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Steven had said nothing, but Jonas could tell by his restless pacing that the boy was excited and filled with new hope that the huntsman might be starting to crack. His mood was infectious, and the younger children played games and giggled, while Jess sang fragments of pop songs.

And the next day – when his jaw had almost stopped hurting – Jonas screwed up his courage and simply went on talking to the huntsman as if he’d never been interrupted.

‘You’re wrong about the children. People do love them.’

Coffin gave no indication of having heard him. His face was stretched and blank. He skirted Jonas like a dangerous whirlpool, spraying the cement with the brick-coloured hose.

‘They weren’t abandoned. Not like the dogs.’

He didn’t expect a response, but he got one, gruff and muffled.

‘Dogs die in hot cars. Seen it with my own eyes.’

Jonas flicked a look at Steven, who nodded encouragingly.

‘You only wanted to protect them. I understand that.’

Coffin dropped the hose into the water bucket, then picked up the broom. Jonas flinched, but Coffin just swept around him and said nothing more.

Jonas had to keep him engaged. If it was only dogs the huntsman would talk about, he’d start there. With a vague motion of his arm, he asked, ‘What happened to all the hounds?’

There was a long pause, then: ‘Had to go.’

‘Go where?’

The huntsman stopped sweeping and picked at the wooden handle of the broom. Jonas looked at Steven, who gave a little shrug.

Coffin bent to his task again, but now his strokes were short and jerky.

‘The Midmoor took a few. The others I had to get rid.’

Jonas said nothing, but pictures raced through his head like a flicker book. He had hunted as a boy, and he knew how hounds were ‘got rid’. He thought of the sixty or so animals that had made up the Blacklands pack. All his life he’d seen them milling about outside pubs, moving as one through the village by night and loping muddily across the moor. A joyous jigsaw of pied coats, silken ears and lolling tongues – vital and vibrant and singing for fun. The thought of spending years whelping them, raising them, training them – and then shooting them all in the head made him feel ill.

The strokes of the broom got louder and the huntsman spoke without any further prompting. ‘Had to be done, Mr Took said.’

He angrily thrust the broom at the wet cement, his voice rising rapidly. ‘Well, I say bollocks to him. Bollocks to him and them fox-loving incomers driving down from London for the weekend and tell us how to live our lives! Take our lives away from us! After a hundred years! Take everything away and then tell me I don’t fucking love them!’

He hurled the broom across the run. It bounced off the fence next to Jonas’s head and Charlie started to wail. The children watched the huntsman, their eyes wide with the fear of uncertainty.

Coffin’s open mouth stretched the stocking mask into a darker shadow that fluttered with vehemence.

‘Now I’ve took everything away from them,’ he said, low and vicious. ‘See how they like it.’ Then he slowly retrieved the broom and carried on sweeping as if nothing had happened.

Jonas felt everything falling into place in his head like a little Chinese puzzle box. He watched Coffin with unseeing eyes, and thought of the emptiness Lucy had left in Rose Cottage – that deep, sucking silence that tugged at his soul and lured him to follow as surely as a siren’s lament from a jagged rock. If he could have filled that void, he would have. If he had been able to forget for one single second the sheer absence signalled by the quiet clock, the folded rug and the empty vase, he would have done anything – anything – to make that happen.

Revenge may have sparked Coffin’s madness, but at some point, Jonas guessed, he had started to steal children simply to fill the runs left echoing bare by the loss of his hounds. What he had done was unpardonable, reprehensible and utterly insane – and Jonas understood it completely.

‘You did the right thing,’ he said quietly.

‘What the hell!’ said Steven.

Jonas didn’t even glance at him. He looked only at the huntsman, who had cocked his unformed face towards him in rare attention.

‘I know what you’re trying to do here, Bob. I can understand it now. I can see how much you love them, and how much you want to take care of them.’

‘Yes,’ said the huntsman.

‘You just want them to be safe.’

‘That’s right,’ said the huntsman.

‘And we’re very grateful,’ said Jonas gently.

The huntsman nodded. ‘Good.’

‘You’re nuts!’ shouted Steven. ‘Both of you!’

Jonas looked calmly at Steven and the boy closed his mouth.

Jonas felt confidence coursing through him. Starving, half naked and chained at the feet of a maniac, he felt suddenly buoyant and completely sure of himself. Coffin’s face was turned towards him. It was blank and stretched, but Jonas knew he had the man’s attention.

‘But Charlie doesn’t understand it,’ he said carefully. ‘He’s not clever like you. Look at him, Bob.’