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Realising that her feet hurt and that her knees were beginning to knock, Steph called it a night. Once again, her eyes shut as soon as she hit the pillow. Her sleep was glorious. Until three in the morning. Then she lay awake, waiting for morning and cursing her jetlag.

FOUR

After a breakfast at a local café – a classic fried breakfast; something the Americans hadn’t quite mastered – Steph decided that she wanted to go and see the location of the boy’s death for herself. She needed to explore the area and start asking herself the questions she should as a biologist.

She bought herself some lunch to put in her backpack and began walking in the direction the barwoman had told her about the previous night. It didn’t take long to find her way in amongst the trees.

The land was undulating. She was surprised a little kid had persevered with the walk. Even if he hadn’t gone that far, it was still tiring work. That said, Steph loved it. It was miles better than being stuck behind some desk waiting to die.

Every so often the trees would clear revealing some wide-open spaces. But at the altitude she was, there were always trees over the next dip or around the next corner of whichever rocky hillock she tried to circumnavigate.

She sat down against the base of a tree and took out her water, notebook and a pen. She sipped the water and then began writing. Her pen first began to jot down the names of surrounding trees: oak and birch. Then she penned potential food sources as well as observations of the size of the land. Could the land support wildlife? Easily. That was the type of thing most of her readers wanted to know.

She had written a whole book on the alleged Alaskan Bigfoot and its supposed activities. The premise of the book orbited around the notion that the area where all the sightings were meant to have occurred could comfortably support a large primate if one was so adapted to the climate. As far as she was concerned, it was not her job to say whether there was or wasn’tsuch a creature, just whether one could survive with the right adaptations. The reader could decide for themselves what they thought.

For herself, Steph started jotting down a list of a few native animals to Scotland: badger, fox, deer and rabbit. It certainly wasn’t the African savannah. It wasn’t even the American Rockies. Unless the boy had already been dead, there wasn’t a native animal that could have caused the damage. A rabid badger might deliver a nasty bite, but it was unlikely to tear a child limb from limb.

In terms of Steph’s audience and what they would want to know, could there have been a non-native animal roaming the wooded valleys? There was always the chance of the hunting dogs theory being true, but it seemed unlikely. It would have been rather exceptional.

Steph laughed. The idea of hunting dogs killing a child in Scotland being described as an exceptional case when she was busy trying to investigate the potential of the land to house rare and exotic predators tickled her.

She got up and carried on. As she walked, she took out a printed piece of paper that had one of the media reports of the boy’s death. It said that there had been bite marks on the boy as well as clean lacerations on his legs – one of the parts of his body still whole. That also put the dog theory to bed in Steph’s mind; a dog was unlikely to cause a clean cut to someone. They lacked the tools. They would bite and tear in a messy way.

Steph had watched wolves bringing down a young bison in Yellowstone once. They had exhausted the thing with their constant biting, ripping and yanking at its flesh until it finally succumbed to the inevitable. Nothing the wolves did could be described as clean though.

To deliver a clean cut, you would have to slash quickly through someone’s flesh with something sharp enough not to drag toomuch. A knife would cut. However, if it had been a knife cut on the boy, the coroner would have identified it straightaway. The boy’s death was still reported as being under mysterious circumstances. The police were not claiming murder, but the boy had clearly not dropped dead of his own accord, and yet there were no wild animals sufficiently large enough to bring him down. They were stumped. Steph got it. It would have been quite a thing for any member of the law who wanted to be taken seriously to suggest there could be something else out there. Most people didn’t want to be perceived as whack-jobs. They toed the socially acceptable line. The fact that the boy’s death fell the wrong side of the line… well, that was just too bad.

Eventually, Steph found what she had been hoping to find: the fence. She walked up towards it and looked left. Then she looked right. She could see no end either way; it just trailed off into the distance or deeper tree coverage.

What really interested Steph was that the woman behind the bar had been right: the fence did have an electric current running through it. However, the wired parts of the fence that had the charge running through and that were buzzing slightly were not on Steph’s side of the fence. They were on the inside.

Steph got up close to the fence and peered through it. The inside looked similar enough to the land on the outside. However, there were some notable differences. The tree coverage was thicker on the inside of the fence. Also, the layout of the trees appeared less natural, as if they had been planted. They were young Steph also noted. Young and yet large enough to create a partial barrier to sight. But for what? Steph strained her eyes to try and focus on a spot which seemed to cut through the trees. Nothing. Not anything of note. Or was there?

Steph was not completely sure but it was possible that she could see a section of metal fencing further back. She could not be certain as it was such a small area she was looking at and thenit became engulfed by vegetation again. It could just be branches that at the couple of hundred yards or so were playing tricks on her. But why would they look metallic?

She reached into her bag and pulled out her binoculars. She put them near the wire fence in one of the gaps and then tilted them before looking through one-half of them with her right eye and shutting her left as if she were using them like a telescope.

Through the magnified sight it looked even more like a section of fencing. Two fences? Why? And how come the people at the hotel said nothing about it last night? Did they even know? Perhaps not. It was not exactly obvious. You’d almost have to be looking for it to find it.

It was odd. Having an electric current on the inside of a fence suggested keeping something in rather than out. Having a second fence suggested youreallywanted to keep something in. Steph had seen things before that were vaguely similar, especially around military bases, but nothing quite like this.

She looked around to see how she might be able to get over the fence. There had to be a tree she could climb to jump over. It was not as if the fence was a ridiculous height; maybe eight or nine feet. It would not be the most comfortable drop-down, but even a rolled ankle would probably be worth it.

As Steph walked along its perimeter, she noticed no obvious tree from which she could launch a scaling of the fence. It was frustrating. Could she go under it? Not without a spade. She was sure that someone must have gone over the fence before. There had to be someone who had been curious enough to try it. Perhaps it was worth asking the woman at the bar again. It was Friday so Steph suspected there might be a few more people looking for a drink and open to a conversation.

Steph began studying the gap between the outer fence and where she presumed the inner fence must run – she hadlost sight of it as she walked, allowing it to be swallowed by the vegetation once more. She sighed. There was something definitely worth pursuing about this fencing. Just the double fence alone would spark an interest in her niche audience.

The light was starting to fade slightly as dark clouds gathered above. Steph looked at her watch. It was too early for the light to be fading which suggested rain was likely on its way. She was about to turn away from the fence when something caught her eye. Something didn’t look quite right in one of the trees. It was as if there was a knot showing on the trunk where there shouldn’t be one. Maybe a slight deformity in the bark? Steph strained her eyes. They yielded nothing. She took out her binoculars and peered through using only her right eye once more. She blinked. She lowered the binoculars and then raised them again. Steph snorted at what she saw.

In the tree was, when observed carefully enough, the unmistakable outline of a lens. It was true that people put up camera traps in forests to observe wildlife – Steph had used this method enough times herself – but they were rarely so well hidden. This one looked as it if was in the tree itself. It was only on closer inspection that Steph realised a fake bark had been placed around the exterior to blend it in with the tree even more. That certainly explained the mildly deformed look.

Questions. This first small expedition had left Steph with more questions than answers. That was a good thing as far as she was concerned. The worst thing she could have encountered were answers straightaway which would clear things up in a succinct way, But that wouldn’t sell any material.

Wincing up at the sky, Steph hauled her bag onto her back and headed off.

FIVE

The hotel bar was busier that evening. Even so, there wasn’t much more chatter. Perhaps the pelting rain outside had helped dampen things.