed it.

The awesome skyscape seemed to have affected Joesbury too. He was silent for most of the journey back and dropped me off with barely a goodbye. Now, colour had largely fled the world and just a few ribbons of gold broke up the unrelenting blackness. Like memories of a day I really hadn’t wanted to end.

I spotted the gap in the hedgerow Evi had told me to watch out for and turned off the road. A few yards down the lane I switched off the Black Eyed Peas album I’d been listening to. There was something about the farm track, stretching for what seemed like miles ahead of me before disappearing into a black void, that made hip-hop seem entirely out of place.

The surface wasn’t great and I had to go slowly, rocking and lurching from one rut to another. I seemed to have left civilization behind, my headlights the only break in the darkness for miles. Nor could I rely on anything astral. Someone had taken a vacuum and cleaned the sky of stars, and if the moon had come up at all this evening, it had changed its mind and gone in again.

On a whim, I slowed right down and switched off the headlights, just to see. The night seemed to solidify. It leaped closer, surrounding the car. I swear I could hear the metal of the bodywork groaning under the pressure. Completely freaky! I switched my headlights back on quickly. I’d had no idea that night-time could be so intense.

I carried on past farm buildings on the right-hand side of the track and what could even have been a house. No lights though. No parked cars. Nothing to indicate a gathering. I think I was almost considering giving up when I passed through two tall stone columns and saw the farmhouse ahead. Several vehicles were parked at the front and there were lights on in the downstairs windows. I parked and got out. The email Evi had sent me earlier had warned against wearing heels. Easy now to see why. This wasn’t even a rough gravel drive. This was rock-spattered earth.

The house was two storey, square built, of stone construction. It looked like a haunted house in a children’s story book: carved window ledges, elaborate crest over the front door and those nasty imp-like statues that leer down at you, tongues dangling, from the roof edge. There was a large iron ring centrally placed on the door. I lifted it, was about to let it fall.

‘That door hasn’t been opened since the old Queen died,’ said a voice from the side of the house. I turned to see Nick Bell heading towards me, lit cigarette in one hand.

‘This is your house?’ I asked when he was closer, cursing my stupidity for not asking Evi whose party she was inviting me to.

‘I rather think it owns me,’ he replied. ‘Laura, isn’t it? Evi told me you were coming. Good to see you again.’

He bent lower and kissed me on one cheek. The skin of his face was cold and his breath smelled of smoke and red wine. I couldn’t help a shudder as his lips made contact.

‘So did the old Queen die here?’ I asked, more to cover my confusion than because I have any interest in deceased royalty. The house looked old enough for any number of dead queens to be associated with it.

‘Quite possibly,’ he replied. He was wearing jeans and the same blue and brown flecked woollen sweater I’d seen him in at the hospital. ‘Her rotting corpse could still be in one of the attic bedrooms,’ he was saying. ‘We get some very odd smells from time to time.’

I followed Nick round the side of the house, past smokers huddled around a fire-pit and in through a boot room that smelled of dogs. On a counter I saw what looked like a cardboard box of fluffy yellow chicks. I leaned closer. Chicks all right. Dead ones. I was about to ask Nick why he kept dead poultry in his boot room when he ushered me into the kitchen. A slim woman in her early fifties with shoulder-length dark hair claimed his attention and a couple of pointers grabbed mine.

I have very little experience of dogs but it’s difficult to resist creatures that are so unashamedly pleased to see you. Both were predominantly white with speckled markings. The smaller and slimmer of the two had a chocolate-brown face with ears so active they almost seemed to be talking at me. The other, with red-brown face and markings, looked older, its big cocoa-coloured eyes both wise and friendly. The name tag on the older one said Merry. The younger was Pippin.

In my experience, people who are very keen on The Lord of the Rings can be a bit odd. On the other hand, I was quite a Tolkien fan myself.

Nick was searching around in a kitchen drawer. I put down a bottle of wine and poured myself an orange juice.

‘Wonderful house,’ I said, when Nick had emptied the drawer of cutlery and I had his attention again.

