And then, as she began her second turn, there was Steep. He was approaching her with a steady stride, his gloved hand already outstretched to claim his prize. She wanted to keep the largest distance possible between the enemy and the front door of her house, so she didn't wait until he came to her but went to meet him on the opposite side of the street. Curiously, she felt only the tiniest twinge of fear. This street was her world - nagging mother, yapping dog, milkman and all. He had little authority here, even in the dark.

They were within a couple of yards of each other now, and she could see better the look on his face. He was happy, his eyes glued to the book in her hand.

'Good girl,' he murmured to her, and had it out of her hand before she was even aware that it was gone.

'He didn't mean to take it,' she called after him, just in case he bore Sherwood some ill will. 'He didn't know it was important.' Steep nodded. 'It is important, isn't it?' she said, hoping against hope he'd leave her with a clue, however vague, as to the nature of the book's contents. But if he understood her intention, he wasn't about to give anything away. Instead, he said:

'Tell Will to watch out for Lord Fox, will you?'

'Lord Fox?'

'He'll understand,' Steep said. 'He's part of the madness now.'

With that, he turned his back on her and was gone, off down the street: past her father's yard, past Arthur Rathbone, who wisely stepped out of his way, past the postbox at the corner, and out of sight.

She kept watching the corner for several seconds after he'd gone, deaf to the sobs and yells and yappings. She felt suddenly bereft. A mystery had gone from her hands, and now she'd never solve it. All she had to vex her were her memories of those pages and their tiny hieroglyphics, laid out like a wall built to keep her from understanding what lay on the other side.

'Frannie?'

Her mother's voice.

'Will you come back in here?'

Even, now, though Steep was long gone, it was hard for Frannie to look away.

'Now, Frannie!'At last, she reluctantly turned her gaze back towards the house. Her father had managed to half-carry, half-haul Will to the doorstep, where her mother stood hugging Sherwood.There would be hell to pay now, Frannie thought. Questions and more questions, and no chance of concealing anything. Not that it mattered after tonight. Will was back, his adventures over before they'd begun: she didn't need to protect him with lies. All that remained was to tell the truth, however strange that was, and take the consequences. Heavyhearted and empty-handed, she trudged back towards the threshold, where Sherwood was sobbing against her mother's bosom; sobbing as though he'd never stop.

Three hours later, with the gloomy day dawned, and a second blizzard moving in, Jacob and Rosa found each other on the Skipton road, a few miles north of the valley. They'd not made an explicit arrangement to meet, yet they came to the place (from different directions: Jacob from the valley itself, Rosa from her rock in the hills) within five minutes of each other, as though the rendezvous had been planned.

Rosa was in a bit of a haze as to what she'd actually done to her pursuers, but it had turned into quite a chase, she knew.

'One of them ran and ran,' she said. 'And I was so mad when I caught up with him, I ... I ...' she stopped, frowning '... I knew it was terrible, because he was like a baby, you know? The way they get.' She laughed. 'Men,' she said, 'they're all babies. Well, not all. Not you, Jacob.'

A gust of snow-flecked wind carried the sound of sirens in their direction.

'We should be on our way,' Jacob said, looking up the road and down. 'Which way do you want to go?'

'Whichever you're taking,' she replied.

'You want to go together?'

'Don't you?'

Jacob wiped his nose, which was running, with the back of his glove. 'I suppose so,' he said. 'Until they've given up looking for us, at least.'

'Oh, let them come,' Rosa said, with a sour smile. 'I'd like to tear out their throats, every one of them.'

'You can't kill them all,' Jacob said.

Her smile sweetened. 'Can't we?' she said, for all the world like a child wheedling for some indulgence. It amused Jacob, despite himself. She always had some little performance to entertain him: Rosa the schoolgirl, Rosa the fishwife, Rosa the poetess. Now Rosa the slaughterer, so busy with her murders she couldn't remember what she'd done to whom. If he wasn't to travel alone, then who better to go with than this woman who knew him so well?

It was not until the next day, reading The Daily Telegraph in a cafe in Aberdeen, that they got some sense of what Rosa had actually done, and

even then the newspaper uncharacteristically chose discretion as to the details. Two of the four bodies found on the hill had been dismembered and some portions of one remained unaccounted for. Jacob didn't enquire as to whether she had eaten them, buried them, or scattered them along her route of retreat, for the delectation of local wildlife. He simply read the account, then passed it over to Rosa.

'They've got good descriptions of us both,' he remarked.

'From the kids,' she said.

'Yes.'

'I should go back and kill them,' Rosa drawled. Then, with a spurt of venom, 'In their beds.'

'We brought it on ourselves,' Jacob said. 'It's not the end of the world.' He grinned into his Guinness. 'Or maybe it is.'

'I vote we head south.'

'I've no objection.'

'Sicily.'

'Any particular reason?'

She shrugged. 'Widows. Dust. I don't know. It just struck me as a place to lie low, if that's what you want to do.'

'It won't be for long,' Jacob said, setting down his empty glass.

'You've got a feeling?'

'I've got a feeling.'

She laughed. 'I love it when you have feelings,' she said, lightly cupping his hand in hers. 'I know we've said some hard things to one another in the last little while-'

'Rosa

'No, no, hear me out. We've said some hard things and we meant them, let's be honest, we meant them. But ... I do love you.'

'I know.'

'I wonder if you know how much I love you?' she said, leaning a little closer to him. 'Because I don't.' He looked puzzled. 'What I feel for you is so deep in me -it goes so far down into my soul, Jacob - into the very heart of who I am. There's no seeing the end of it.' She was gazing deep in his eyes and he returning her gaze, unblinking. 'Do you understand what I'm telling you?'

'It's true for me-'

'Don't say it if it's not.'

'I swear it's true,' Jacob replied. 'I don't understand it any more than you do, but we belong together; I concede it.' He leaned a little further and kissed her unpainted lips. She tasted of gin; but beyond the alcohol was that other taste, the like of which no mouth but this, his Rosa's mouth, had in it. If any man had told him at that moment she was less than perfection, he would have killed the bastard on the spot. She was a wonderment, when he saw her like this, with unclouded eyes. And he

the luckiest man alive to be walking the earth with her. So what if it took another century to complete his work? He had Rosa at his side, an ever-present sign of what lay at the end of his endeavour.

He kissed her harder, and she replied with kisses of her own; deep, deep kisses, which inspired him to return them in kind, until they were so wrapped about each other that nobody in the place dared so much as glance their way, for fear of blushing.

Later, they adjourned to a piece of wasteground adjacent to a railway track. There, with dusk upon the isle, and another snow, they finished the lovemaking they'd left off in the Courthouse. There was no paucity of passion this time: they were so elaborately intertwined that a passenger in one of the many trains that flew by while they coupled, glimpsing them there in the dirt, might have thought they were seeing not two beings but one: a single nameless animal, squatting beside the tracks, waiting to cross to the other side.