Noubel banged on the side of the ambulance as it pulled away, then, satisfied his men were doing their job, he wandered back to his car, cursing himself. He lowered himself into the front seat, feeling every one of his fifty years, reflecting on all the wrong decisions he’d taken today that had led to this. He slid a finger under the collar of his shirt and loosened his tie.

He knew he should have talked to the boy earlier. Biau hadn’t been himself from the moment he’d arrived at the Pic de Soularac. He was normally enthusiastic, the first to volunteer. Today, he’d been nervous and on edge, then he’d vanished for half the afternoon.

Noubel tapped his fingers nervously on the steering wheel. Authie claimed Biau had never given him the message about the ring. And why would he lie about something like that?

At the thought of Paul Authie, Noubel felt a sharp pain in his abdomen. He popped a peppermint in his mouth to relieve the burning. That was another mistake. He shouldn’t have let Authie near Dr. Tanner, although, when he thought about it, he wasn’t sure what he could have done to prevent it. When reports of the skeletons at Soularac had come through, orders that Paul Authie should be given access to the site and assistance had accompanied them. So far, Noubel hadn’t been able to find out how Authie had heard about the discovery so fast, let alone worm his way onto the site.

Noubel had never met Authie in person before, although he knew him by reputation. Most police officers did. A lawyer, known for his hard-line religious views, Authie was said to have half the judiciaire and gendarmerie of the Midi in his pockets. More specifically, a colleague of Noubel’s had been called to give evidence in a case Authie was defending. Two members of a far-right group were accused of the murder of an Algerian taxi driver in Carcassonne. There’d been rumors of intimidation. In the end, both defendants were acquitted and several police officers forced to retire.

Noubel looked down at Biau’s sunglasses, which he’d picked up from the ground. He’d been unhappy earlier. Now he liked the situation even less.

The radio crackled into life, belching out the information Noubel needed about Biau’s next of kin. He sat for a moment longer, putting off the moment. Then he started to make the calls.

It was eleven o’clock when Alice reached the outskirts of Toulouse. She was too tired to carry on to Carcassonne, so she decided to head for the city center and find somewhere to stay the night.

The journey had passed in a flash. Her head was full of jumbled images of the skeletons and the knife beside them; the white face looming out at her in the dead gray light; the body lying in front of the church in Foix. Was he dead?

And the labyrinth. Always, in the end, she came back to the labyrinth. Alice told herself she was being paranoid, that it was nothing to do with her. You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. But no matter how many times she said it, Alice did not believe it.

She kicked off her shoes and lay down fully clothed on the bed. Everything about the room was cheap. Featureless plastic and hardboard, gray tiles and fake wood. The sheets were overstarched and scratched like paper against her skin.

She took the Bushmills single malt from her rucksack. There were a couple of fingers left in the bottle. Unexpectedly a lump came to her throat. She’d been saving the last couple of inches for her last night at the dig. She tried again, but Shelagh’s phone was still on divert. Fighting back her irritation, she left yet another message. She wished Shelagh would quit playing games.

Alice washed down a couple of painkillers with the whisky, then got into bed and turned the light off. She was totally exhausted, but she couldn’t get comfortable. Her head was throbbing, her wrist felt hot and swollen and the cut on her arm was hurting like hell. Worse than ever.

The room was stuffy and hot. After tossing and turning, listening to bells strike midnight, then one o’clock, Alice got up to open the window and let some air in. It didn’t help. Her mind wouldn’t stay still. She tried to think of white sands and clear blue water, Caribbean beaches and Hawaiian sunsets, but her brain kept coming back to the gray rock and chill subterranean air of the mountain.

She was scared to sleep. What if the dream came back again?

The hours crawled by. Her mouth was dry and her heart staggered under the influence of the whisky. Not until the pale white dawn crept under the worn edges of the curtains did her mind finally give in.

This time, a different dream.

She was riding a chestnut horse through the snow. Its winter coat was thick and glossy, and its white mane and tail were plaited with red ribbons. She was dressed for hunting in her best cloak with the squirrel-fur pelisse and hood and long leather gloves lined with marten fur that went up as high as her elbows.

A man was riding beside her on a gray gelding, a bigger, more powerful animal with a black mane and tail. He pulled repeatedly on the reins to keep it steady. His brown hair was long for a man, skimming his shoulders. His blue velvet cloak streamed behind him as he drove his mount on. Alice saw he wore a dagger at his waist. Around his neck was a silver chain with a single green stone hanging from it, which banged up and down against his chest to the rhythm of the horse.

He kept glancing over at her with a mixture of pride and ownership. The connection between them was strong, intimate. In her sleep, Alice shifted position and smiled.

Some way off, a horn was blowing sharp and shrill in the crisp December air, proclaiming that the hounds were on the trail of a wolf. She knew it was December, a special month. She knew she was happy.

Then, the light changed.

Now she was alone in a part of the forest she did not recognize. The trees were taller and more dense, their bare branches black and twisted against the white, snow-laden sky, like dead men’s fingers. Somewhere behind her, unseen and threatening, the dogs were gaining on her, excited by the promise of blood.

She was no longer the hunter, but the quarry.

The forest reverberated with a thousand thundering hooves, getting closer and closer. She could hear the baying of the huntsmen now. They were shouting to one another in a language she did not understand, but she knew they were looking for her.

Her horse stumbled. Alice was thrown, falling forward out of the saddle and down to the hard, wintry ground. She heard the bone in her shoulder crack, then searing pain. She looked down in horror. A piece of dead wood, frozen solid like the head of an arrow, had pierced her sleeve and impaled her arm.

With numb and desperate fingers, Alice pulled at the fragment until it came loose, closing her eyes against the aching pain. Straight away, the blood started to flow, but she couldn’t let that stop her.

Staunching the bleeding with the hem of her cloak, Alice scrambled to her feet and forced herself on through the naked branches and petrified undergrowth. The brittle twigs snapped under her feet and the ice-cold air pinched her cheeks and made her eyes water.

The ringing in her ears was louder now, more insistent, and she felt faint. As insubstantial as a ghost.

Suddenly, the forest was gone and Alice found herself standing on the edge of a cliff. There was nowhere left to go. At her feet was a sheer drop to a wooded precipice below. In front of her were the mountains, capped with snow, stretching as far as the eye could see. They were so close she felt she could almost reach out and touch them.

In her sleep, Alice shifted uneasily.

Let me wake up. Please.

She struggled to wake up, but she couldn’t. The dream held her too tightly in its coils.