‘Belonged to my parents,’ he replied. ‘I inherited a few years ago. I’m going to sell it to someone who can afford to renovate it just as soon as I can get it safe enough to show estate agents round. The place is falling apart.’

Someone else came over to speak to Nick and I took myself through to an oak-panelled dining room awash with old Toby jugs and willow-patterned plates. The fireplace was massive. A second later I realized it needed to be. There was practically a breeze running through the room from ill-fitting windows on opposite walls. I counted two buckets and a bowl on the stone-flagged floor to catch the rain. And this was the ground floor.

There were around a dozen people in the room and not much space for more. I carried on walking into another stone-flagged room with easy chairs, a shiny black grand piano, an even larger fireplace and, cliché though it was, the decapitated head of a large mammal on one wall. Evi was perched on a window seat at the far end. An older man was sitting next to her, leaning rather closer than would have felt comfortable had I been in her position. Evi was dressed in bright scarlet this evening: red sweater that came down to mid-thigh, black jeans tucked into red boots. Her hair had been gathered up and was held in place by a red clip. Tiny, sparkly red earrings. She had a long neck, I noticed, and she held her head high.

She caught my eye and gave me a smile. I was about to cross the room and join her when someone spoke to me.

‘Dried off, have you?’ asked a boy I thought I recognized. He looked a little older than the average student, his skin a little more papery, deeper lines around the eyes. He was about five foot seven and thin. Pinched around the face. Runty was a word I might have used, had I been feeling mean.

‘Is it raining out?’ I replied, although I knew exactly what he meant. He saw the look in my eye and almost turned away. I was being Lacey.

‘I take it you were on the green on Tuesday night,’ I said, grabbing a nearby bowl and offering it to him. He glanced down and a confused look took hold of his face. Well, I was offering him pot pourri. Curled wood-shavings and dried leaves, to be specific. Lacey would have put one in her mouth just to prove a point. Laura put them back down on the piano and looked sheepish.

‘I’m Laura,’ I said.

‘Will,’ he told me. ‘What are you reading?’

I bit back the temptation to say Dan Brown. ‘Psychology,’ I replied. ‘You?’

‘I’m doing part three of the mathematical tripos,’ he told me and I nodded, as though it meant something.

‘Who were those boys?’ I asked him. ‘The ones on the green the other night wearing masks?’ Scott Thornton I already knew about. Wouldn’t hurt to put names on the others.

He smirked and his eyes fell to my chest. ‘Why, are you planning revenge?’ he said.

‘Just want to know which shins I have to kick when I see them in daylight,’ I said, before I could stop myself. There was something about this guy that was really bringing out the Lacey in me.

‘To be honest I’ve not seen that lot before,’ he said. ‘A lot of freshers get dunked in the first few weeks but not usually by Lone Ranger lookalikes. So did you enjoy the experience of being chained up?’

God, this bloke was a twat. Fortunately, at that moment, people began appearing with loaded dinner plates.

‘I’m starving,’ I muttered. ‘Catch you later.’

Evi had been abandoned by her admirer. ‘Can I get you something to eat?’ I offered. She started to shake her head, then seemed to change her mind.

‘That would be great,’ she said.

Back in the kitchen I joined the small queue. The curry I could smell was a mildly spiced pheasant casserole served with roasted root vegetables. People were still tucking into the first course, though, which was some sort of pâté.

I cut Evi a slice of pâté, found some bread and a knife and carried it back through, meaning to ask her how long she’d known Nick Bell and, if I could do it discreetly, what she thought of him. It probably wouldn’t hurt to find out how good his IT skills were.

It wasn’t to be. Two men were talking to her now. She was beautiful and fragile, like a princess in a fairy tale. They just couldn’t help themselves. I reached around one of them to hand over the plate.

‘Thanks, Laura,’ she said. ‘Can we catch up later?’

I left her to her admirers and went back to the food. The pâté was great, then the dark-haired woman started serving the casserole. I made polite conversation about nothing with people near by and was just wondering whether second helpings were acceptable when my host reappeared.

