The Actuality

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There is movement along the skyline and figures with guns emerge between the trees.

Evie takes the child by the hand and leads her away quickly along the bank.

Four men in grey camouflaged jackets and military caps, carrying hunting rifles with telescopic sights, crest the hill, together with another – taller, familiar in outline. No, she thinks, it is an impossibility. She saw what she saw four days ago in Paris. It cannot be him.

From here the ground rises and they hurry up an overgrown path, batting the branches from their faces with their elbows. As they run, the dog, sensing the child’s fear, fights its way out from under her coat, leaping to the ground, and valuable time is lost in retrieving it from between the rocks.

While the voices behind grow louder.

Hiding behind a fallen tree they watch the men descend. One carries on his back a steel cage, nine or ten inches deep and three feet high, struggling under the encumbrance to find his footing on the mossy stone.

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