‘Amy?’

She was struggling to stand up, slipping in the juices of the corpses. He stared at her, suffused with horror. They were covered with brown-green, waxy slime. And then David succumbed to his gag reflex: he briefly puked into the pooling fluids, and puked again. Amy was coughing, violently, as she stood up; then she seemed to steel herself, and she closed her eyes, and she opened her eyes, and she pointed to the ceiling.

The voices above were sharper, nearer, angrier, the men were nearly done searching the house. She hissed:

‘The last door – what choice -’

Skidding through the puddles, they approached the final door.

The insanity of the scene did not prevent the danger approaching. Together, they pulled at the door handle, the metal slipping in their greasy hands. The obvious fear was written on Amy’s face – what if this was another flood, of fluids and bones? – but it wasn’t. The door opened quite easily. It opened onto a dry and lofty space, and at the end of the vault gaped…a passageway. Clung with spiderwebs, long and dismal, and stretching into further blackness.

‘The chemin!’

Amy was already inside, beckoning David to follow. He paused to shut the chamber door behind them. Quietly yet emphatically. It wouldn’t stop anyone. It wouldn’t stop the Wolf. It might delay their pursuers a few vital minutes.

‘OK.’

The passageway was too low to walk properly: they had to crouch, and scuttle, desperately, like hapless large insects.

But they were escaping at last. The footfalls and voices grew faint. But when the men found the cellar door?

‘Which way now?’

David switched the phone-light left and then right, the pitiful torchbeam revealed more passages branching off. The roof of the nearest passage was pierced by a worm, wriggling and pink. He could feel the clammy fluids on his jeans, he was covered with decaying human bodies, smeared with a scum of ancient human fat. The gag reflex tugged at his throat, once again.

‘This one,’ Amy said, her voice half-choked. ‘Pointing left. It must – surely – it must – go to the woods -’

‘Now!’

They made their way, in frightened silence, until a soft thunder halted their progress, joined by a tinkling: water was dripping through the soil above, dripping down the muddy walls.

‘The Adour?’ she said. ‘We’re going in a different direction.’

‘It’s too late now.’ He grabbed Amy’s wet hand. ‘Quick -’

A few metres further, the dirty passageway began to broaden, and gain height until it was almost possible to walk. Until it was almost possible to run.

They ran. The passage curved to the left and the right and then it stopped at some stairs of impacted soil. At the top of the stairs was a trap door.

‘It could open anywhere,’ said Amy. ‘Someone’s house. The boulangerie.’

‘We’re gonna surprise them -’

David climbed the earthen steps and shoved a shoulder violently upwards; the doorflap began to yield, a slant of light striped his face, and the trap door slapped open, with a bang. He looked across – as four faces stared back at him, grinning.

What?

But it wasn’t four faces. It was four rag dolls: Campan mounaques. The family of rag dolls installed in the front pew of the church.

The dolls smiled forever. Smiling at David’s soiled face as he hoisted himself out of the trap door, then leaned down and hauled Amy to the surface. She gazed about.

‘The church – of course.’

David nodded. ‘We better get out of these – clothes – now, get out of them now – let’s use these -’

He pointed at the rag dolls. Within a minute they had stripped themselves, extracted money and possessions, and jumped into the ordinary clothes of the rag dolls, the baggy jeans and jumpers; David kicked away his clothes, trying not to imagine what kind of…things…what kind of fetid silt…had touched his skin.

‘OK?’ he said.

Amy was using her discarded jumper to wipe her head. She shivered.

‘Jesus. David. What…was…that stuff? In the cellar?’

‘Body liquor.’

‘What?’

‘If you store bodies in an airtight space, for centuries, they decay…in a certain way. But -’

‘They turn to liquid?’

‘Eventually.’ He glanced around the church, trying to work out what to do next. Amy pressed him: ‘Explain!’

‘The corpses slowly become adipocere – corpse wax. A sort of cheesy wax. Grave wax. Then over centuries they turn again, into…a…’ He was trying not to think about it. ‘A sort of soup. With flesh. I’m sorry. But that’s what we found -’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Human biochemistry.’

She was trembling.

‘Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.’

Her eyes were shut, absorbing the ghastliness. He decided not to tell her his darkest fears. One of the reasons you might store human bodies so diligently and carefully was if you feared they carried severe disease. Infectious disease.

‘OK,’ she said, opening her eyes. ‘I’m OK. But José…’ She inhaled deeply, to calm herself. ‘Poor José.’ Then she said: ‘What now?’

‘We get the fuck out of Campan.’

He crept to the main door, and creaked it open. They stealthily walked the path through the overgrown churchyard to the main iron gate. And gazed. There was not a person or a car to be seen; the only sign of humanity was one solitary old woman hurrying under an umbrella, way down the grey and lonely main street.

‘Run for it -’

They sprinted out of the churchyard, hurling themselves down the humble main street of Campan, beyond the last dilapidated villa, running into the countryside. And still running.

After twenty minutes Amy called a halt, she had her hands on her knees. Gasping and gulping. Almost puking. David stopped, exhausted, and looked around, they had reached a junction, where traffic slashed past, burning down the main road.

But now Amy was running on.

‘We can hitch! We need to hitch a lift -’

‘Where?’

‘Biarritz. Somewhere busy, with lots of people, where we can get lost. This road goes to Biarritz.’

He followed her, as she ran to the road, with her thumb out, hoping for a lift. David was desperate: who the hell would stop for them? Dressed like scarecrows, faces frightened, half smeared with some unspeakable effluent.

Five minutes later a French apple truck stopped; the driver leaned over, pushed the door open. They climbed in, profusely thanking the man. He glanced at their clothes, he sniffed the air, and then he shrugged. And drove.

They were escaping. Down the thundering autoroute to Biarritz. David sat back, his arms aching, his mind spiralling, waiting for the sense of relief. But then he heard a beep. A message. He patted his scarecrow jeans: his phone! He’d forgotten that he’d turned his phone on, to use the light: he’d been keeping the phone off all this time, just in case Miguel was tracing his own number, too.

As he took the phone from his pocket, he felt the wild incongruity, a clash of modernity, and madness. He had been drenched with the vile distillation of many dead bodies, and yet his phone was bleeping.

The flashing number was British. He clicked.

And then he had one of the strangest phone calls of his life. From a journalist in England. A journalist called Simon Quinn. The phone call lasted an hour; by the time it was done they were in the depths of the Gascon hills, near Cambo-les-Bains.

David shut the call down. And then he rang a random number: and as soon as it answered he opened the window, and he threw the damp and mudded phone into the long grass of the verge, with a fierce relief. If anyone was tracing his calls, they would trace them to Cambo-les-Bains.

Amy was asleep in the seat next to him. The truck driver was furiously puffing a cigarette, oblivious.

He sat back, pensive. The phone call from the journalist. What did it all mean? Murders in Britain? Scientists? Genetics?