‘How you doing?’ he asked me.

‘Bursting out of my jeans but otherwise fine,’ I told him. ‘Fabulous food.’

‘Liz and I have an arrangement,’ he said, nodding towards the dark-haired woman. She caught her name being mentioned and gave him the sort of look a son gets from a mother who is just a little too fond of him. ‘I kill it, she cooks it,’ he went on. ‘What we don’t eat she sells at the Third Tuesday Farmers’ Market.’

I was not in Kansas any more.

‘When you say kill it, you’re speaking figuratively, right?’ I said. ‘You mean you pop down to Waitrose, stalk the aisles in a predatory fashion and wrestle the last piece of frozen chicken from a single mum with toddler twins.’

‘You’re in the country now,’ said Liz, who’d crept closer. ‘Jim wouldn’t eat a piece of meat that’s seen the inside of a supermarket.’ She nodded towards a wiry, silver-haired man by the window and Lacey had an urge to ask if Jim were her husband or her brother, or both. Laura, though, gave her a tight-lipped smile. Without returning it, Liz picked up a stack of dirty plates and left the room.

‘So you’re a killer?’ I asked Nick, looking into his eyes, trying to see if there was anything not quite right in there. They looked steadily back, a rich golden brown. Beautiful eyes. With a light in them that I couldn’t interpret.

‘Got a problem with that?’ he asked.

‘Depends what you kill,’ I said. ‘And, I guess, on how you do it.’ Oh, I had to be careful. Lacey was standing on tiptoe, arms outstretched, desperate to be out of her box, and if this man had anything to hide I was probably putting him on maximum alert.

He was a cool customer, I had to admit. He gave me a very wide grin and took my empty plate from me. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I’ll show you my lethal weapons.’

*

Jessica Calloway opened her eyes to find she was no longer in her room at college, the scene of so many dreadful nightmares lately. She was in a forest. She got to her feet slowly. She could see stars shining down through impossibly tall trees. The ground was covered with a soft sprinkling of frost that gleamed silver in the starlight.

‘Jessica,’ called a voice from somewhere among the trees. A high-pitched, tinny voice that didn’t sound quite human. This was just another bad dream. She’d wake up soon, trembling and sweating and screaming, but awake and safe.

She was standing on a rough path that had been formed by the constant passage of footsteps. Every few yards or so a small light was half hidden amidst the undergrowth, each giving off a soft glow. The lights seemed to invite her on, deeper into the woods.

A movement above her head made her jump. She looked up to see a creature, a very large bat, swooping down from the trees towards her. Jessica started, then stared at it in astonishment. The bat was the palest shade of blue and it left behind a trail like a silver moonbeam. As Jessica watched, the bat disappeared and the trail shimmered away to nothing.

In the boot room, Nick was holding out an oilskin coat for me. I slipped my arms into it and we stepped outside to find that snow was falling. I felt a flurry of nerves and told myself to chill. We were surrounded by people. This was his home. Nothing was going to happen.

‘I didn’t bring a torch,’ he said. ‘Stay close.’

We followed a flagstone path that led away from the main house towards a row of outbuildings. Some of them looked like stables. As we drew closer the long, pale face of a horse appeared.

‘This is Shadowfax,’ Nick said, stopping to stroke the horse’s nose.

‘You really are a Lord of the Rings fan,’ I muttered, as he pulled keys from his jeans pocket and slid one of them into the door of the next building.

‘They’ll be asleep,’ he said. ‘Keep your voice low.’

Inside the shed was darkness, a strong smell of animal waste and an odd, expectant silence. Then a flapping just over my left shoulder. Light began to grow. I could see Nick’s hand in the corner of the room, adjusting a dimmer switch. I was being watched by ten pairs of soft, black eyes.

I’d stepped back against the door. Too quickly. I’d startled them. They jumped, squawked, flapped and grumbled.

‘Are you OK?’ asked Nick, frowning at me. ‘Sorry, should I have warned you?’

