‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ Adam asks. ‘Your breathing sounds—’
‘I’m fine.’
He looks unconvinced but carries on anyway. ‘I think he might be upset with me. Ever since I said I didn’t want to adapt his books anymore—’
I stare at him, taken aback. ‘You did what? I don’t understand.’
‘I just decided that maybe it was time to focus on my own work.’
‘You didn’t tell me—’
‘I couldn’t bear the inevitable I told you sos. He didn’t take the news well at all. It was like a spoilt child throwing a tantrum. I’d had Henry Winter on too high a pedestal my whole life. I looked up to him even when he looked down on me. But then I saw him for who he was for the first time: a selfish, spiteful, and lonely old man.’
I take in his words, processing what they mean for him, and for us.
‘When was this?’
‘A while back. I tried to keep things friendly, but then he ignored my calls, and I haven’t spoken to him for… a long time. His books were all he had. But if there’s one thing I have learned from life as well as fiction, it’s that nobody is ever just a hero or just a villain. We all have it in us to be both.’
Adam glares at me when he says that last sentence. I’m about to ask why when I spot my inhaler on the desk behind him.
‘Why do you have that?’ I ask.
‘Your inhaler?’ he says. ‘I didn’t even notice it was there.’
I stare at him for a long time, I can normally tell when he’s lying and I don’t think he is.
I grab the inhaler and slip it in my pocket. ‘I think we’re both exhausted, and now that we know who this place belongs to, I just want to find Bob and get out of here.’
As soon as I say his name, I hear a dog barking outside.
Adam
We run out into the snow.
I don’t know what to expect. Henry Winter standing outside the chapel? Holding Bob’s lead, and laughing manically like a comedy villain? Maybe he has finally lost his remaining marbles? The man writes dark and twisted fiction, but I still struggle to believe he would be capable of something like this in real life.
The sound of a dog barking stops as soon as we step outside.
‘Bob!’ Amelia calls.
It’s pointless – the poor old thing is practically deaf at the best of times – but I start shouting his name too.
The valley is now eerily silent.
‘Maybe it wasn’t Bob?’ I say.
‘It was him, I know it,’ she insists. ‘There were a pair of men’s wellington boots by the door when I got back, now they’re gone. Whoever was here before left and they’ve got Bob with them.’
She runs further out into the snow and I have no choice but to follow her.
The sheep are back. They stare in our direction, but aren’t as scary as they were in the dark last night. We both stop in our tracks when we see the back of a person wearing a tweed jacket, dark trousers, and what looks like a panama hat… in the middle of winter… in freezing cold snow up to their knees. Amelia looks in my direction. I can’t read the expression on her face, but if it’s anything like what I’m feeling, I expect it is one of terror.
I remind myself that I used to know this man – as well as you can know someone you work with and have only met a handful of times. I clear my throat and take a step closer.
‘Henry?’ I say gently.
For some reason, I remember the antlers on the wall of the boot room. It occurs to me that authors of murder mysteries and thrillers probably know a lot of ways to kill a person without getting caught, and I don’t especially want to have my remains mounted on a wall. He doesn’t move. I tell myself he’s probably just a bit deaf, like the dog, and carry on until we are face to face.
Except he doesn’t have a face.
What I appear to be looking at is some kind of scarecrow, but with the head of a snowman. He has wine corks for eyes, a carrot for a nose, a pipe sticking out of the space where his mouth should be, and one of Henry Winter’s silk blue bow ties tied around his neck. It’s a shade darker than it should be, saturated with melting snow. Henry’s walking stick, the one with the silver rabbit’s head handle is leaning against it, as though for support.
Amelia comes to stand by my side. ‘What the—’
‘I don’t know anymore.’
‘This wasn’t here before, was it?’
‘No. I think we would have noticed. I really don’t understand what is happening.’