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Andrew.'
    'No need to ask what brings you here.'
    'I thought you'd be surprised to see me.'
    'Hardly.'
    'Irene's got me down for your birthday.'
    'Glad I could provide her with an excuse.'
    'It's only partly that.'
    'But the biggest part, I'd say.' He moved closer. 'Want some tea?'
    'Coffee would be nice.'
    'Got none.'
    Tea, then. Fine.'
    'Come on in. You'll have to take me as you find me.'
    Nick found him as he would have expected rather than hoped. Carwether was a middle-sized, solidly built moorland family farmhouse. It needed roaring fires and gambolling children to
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    make it feel like a home. Instead it was cold and silent as a grave, sparsely furnished and echoing to their footfalls. They went into the kitchen, where a range gave off a meagre hint of warmth. Andrew set the tea going while Nick glanced up at a feed merchant's wall calendar hanging near the door. Every day was blank.
    'As soon as Irene told me she'd cook me a Sunday lunch at Trennor for my birthday, I knew it was cover for a family conference,' Andrew said over his shoulder as he filled the teapot. 'So, it stood to reason you'd be in on it. She was bound to want you down. The only question was whether you'd come.'
    'Well, here I am.' Nick sat down at the table. The Western Morning News was folded open in front of him. He closed it and saw, lying beneath, a large-scale Ordnance Survey map of Bodmin Moor. It too was folded open. Someone - Andrew, presumably - had marked apparently random locations on it with bright red crosses. Half a dozen or more were clustered around Blisland, on the western fringe of the Moor. The rest were scattered more widely. 'Plotting something, are you?'
    'What do you mean by that?' There was aggression in Andrew's voice as he turned from the sink.
    'These crosses.' Nick smiled to defuse the moment. 'On the map.'
    'Oh, those.' Andrew sniffed, fetched a couple of mugs from the cupboard and plonked them down next to the map. 'Yeah. You could say I am. They're a year's worth of recorded sightings.'
    'Sightings of what?'
    'Big cats.'
    'You buy into that?'
    'They're out there. If you'd seen what was done to one of my ewes last back end, you'd not doubt it.'
    'I thought it was just . . . rural myth.' And that was what he would have expected Andrew - an unvarnished rationalist, if ever there was one - to think as well.
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    'What I've seen I've seen.'
    'You've seen one?'
    'More than one. Or the same one twice. Most recently, there.' He pointed to one of the crosses closest to Carwether. 'A panther of some kind. Large, loose-limbed and black as pitch, a field away from me. Dusk, it was. They're nocturnal, of course. Creatures of the night.'
    'Dusk can be a confusing time, visually.'
    'You don't have to believe me, Nick.' Andrew gave him a half-smile that was almost contemptuous. 'It really doesn't matter. I'll prove it in the end. To everyone.'
    'How will you do that?'
    Tnfra-red photography. I've been going out after dark with a special image-intensifying video camera and nightscope. I'll get one on tape sooner or later.'
    'But you haven't yet.'
    'No. Not yet.' Andrew poured the tea, then sat down at the other end of the table. 'Anyway, you're not here to discuss big cats. Fat ones, now, that's a different matter. We seem to have one by the tail.'
    'You mean Tantris?'
    'You know all about it?'
    T've just come from St Neot. I met Elspeth Hartley there. She filled me in.'
    'Persuasive woman.'
    'Not as far as Dad's concerned, apparently.'
    'He's bound to see it differently.'
    'I'd have thought he'd want to be involved in the project. It's right up his street. Buried treasure. Historical mystery. Irresistible, surely, to someone who's made a career out of digging up all our yesterdays.'
    'You should tell him that, Nick. It might shame him into agreeing.'
    'Maybe I will.'
    'Don't mind me. I don't want a fuss to be made about my birthday. A handy way to avoid that is for you to make a fuss about something else.'
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    'You are in favour of