‘What are they?’ I asked, my eyes flicking from one creature to the next, taking in that they were all tethered to their perches. I still wasn’t moving from the door.

‘Peregrine falcons,’ Nick replied, approaching the nearest bird. The creature bent its head towards Nick’s outstretched hand, as though it would nuzzle against him. Or bite. Nick pulled out of reach before either could happen.

The birds differed slightly in size but were identical in colouring. The feathers on their backs and upper wings were the colour of rain-drenched slate. Those on their breasts were cream and cinnamon, dappled with black. ‘Fastest creatures on the planet,’ said Nick. ‘Haldir, this is Laura.’

The falcon looked at me. Its eyes were black, rimmed with yellow. I’d seen people with less intelligence in their eyes.

‘I thought that was the cheetah,’ I said. The falcon hadn’t taken its eyes off me.

‘Cheetah, shmeetah,’ said Nick, lifting his fingers towards the bird again, pulling them out of reach as the bird ducked its head. ‘The cheetah can run at seventy miles an hour for a couple of minutes. Peregrines have been recorded diving at two hundred miles per hour.’

At the far end of the shed, on a separate, raised perch, a bird that I was pretty certain was an owl jumped and spread its wings, as though clamouring for attention.

‘Well, I would be impressed, but isn’t that just the same as falling?’ I said. ‘If you’re high enough, don’t you just gather speed ad infinitum?’

Nick held out his arm and the falcon stepped on to it. ‘The essential difference between freefall and a controlled dive is that a peregrine can pull himself out of a dive in two seconds.’

I took a step closer to them both. ‘Will he let me touch him?’ I asked. The bird looked at me as if to say, Try it, sweetheart.

‘He’s a bit jumpy,’ said Nick. ‘Even I have to watch myself. Leah will, though.’ He put his arm back to the perch and the falcon graciously stepped down.

‘Put this on.’ Nick was holding out a long leather glove. I pulled it on over my right hand. It stretched halfway up my arm. Then Nick raised my arm until it was horizontal and led me further into the shed until we were both surrounded by intense black eyes. He lifted the owl from her perch and put her gently down on my outstretched arm. She was almost entirely white except that the feathers on her back and wings were the colour you might see if a tortoiseshell cat was turning slowly to gold.

‘She weighs nothing,’ I said, lifting my arm a fraction. She gave a little jump and shook her wing feathers.

‘She’s really just a pet,’ Nick replied. ‘A barn owl. Owls aren’t much good for hunting. I fly her sometimes, just for fun.’

‘And these birds hunt for you?’ I asked. ‘They actually catch food that you eat?’

‘More than I can eat. That’s why Liz comes in handy. You should come out with me one day.’

‘Do you fly them every day?’

‘In the season, yes.’

‘How do you find time to work?’ I asked.

‘I’m a GP,’ he said. ‘We work part time and get paid a fortune. Don’t you read the papers?’

Leah turned her head to look directly at me. There was something a bit eerie about the way her head could move independently of her body. Nick reached out and ran his hand lightly over her crown. As his hand left her, she seemed to stretch up towards him.

‘Never thought I’d hear one of you admit it,’ I said.

‘Oh, I’m always honest about the small things,’ he said. ‘That way the big lies tend to go unnoticed. You weren’t too sure when you came in, were you?’

‘Not really,’ I said. ‘A bird very like these attacked me yesterday.’

‘Where?’

‘A couple of miles from here. Not far out of town. I was out running. I thought I might lose my eyes at one point. It was a bit freaky.’

‘Describe it for me,’ he said.

As best I could, from memory, I described the bird that had flown at me the day before. I gave a rough idea of its wingspan, the colour of its feathers. ‘Bigger than these,’ I finished, looking carefully at the falcons. ‘And with different feathers underneath.’

‘Sounds like a buzzard,’ said Nick.

‘Are they known for rowdy behaviour?’

‘Well, funnily enough, it’s not unheard of,’ he replied. ‘Especially in the summer when they’ve got young in the nests. This time of year, though, it is unusual. I can only imagine it had been kept in captivity at some point and became used to humans providing food.’

