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their eyes. Sam, in his self-contained room which opened directly onto the yard, struggled with his clothes in the semi-darkness, forcing his thoughts away from the terrible morning, only a week and a half ago, when Lilah had shouted for him. The ghastly business of retrieving Guy from the slurry haunted his dreams, and he feared it would do so for the rest of his life.
    As he went out into the yard, a sack held over his head and shoulders against the rain, he cast his eyes up the rising slope to where the roof of the Grimsdales’ house could be seen. It was something he did every morning, without knowing why. Thesun rose over that roof; perhaps that was it. In winter months, the first pale suggestion of dawn came to that stretch of sky first. There was also the telltale plume of smoke, rising from the chimney, indicating the wind direction. However early Sam and Guy might have risen for the morning milking, Amos and Isaac were always earlier. Once or twice Guy had joked that he thought they must be vampires or zombies, living a nocturnal existence. Sam had disapproved of such remarks – weren’t the youngsters scared enough of the brothers already?
    The fact that there was no smoke on this particular morning did not strike Sam as odd; the drizzle would have obscured it anyway. He could barely even see the house. Glumly, he trudged to the field gate, halfway down the lane, and called the usual ‘Ho! Ho!’ at the cows, to bring them trooping submissively into the milking yard. He had convinced Lilah and Roddy that he could manage on his own. The cows behaved much better for him than they ever had for Guy, and if they pushed into the stalls in the wrong sequence, what did it matter? They all got dealt with, one way or another, and the milk yield was just as good as it had ever been.
    Lilah’s alarm clock was set to coincide with the final minutes of the milking, so that she could play a part in returning the cows to their field, whileSam sluiced down the equipment and tidied up. As she emerged into the persistent rain, she too glanced up towards the Grimms’ house. What she saw did not give her any indication of the day’s weather. Running clumsily, a hand held to the side of his head, which was splashed grotesquely with deep red, was Amos Grimsdale. As he came closer, she could see how sunken his eyes were, his mouth a dark circle of suffering and horror. He was trying to speak.
    Hesitantly, she moved towards him, remembering all the times she had run away and hidden from him, creating a bogeyman with which to frighten herself. Now, she had no choice but to behave responsibly. A few moments later she could hear his words: ‘Isaac! Help me! Isaac – he’s dead.’

CHAPTER FOUR
    Sam and Lilah both followed Amos back to his house, trying to soothe his babbling, numbly prepared for whatever horror they might encounter. Lilah had run back to her own house first, yelling at Miranda to wake up, phone the police, send them to the Grimms’ house. She wasn’t sure that anything would be done as she’d ordered.
    ‘He won’t really be dead,’ said Sam, repeating it like a mantra, trying to convince Amos or perhaps himself. But when Lilah looked at the vicious lesion on the side of the old man’s head, she was not reassured. When they found Isaac, lying in his jumbled bed, not bleeding, but staring with sightless eyes at the ceiling, they had to agreewith Amos. A ghastly cavity beside Isaac’s right eye showed where a savage blow had been struck, forceful enough to kill him. The clear assumption was that the same attempt had been made on Amos, but with less skill or effectiveness. Together they turned to him.
    ‘Who was it?’ asked Sam. ‘What bloody bugger did this, eh?’
    Amos sat down heavily in a chair beside the bedroom door, ignoring the pile of clothes draped over the seat and back. He looked dazed, vacant. At first Lilah thought he was groping for a description of the murderer, remembering the face and trying