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“Well, then I only had your rifle to worry about; now your rifle is the least of my concerns.” She let that hang in the air for a moment and then carried on walking, leaving the two behind her a little more wary. Perhaps that was a mistake. Would they be more alert to movement other than the bear’s?

In fairness to herself, she genuinely felt as if something had been nearby. This was no place to throw any degree of caution to the wind. Yes, she could have been being watched by Davey or one of the others, but it was just as likely it was something else.Hell, she wouldn’t have put it past the cave lion if it had escaped from the truck and was now stalking them. Come to think of it, the lion had been awfully subdued in the back of the truck. She wondered how much tranquillizer they had given it.

They carried on up the slope for another hundred metres or so. After that the small pathway widened slightly onto an opening on the incline where the land flattened briefly. Again Steph stopped walking. She crouched down. The other two copied her. Ahead of her, reaching into the slope that continued around the small relief from the incline, was a cave. It looked fake. It was clearly fake. In fact, even the small levelling of the land seemed unnatural.

Steph studied the rocky outline of the cave. It looked like concrete. It was definitely concrete. It was, Steph reckoned, probably housing some sort of metal support. The whole thing was artificial. She supposed it had to be. The chances of there being a perfectly habitable cave in the surrounding land were wishful thinking. Artificially you could guarantee it. She edged back down the slope. The other two, having had a look for themselves, also edged down, ensuring their heads were below the lip of the small plateau.

“Right, so what’s the plan?” the larger of the two asked. He made sure not to look at Steph when he said this. However, the smaller man was not so exclusive. He moved a dark lock of sweat-pasted hair away from the corner of his eye as he looked at Steph.

“If we go in there, what’s the risk?”

Steph screwed up her face in what she hoped looked like concerned thinking.

“It depends how far back in the cave he’s gone.” This seemed plausible. They might have built the cave to go back a way. “The further you go the darker it is and the more chance of something going wrong. You don’t have night-vision goggles with you, doyou? Torches?”

The men looked at each other before turning their heads back in the direction of the truck.

“So you’re saying that it would be better to coax him out?”

“I’d say so.”

There was a definite strangeness to organising a plan for people when you were already part of a counter plan to ambush them, despite not being privy to the finer details of the original plan.

“If he is in there, I’d suggest wolf howls.”

“Ifhe’s in there?” the larger one said, looking down the length of his rifle at something in the distance.

“Well, I can’t guarantee anything,” Steph said, “but I assume he’s in there.”

“Why do you assume?” asked the smaller one.

“Because the most recent tracks were the ones going up the slope.”

Was that true? It could have been. Steph hadn’t really paid enough attention. It didn’t really matter to her. Staying alive and stopping these two making off with any of the animals was what mattered. Although, thinking about it,why? Why should she care if they made off with the animals? Kelvin had made it seem in her best interests to care, but without him there, his reasons didn’t feel nearly as compelling.

Frowning, the smaller man held out the tranquillizer rifle to the larger man. The larger one sighed and handed over his own rifle.

“He would make a great talking point in my snooker room.”

“Well, that’s not what we’re being paid for,” said the smaller man. “Anyway, you won’t be able to afford a snooker room if you don’t shoot your tranquillizer straight, and you can’t use those damn pistols either.”

“Come off it! I could hit a squirrel between the eyes at two hundred yards, I’m hardly going to miss a great fucking lump like that, am I?”

Then taking Steph a little by surprise, he got up and began walking off to their right. The smaller man had seemingly expected this and simply sat on the slope raising his eyebrows at Steph for want of nothing better to do.

“Where’s he going?” Steph asked. “What about the wolf sounds?”

“When he’s in position!” the smaller man said. “I can’t claim to be an expert at making such sounds. You?”

Steph recalled trekking to trace a man-eating wolf in Alaska. Certainly, that was how she sold it in one of her books.

“I’m not bad. But why is he changing position? Why’s he not going up the slope?”

“Good, you can do it then. As for his moving, it is so we don’t put all our eggs in one basket in terms of a safe position. It also means we can confuse the bear momentarily if need be. Us, we will make the howls – you’ll make the sounds – and the bear should come towards us, exposing his wide flank to… to my associate, who should be appearing over at the side by some trees…” He poked his head over the lip of the small plateau. “Any time… now!”

A balding head poked out from between two trees a mere thirty yards away. He nodded and then slipped back out of sight.

“Right then,” the smaller man said, suppressing a smile, “get howling!”