The birds sensed the commotion before we heard it. One second they were relaxed, getting used to our presence, maybe even enjoying the unexpected company, the next there was a massive ruffling of feathers, excited jumping around and frantic squawking. Nick gave the door a worried glance before reaching out to take Leah from me. He put her back on her perch, spoke softly to the others and led me to the door.

‘You there, Nick?’ called a man’s voice. I stayed in the shed. I’d recognized that voice.

‘We’re here,’ called Nick. ‘What’s up?’

‘There’s a dog in with the yows down at Tydes End,’ said the voice I knew. ‘Causing fuckin’ mayhem, according to Sam.’

Nick sucked in a deep breath. ‘Shit,’ he said. ‘It’s too bloody dark. We’ll need lights.’

‘Got ’em. John’s taken the truck down. I said we’d follow.’

Nick turned to me. I had no choice but to step outside. Two men had approached. One was a tall dark-haired man in his late forties who looked as though he ate too much red meat. The other was smaller and slimmer, with silver hair and narrow-set eyes. He was the man called Jim whom Liz had pointed out earlier. He was also the farmer-bully who’d turned me out of the scary woods the previous day.

‘Laura, can you make your way back to the house?’ Nick said. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can.’

I sensed Jim hadn’t recognized me. The day before, I’d been in jogging clothes, my hair pulled back and dark with sweat, no make-up. Dressed for a party I looked very different. ‘Of course,’ I replied. ‘Everything all right?’

‘There’s a dog worrying the sheep a couple of fields along,’ said Nick. ‘They’re all in lamb so it’s pretty serious. Half the flock could miscarry if we don’t get it out of there. Back soon.’

He patted my shoulder and was off, stopping only to unlock the last shed in the row and pull something that looked a lot like a shotgun out of it. Then he and the other two men disappeared over a fence and across the field.

Jessica walked on, further into the forest, and gradually became aware that the light was changing. The trees were no longer black and silver in the moonlight but a pale shade of gold. They were gleaming all around her, glowing brightly as though reflecting back sunshine. She looked up. As each tree reached the midnight-blue sky, the gold trunks splintered into a glittering cobweb of branches. And tiny pieces of gold were drifting down from above. At first Jessica thought they were falling leaves, but as one landed on her outstretched arm she realized it was snowing.

The snowflake, nearly three centimetres in diameter, stayed on her wrist. She could see its intricate pattern, like the inside of a kaleidoscope, against her pale skin. She watched it melt and others take its place. Golden snowflakes were falling all around her, landing on her arms, her legs, her hair, and covering the ground like a carpet of silk.

Jessica stood up. She had never seen anything so beautiful in her life as this golden wood, in which the trees seemed almost to be growing before her eyes. She could see them breathing, their long, strong trunks swelling as they took in air, then relaxing as they breathed out again. She’d always known that trees breathed, all plants did, but had never thought she’d actually see it happening.

With each breath they grew a little taller. And were they singing? They were. The trees were singing to her, a soft, high-pitched, almost tuneless song, like the sound whales make when they call to each other across hundreds of miles of ocean. It was the sort of music you might hear among the stars.

Jessica turned on the spot, listening to the trees call to each other, knowing that if she stood here and listened hard, she might actually start to understand what they were saying. She realized she wasn’t afraid any more. There was nothing to be afraid of in a wood so beautiful. She took a step closer to the nearest tree and reached out. It was warm and soft, like the skin on a warm-blooded animal. She stroked it and felt the tree purr in response like a great cat.

From behind her came a low-pitched chuckle.

Jessica jumped round, her back against the cat-like tree. Someone was watching her. Inching her way round the tree, she began to back away. She’d long since left the path behind. She had only the light from the golden trees to guide her, and the soft iridescence of the snow at her feet. She backed up against another tree and worked her way round it. She almost stumbled but managed to get her balance in time.

Still watching her. And getting closer. She couldn’t see them but she could hear them breathing, smell the bitter, stale male odour.

