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took him so violently that for a moment he stopped breathing altogether. Ash raced down the incline and made for the car.
    Almost there, he fell to his knees and slid on the wet grass. One hand slammed against the Ford’s metalwork and he ducked low, peering into the darkness underneath.
    A sigh that contained a muted groan escaped him when he saw there was no one lying there in the shadows, and he twisted around and rested his back against the door panelling, one leg outstretched, the other bent with his wrist resting across the knee. He lifted his face up to the sky and the light rain pecked at his closed eyelids. ‘Thank God,’ he said in a low whisper.
    There had been no one standing in the lane.
    It was the only answer. He had imagined the figure.
    As though very weary, Ash hauled himself up, pulling on the Ford’s slippery bodywork as he did so. Once on his feet he leaned against the car, an elbow on the roof, his other hand on the bonnet; his shoulders hunched, he drew in deep, deliberate breaths, giving himself time for the tension to drain away.
    He had seen someone there as his car had crested the old stone bridge, though. And he had been sure he was going to hit the boy as he’d desperately turned the wheel.
    The boy .
    A strange little boy wearing a three-button coat that was too tight and short trousers that came well below his knees. Howcould it have been his imagination if he had noticed details like that?
    Yet there was no one around, no one at all. Even the sound of the tractor had faded away.
    A cry, so sharp in the rain-splattered stillness, made him spin around. He looked for the bird - it had to be the guttural squawk of a crow - but failed to find it. It was probably somewhere high in the trees.
    Ash pulled open the car door and reached over into the back seat. He unzipped the battered leather holdall lying there and delved inside, rummaging until he touched cold metal. He brought out the silver-plated hip flask and turned to sit in the passenger seat, legs outside the car despite the rain. Unscrewing the top, he lifted the flask to his lips and took a long swig of the neat vodka.
    Its heat swelled in his throat and chest, then abated so that only a mild flush remained.
    It helped a little.

5
    H E CAUGHT GLIMPSES of the village through the trees as he drove down the hill. The road curved dramatically, almost back on itself, and he concentrated on the manoeuvre, only looking towards Sleath when the road had straightened again. He just glimpsed the church tower beyond the cluster of other buildings before the woods thickened and the view was lost.
    Ash tossed a cigarette butt out of the window and realized his hand was still trembling from the incident earlier. Only a few minutes had passed since then, but already reason was imposing its simplistic logic: he had imagined the boy standing in the lane. The near-accident because of the tractor had probably triggered off something in his mind, a memory perhaps; or maybe it had induced an hallucination of some kind. Whatever, he had swerved to avoid something that wasn’t there. Couldn’t possibly have been there. What the hell, he’d investigated enough cases of so-called phantoms or apparitions to know most were caused by over-active imaginations or trauma. He knew perfectly well that the human mind was full of tricks and he’d just been a victim of one of them. Yet the unease lingered (why else did his hand still tremble?) and certain memories endeavoured to push themselves to the fore as if in league with his mind’s brief deception. No, that was wrong, he thought. His memories were stronger, they were the stimuli, and hisimagination was susceptible to them. It was a logic that was far from simple, but it strengthened the original rationale and therefore was more convincing. And it was a notion that Ash was anxious, although not happy, to cling to, for anything else conjured more questions and more doubts within himself.
    The road levelled out and