It took twenty minutes to drive to the cottage, not half an hour. A whole slew of possible scenarios hit him as he approached the corner and turned into the driveway. The police are inside, comforting Jo and liaising with the station, passing on news of the search under way on the Plain. Tom pulls up in his car—only twelve hours late—and whatever apology he offers, he cannot hide the filth on his clothes, the mud beneath his fingernails, the blood in his hair. And just then the officers receive a call about a mass grave turned out on Salisbury Plain and one of them goes to search the car, glances into the backseat, approaches the boot …

Or perhaps there is no one there and Jo is sitting up alone, nursing yet another cup of hot sweet tea as she awaits his return. She is angry and scared and afraid of being alone, very afraid, she has always told him that, and in a way he thinks it is Steven's death that brought her own mortality screaming down upon her. And Tom's as well, because it is his death she fears the most. I never want to be left alone, she often tells him, and in that statement are implications that they refuse to discuss. But he often thinks to himself that she never will be alone, because if anything happens to him she will ensure that she follows soon after. So she is there, staring at the door and waiting for it to open, and at the back of her mind is that growing shadow of suicide …

Or maybe Mister Wolf is there already, somehow knowing where to wait for Tom. And perhaps Jo is lying dead in the kitchen, her blood staining the flagstones black and the look on her face something Tom will never see. Because Mister Wolf is a hunter, a killer, and as soon as he has Tom in his sights he will shoot. Natasha will find her death at last. And Steven, wherever he may be …

But there was no vehicle in the driveway, and the cottage lights blazed, and even before Tom had stopped the car Jo was out of the house and flinging herself at his door, hauling on the handle and leaning in as he applied the parking brake, hugging him, hitting him, cursing at him and screaming how much she loved him, how worried she had been, and never once did she ask where he had been or why he had returned so late.

"Jo," Tom said, tears coursing a surprising hot streak across his cheeks. "Are you feeling better?" We need to move, he thought, but here was his beloved wife. He had made her like this, and he owed her this moment.

"I was so worried!" she screamed into his neck, unable or unwilling to lift her head and lose contact with him. Tom felt her voice pressing against his skin, finding his flesh and bones whole and reveling in that, screaming again. She moved back slightly then, her apparition of her husband now made flesh, and Tom's heart broke at the sight of her face.

She must have been crying for a long time. Her eyes were puffy and red, her face swollen and sore from the tears. Her mouth was turned down at the corners, as if the weight of her fears had been acting on her with a terrible gravity. She was still wearing the nightclothes he had left her in, and they were rumpled and creased, smelling vaguely of must and fear. I can smell the fear on my wife, Tom thought, and fresh tears came to his eyes.

For a while, he forgot about the thing in the boot.

"I'm so sorry Jo," he said, reaching out and hugging her back to him. She shifted position so that she was sitting on his lap in the car, bent low, her head resting on his shoulder so that her hot face pressed against his neck and cheek once again. "I love you honey, really, I'm so sorry if I frightened you. Time ran away with me, just left me. And I got lost on the way home, and I didn't know what to do, I had no idea what I was doing!"

"You smell," she said, "mud and earth. You stink. You're filthy! Oh Tom, I was so terrified that you'd never come back!"

Tom's idea about lying to his wife—about the car having a puncture, and him knocking himself out changing it—had fled the moment he saw her. In truth he had no wish to lie to her about anything, not anymore. And with that certainty came a sense of excitement at what he had to tell her next. Steven, he would say, Jo, I really think he might still be alive. But he did not have the chance to speak. Jo hugged him tight, squeezing the air from him, keening like a dog welcoming home its long-lost owner. And Natasha, so silent for the whole journey, chose that moment to make herself known again.

Daddy! she said. He's coming! Misterwolf is coming!

Tom glanced past Jo's head at the rearview mirror and saw that Natasha was mistaken. Whether or not she could have spoken up earlier was something he did not think about until much later, but right then all he knew was that she was wrong. Mister Wolf was not coming; he was already here.

The Jeep was parked in the drive entrance, blocking any hope of escape out onto the road.

He's here to hurt me, Daddy!

The driver's door was opening.

Please don't let him hurt me … it hurts so much already!

And as Tom opened his mouth to speak to his wife for the last time, the shooting began.

To begin with, Cole was aimless. He drove simply because he had to drive. Sitting in his Jeep waiting for inspiration to hit would have felt even more useless than just driving for the sake of it. So he powered along country lanes, taking lefts, rights, or heading straight on at junctions, trying to imagine which way Roberts had come. He slowed down and turned his lights off intermittently, looking for signs of other car headlights in the countryside around him. There was nothing.

He drove fast, because slow would have felt even more hopeless.

Blood was pooling in his boot, squelching at every gear change. His jeans rubbed at the gash on his calf, and each contact was like the touch of a white-hot iron. He needed stitches, he knew, but they would have to wait. What were causing him more problems were the cuts on his hands, the sliced left palm especially. They smeared the steering wheel with blood, and every time he changed gear his hand slid around the gear stick, threatening to slip off. He wiped his hands on his jeans and jacket, but that only aggravated the wounds and encouraged the bleeding.

I've really hurt myself, he thought. Done some real damage.

He drove on. At a T-junction he turned left without thinking, simply because there was nothing else to do. And inside, he searched for Natasha.

She would not be out in the open, in those parts of his mind that he knew so well. She would be below. Down in the dark, hidden away, rooting around like the devious little bitch she was. So he hunted for her, running through the familiar streets of his consciousness, heading off down alleys he did not recognise. There was graffiti on walls, but he could not read it. Letters swam in and out of focus. He thought they were a language he did not know, speaking of things he could not understand. As much as this disturbed him, Cole was used to it. He often felt like a stranger in his own mind, and like everything else that was wrong with life, he attributed it to Porton Down.

He sought further, deeper, inviting Natasha in even though he hated the sense of her in his head. Especially this Natasha, newly risen from the ground with a shout instead of a whisper.

"How does the air feel on your skin, monster?" he said. "Are you lonely without the bones of your kin to keep you warm, vampire?" Like all berserkers she despised the word vampire, he knew, but it was more out of vanity than anything else. She hated for her berserker clan to be thought of as anything other than unique. "Wrinkled dry dead thing crying like a baby when I chained you up with those vermin you called mother, father, brother."

A chuckle in his mind; not his. He did not feel her intrusion, but he knew that she was there, hovering slightly beyond. He drove on, trying to discern which direction the laugh had come from.