A twig snapped behind her and Jessica began to run. She didn’t dare look back, just kept on running, over rough ground, dodging undergrowth, finding narrow paths through the trees. She saw the lights and the thought flashed into her head that this might be fresh danger. She didn’t process it in time. She’d reached the clearing, had stumbled among them, before she saw the clowns.

I was in no hurry to get back to polite conversation with strangers, but when I reached the back garden I saw the fire-pit was still lit. Two men and a girl were gathered on fold-up chairs around it. Maybe I’d join them. I’d heard people say smokers were the best fun at a social gathering. I was just drawing close when Evi appeared at the back door wearing a blue woollen coat speckled with snowflakes.

‘There you are, Laura,’ she said. ‘Any chance of you walking me to my car?’

Evi didn’t strike me as the sort of woman who’d need walking to her car, disabled or not, so I figured she wanted to talk to me.

‘You’re leaving early,’ I said. ‘Or is it over? Does everybody have to get up for milking?’

‘No, it’s just me,’ she said. ‘I don’t really do late nights.’

Evi’s car was parked next to mine. I held the door open for her and she looked around, as though checking we were alone.

‘Are you OK?’ I asked.

She didn’t reply for a moment, letting her eyes fall to the steering wheel then raising them back to me again. In the dim light they looked black. Then, ‘Do you know much about IT, Laura?’ she said. ‘From a forensic point of view?’

‘A bit,’ I replied. ‘What’s happened?’

Other people were leaving too and drawing closer. I walked round and climbed into the passenger seat of Evi’s car.

‘There’s another track twenty yards down the lane,’ I said, as she turned to me in surprise. ‘You can drop me off there.’

We drove for a second or two and then she pulled over. The car behind passed us.

‘I didn’t realize you knew Nick,’ Evi said.

‘I met him a few days ago at the hospital,’ I replied. ‘Do you know him well?’

‘We both studied medicine here,’ she told me. ‘Nick was a couple of years ahead of me.’ Her face relaxed into a smile. ‘He came to see me yesterday. He’s worried about the suicides too. He was quite relieved to know someone is doing something.’

Worried about the suicides? Or worried that Evi might be on to him?

‘You didn’t tell him about me?’ I asked.

Her eyes opened wider. ‘No, of course not,’ she said. ‘I just thought you might have done.’

I shook my head firmly. ‘No, I haven’t. He can’t know.’ If there was one thing Joesbury and the others had impressed upon me it was that no one could know who I was. Trust no one.

‘So your IT problem,’ I said. ‘What’s that all about?’

She turned away again, tapped her fingers on the steering wheel, glanced into the mirror. There was nothing behind us, just dark shapes all around. ‘I may have a stalker,’ she said eventually. ‘But the police don’t take me terribly seriously. They think I’m a bit … hysterical.’

Hysterical wasn’t a word I’d use to describe Evi Oliver. Anxious maybe, suffering from poor health certainly, but otherwise very considered in everything she said and did.

‘What sort of stalker?’ I asked.

‘I had a couple of threatening emails the other night,’ she told me. ‘But when I tried to forward them on to the detective I’ve been speaking to, they disappeared from my system completely. Now he doubts whether they ever existed in the first place and I’m beginning to think the same thing myself.’

‘They vanished when you forwarded them on?’

‘Yes. Is that possible?’

‘Perfectly,’ I said. ‘They’ll have had some sort of malware built into them that activated when you tried to forward, save or print them. They’ll still be on your computer somewhere. We have forensic computer analysts in the Met. They’d find them in a jiffy.’

‘I’m not sure it merits the attention of the Metropolitan Police,’ said Evi. ‘But it’s good to know I might not be losing it completely.’

‘You and I probably shouldn’t exchange any more emails until we know your system’s secure,’ I said.

She sighed and looked worried.

‘Is that it?’ I asked, pretty certain it wasn’t.

She shook her head. ‘There were phone calls too,’ she said. ‘A lot of them, one after the other on my mobile and my home phone. Nobody there. Number withheld.’

