Bob watched her feet drag as she looked toward the southwest corner of the Manor. Sometimes she talked about seeing Mrs. Lockyer-Fox's body on the terrace… shut out in the cold night and left to freeze to death with next to nothing on. Vera knew about cold. She was cold all the time, and she was ten years younger than Mrs. Lockyer-Fox.

Bob threatened her with the back of his hand if she repeated in public the stuff about the door being locked, but it didn't stop the muttering. Her affection for the dead woman had grown exponentially since Ailsa's death, all recriminations forgotten in sentimental remembrance of the many kindnesses Ailsa had shown her. She wouldn't have insisted on a poor old woman working beyond her time. She would have said the time had come for Vera to rest.

The police had paid her no attention, of course-not after Bob had screwed his finger into his forehead and told them she was gaga. They smiled politely and said the Colonel had been cleared of any involvement in his wife's death. Never mind that he'd been alone in the house… and the French windows onto the terrace could only be locked and bolted from the inside. Vera's sense of injustice remained strong but Bob cursed her roundly if she expressed it.

It was a can of worms that shouldn't be opened. Did she think the Colonel would take her accusations lying down? Did she think he wouldn't mention her thieving or how angry he'd been to find his mother's rings gone? You don't bite the hand that feeds you, he warned her, even if the same hand had been raised in anger when the Colonel found her rifling through his desk drawers.

Occasionally, when she looked at him out of the corner of her eye, Bob wondered if she was more lucid than she pretended. It worried him. It meant there were thoughts inside her head that he couldn't control…

Vera opened the gate into Mrs. Lockyer-Fox's Italian courtyard and scurried past the withered plants in the huge terra-cotta pots. She fished in her pocket for the key to the scullery door, and smiled to herself when she saw the fox's brush pinned to the jamb beside the lock. It was an old one-probably from the summer-and she plucked it down and stroked the fur against her cheek before concealing it in her coat pocket. In this matter, at least, there had never been any confusion. The brush was a calling card that she never failed to remember or recognize.

Out of sight of her husband the muttering had taken a different direction. Bloody old bugger… she'd show him… he wasn't a real man and never had been… a real man would have given her babies…

SHENSTEAD-25 DECEMBER 2001

Vehicles moved onto the tract of unregistered woodland to the west of Shenstead Village at eight o'clock on Christmas evening. None of the inhabitants heard their stealthy approach, or if they did there was no linkage of ideas between engine sound and New Age invasion. It was four months since the events at Barton Edge, and memories had dimmed. For all the hot air expended over the pages of the local rag, the "rave" had inspired a Nimby Schadenfreude in Shenstead, rather than fear that the same thing might happen there. Dorset was too small a county for lightning to strike twice.

A bright moon allowed the slow-moving convoy to negotiate the narrow lane across the valley without headlights. As the six buses neared the entrance to the Copse, they drew onto the side of the road and killed their engines, waiting for one of their party to explore the access track for pitfalls. The ground was frozen to a depth of two feet from the bitter east wind that had been blowing for days, with another hard frost promised for the morning. There was absolute silence as a torch beam flickered from side to side, showing the width of the track and the crescent-shaped clearing at the entrance to the wood that was large enough to accommodate vehicles.

On another, warmer, night the ramshackle convoy would have become bogged down in the soft, damp clay of the track before it reached the relative safety of the root-toughened woodland floor. But not on this night. With careful marshaling, as precisely dictated as aircraft movements on a carrier, the six vehicles followed the gesturing torch beam and parked in a rough semicircle under the skeletal branches of the outer trees. The torchbearer had a few minutes' conversation with each driver before windows were obscured with cardboard and the occupants retired for the night.

Although unaware of it, Shenstead Village had had its resident population more than doubled in under an hour. Its disadvantage was its situation in a remote valley that cut through the Dorset Ridgeway to the sea. Of its fifteen houses, eleven were holiday homes, owned by either rental businesses or distant city dwellers, while the four that remained in full-time occupation contained just ten people, three of whom were children. Estate agents continued to describe it as an "unspoiled gem" whenever the holiday homes came up for sale at exorbitant prices, but the truth was very different. Once a thriving community of fisherfolk and workers of the land, it was now the casual resting place of strangers who had no interest in fighting a turf war.

And what could the full-time residents have done if they had realized their way of life was about to be threatened? Called the police and admit the land had no owner?

Dick Weldon, half a mile to the west of the village, had made a halfhearted attempt to enclose the acre strip of woodland three years earlier when he bought Shenstead Farm, but his fence had never remained intact for more than a week. At the time he had blamed the Lockyer-Foxes and their tenants for the broken rails as theirs was the only other property with a competing claim, but it soon became apparent that no one in Shenstead was ready to let a Johnny-come-lately increase the value of his property for the cost of some cheap wooden posts.

It was well known that it took twelve years of uninterrupted usage to claim a piece of wasteland in law, and even the weekenders had no intention of surrendering their dog-walking territory so tamely. With planning permission for a house the site would be worth a small fortune, and there was little doubt in anyone's mind, despite Dick's protest to the contrary, that that was his goal. What other use was woodland to an arable farmer unless he felled the trees and plowed the land? Either way, the Copse would fall to the ax.

Weldon had argued that it must have belonged to Shenstead Farm at some point because it cut a U-shaped loop into his curtilage with only a meager hundred yards bordering the Lockyer-Foxes at the Manor. Privately most people agreed with him, but without the documents to prove it-almost certainly a careless oversight by a solicitor in the past-and with no guarantee of success, there seemed little point in arguing the case in court. The legal costs could amount to more than the land was worth, even with planning permission, and Weldon was too much of a realist to risk it. As ever in Shenstead, the issue died through apathy, and the "common land" status of the wood was restored. At least in the minds of the villagers.

The pity was that no one had troubled to record it as such under the 1965 Commons Registration Act, which would have given it status in law. Instead, unclaimed and unowned, it remained tantalizingly available to the first squatter who took up residence on it and was prepared to defend his right to stay.

Contrary to the instructions he had given his convoy to stay put, Fox stole down the lane and prowled from house to house. Apart from the Manor, the only property of any size was Shenstead House, home to Julian and Eleanor Bartlett. It was set back from the road down a short gravel driveway, and Fox picked his way along the grass verge to deaden his footsteps. He stood for several minutes beside the drawing-room window, watching through a gap in the curtains as Eleanor made serious inroads into her husband's cellar.