‘When?’ I asked again.

‘Two nights ago,’ she said. ‘Wednesday was when they started. There were more last night and tonight before I came out. I switched both phones off in the end. Which doesn’t really work given that I have to be on call next week.’

‘It’s a real pain,’ I said. ‘But it happens, sadly. You may have to change your numbers and hope they give up. It’s probably not personal.’

Evi said nothing. She didn’t have to. The way she tucked both thumbs into her mouth in a desperate, childlike gesture spoke volumes. I waited, counting in my head. At thirty, she looked at me again.

‘That’s just it,’ she said. ‘It’s very personal.’

Three clowns were sitting around a slatted wooden crate that served as a tea table. A teapot, white with coloured spots, and three matching cups and saucers stood on the crate. There was a plate of cupcakes and another of sandwiches. One clown, dressed in a patchwork jumpsuit, was being mother. It had huge, white, skeletal hands that shook as it raised the pot and poured. All three clowns giggled when the steaming liquid spilled on to the ground. The clown with the teapot had three tufts of scarlet hair that bounced up and down as he laughed. The lower third of his white face was all teeth.

The clown who took the outstretched teacup wore the red and yellow checked suit of an eccentric English country squire. His face seemed twice the normal length, tapering into a sharp point that reached almost to his breastbone. His hair was long, wild and a lurid green.

The third clown seemed enormous. It wore layer after layer of multicoloured ruff round its neck and red and white striped trousers. Its belly and bottom were massive. So were its feet, in the clown’s traditional enormous shoes. This clown’s face, like the others, was mostly grinning yellow teeth.

‘Hello, Jessica,’ it said.

Ten minutes later I watched the tail lights of Evi’s car disappear, then turned back to the house, wondering if I’d done the right thing telling her not to worry and that I’d see her on Tuesday.

Creepy toys. Masked figures in the garden. Blood – albeit fake – in the bath. Those were the actions of a seriously disturbed mind. And a clever one at that.

Two more cars passed me in the lane and I could hear more cars starting up. Country folk obviously did keep earlier hours. I really had to go myself. Evi’s story had worried me. I also wanted to think about Nick Bell and whether I really suspected him. And if he was involved, involved with what? Then there was Scott Thornton, a senior member of my college who, together with a couple of mates, had dressed up like Zorro and borrowed a well-established college ritual in order to scare and humiliate a new student.

Then all thoughts of Bell and Thornton fled, to be replaced by the most hideous sound. Several short guttural sounds, in fact. Like someone trying to scream and having the breath choked out of them at each attempt.

Run! The voice in my head told me. Hide!

Telling myself the sounds had been faint, that whatever had made them was almost certainly some distance away, and that they’d been carried to me on the wind, I nevertheless stepped into the lane, not wanting to be too close to the hedge. Or to anything that might be hiding. The night had fallen silent again.

What on earth had I heard? A woman screaming in distress had been my first thought, but we were miles from anywhere out here. I looked back towards the house, wondering how long it would take me to sprint there, in the dark and over uneven ground.

There was something moving in the hedge. Something large, breathing heavily. I stepped back, a second from running for my life, at the same time not daring to take my eyes from what was coming at me. A creature, on four powerful legs, teeth gleaming as though they were lit from within. It bounded up to me with a speed I couldn’t hope to match. Then stopped, just a little too well mannered to spring.

‘Hello,’ I said, with a voice that didn’t sound too steady. ‘Where did you come from?’

The dog was soaking wet. It poked its long white nose towards the pockets of my borrowed oilskin. Its tail was wagging and its ears were back and it simply knew that my fingers were made to tickle the backs of its ears. When I stopped it stood upright on its hind legs, putting its front paws on my chest. It wasn’t far off my height. Could a dog, this dog, have made the noise I’d just heard? I didn’t think so.

Oh, having my face licked was a compliment I could do without.

Then I heard shouting from the field immediately on the other side of the hedge. I recognized Nick’s voice and the thin, reedy tones of silver-haired Jim. This had to be the dog from the sheep field. If so, they were hot on its trail. They’d be with us any second.

‘Come on,’ I whispered to the dog. Obedient in the way only dogs are, it followed me to my car.

‘In you get.’ It jumped inside and settled itself down on my back seat.

‘Keep your head down,’ I told it, before heading back towards the house. By the time I’d found my coat, Nick and the others were back.

‘Any luck?’ Liz asked Nick, completely ignoring Jim. He shook his head and turned to me.

‘Are we losing you?’

‘Early start,’ I lied. ‘Thanks for having me over.’

‘I’ll walk you to your car,’ he offered.

‘No, really. You should see to your guests.’

‘You are my guest.’

We were out of the door, heading across the side courtyard.

‘Have you registered with a GP yet?’ he asked me, when we were ten yards from the car and I was sure I could see eyes gleaming at me from the back seat.

‘Why, are you touting for business?’ I asked, catching the flick of a white tail. Oh, I was so busted.

‘On the contrary, I was going to ask you not to register with us,’ he said.

‘Why?’ I said, which wasn’t too bright, I grant you, but there was a white paw on each of the front seats and a long white nose was pointing right at me. Any second now …

‘Because if you’re my patient, I can’t ask you to have din—What the bugger?’

Dog and man were eyeballing each other on either side of the passenger window. Given that one had tried to shoot the other minutes earlier, the other was looking remarkably pleased to see the one.

‘Please tell me this isn’t …’ He stopped and just looked at me. I had to admit, he was cute. Joesbury’s height, but not quite so bulky. Not that I’d ever really gone for the body-builder type.

‘Well, I’d like to,’ I began. ‘I’ve just never been a particularly good liar.’ Which in itself, I suppose, was a lie. I’ve long been an excellent liar.

‘Do you know how many thousands of pounds of damage a dog can cause in a field of pregnant ewes?’ he asked me.

‘He didn’t though, did he?’ I said. ‘There wasn’t a speck of blood on him. That dog hasn’t killed anything.’

He opened his mouth, closed it, looked round, opened it again. I think he might have been the only man in the world to make such a gormless act look appealing.

‘Do you also know that I, and several other men in that house, are quite within our rights to shoot it right there in your car?’ he said.

‘You’ll have to get the keys off me first,’ I said. ‘And no, you’re not.’

He blinked and ran one hand through his hair, making it stand upright on his head. ‘Excuse me?’ he said.

‘If a dog is attacking livestock, and the only way to make it desist is to shoot it, you have a defence in law if the dog’s owner takes issue with you,’ I said. ‘You do not have any right to put down an animal without the owner’s permission. Only a judge has the authority to make that happen.’

‘What the hell are you, a lawyer?’

OK, I was on dangerous ground now. Not only was I being Lacey again, I was demonstrating knowledge that Lacey, not Laura, would have.

‘An animal lover,’ I said, which was another lie. There’s hardly been time for animals in my life. ‘Oh, look, I’m sure he didn’t kill any sheep.’

‘The entire bloody field could miscarry during the night.’

I looked down, then peered up at him again through my eyelashes. I think I even dropped my head to one side.

‘Well, aren’t you more likely to get compensation from the owner if the dog is delivered home safe and well?’ I said. ‘I’ll take it to the nearest dog shelter in the morning. I’ll also report it to the dog warden. Sorry, I’m just a bit soppy about dogs.’

‘And if it’s a stray?’

I shrugged. Pouted a bit. ‘It’ll be in the dog shelter,’ I said. ‘Can’t get up to much in there.’

He looked as though he were about to argue again and then shook his head. ‘I give up,’ he said, but he was close to smiling now. ‘If I agree to say no more about it, will you have dinner with me tomorrow night?’

Joesbury would kill me. Or might not give a toss. Either way. ‘Seems churlish to refuse,’ I said.

‘I’ll pick you up at eight,’ he said, properly smiling by this time. I waved cheerfully at Nick in the rear-view mirror as I drove away. Well, they do say to keep your enemies close.