Chapter 1

There had been a time when he could switch off. He remembered that clearly, though not recently. Back when cases ended cleanly, when stories had conclusions that felt like answers rather than compromises. Back before the things he’d seen began to linger. Now they stayed. Quiet. Patient. Waiting.

Beside him, Lowri stirred. She didn’t wake fully, just shifted beneath the duvet, her hand drifting instinctively across the mattress to the space he had vacated an hour earlier. Even in sleep, she knew when he was gone. Gareth stood in the doorway for a moment, watching her. The room was dim, washed in that grey pre-morning light that softened edges and blurred detail. Lowri’s face looked younger like that, the lines smoothed away, the worry less visible. For a moment, he allowed himself to see her as she had been years ago, before his work had begun to take more than it gave. Then he looked away.

He left the door half open and moved back down the narrow landing, careful to avoid the loose floorboard near the top of the stairs. It creaked if you stepped on it wrong. He had learned that the hard way. He kept the kitchen light low.

The house held that peculiar early-morning stillness, thick, suspended, as though sound itself had yet to fully arrive. Even the clock on the wall seemed quieter. The kettle boiled. Clicked off.

He poured the water into a chipped mug, the same one he’d owned longer than most of his professional contacts. The handle had been glued twice. It still leaked slightly if you tilted it the wrong way. He never replaced it. Some things, once they’d lasted long enough, earned the right to stay.

The laptop sat open on the table, its glow casting a pale, artificial light across his face. The article had been there for three days, untouched except for minor edits he kept undoing.

Illegal snaring in the valleys. Foxes, mostly. Occasionally dogs. Once, though he had never written about it, a child who had wandered off a footpath and into a wire loop hidden in the undergrowth. He could still see the boy’s face. The panic. The confusion. The way his small hands had pulled at the wire, tightening it further without understanding what he was doing. They’d got to him in time. Another few seconds, another twist, and it would have been his hand instead of the fox’s neck.

Gareth read the final line again. 

The cruelty is rarely seen, but always present.

He frowned.

Too heavy. Too deliberate. It sounded like something written for effect rather than truth.

He hovered over the keyboard, fingers still, then deleted it. The truth didn’t need dressing up. Not like that.

He leaned back slightly, rubbing his eyes. The room felt colder than it should have. Or maybe that was just him. His phone buzzed against the table, the vibration loud in the quiet room. Unknown number. He watched it for a second. Then another. He let it ring once longer than necessary before picking it up.

“Rhys.”

There was a pause. Faint background noise. Movement. The soft rustle of clothing, the distant murmur of voices. Someone adjusting their grip on the phone. Then: “You’re the wildlife bloke, yeah?”

Gareth leaned back slightly in his chair, rubbing at the stubble along his jaw. Mid-fifties now, and the years had settled into him in quiet, unremarkable ways. Slower starts to the day. Joints that complained in the cold. A patience that had thinned into something sharper, less forgiving.

“Depends who’s asking.”

A breath on the other end. “Police. Gwent.” A pause. “We’ve got something… unusual.”

Gareth’s eyes flicked towards the bedroom door. Still quiet. Lowri hadn’t moved.

“What kind of unusual?” he asked, lowering his voice.

Paper shuffled on the other end. Someone nearby said something that didn’t quite carry. The caller hesitated. As though deciding how much to say. “Body down by the Usk,” they said at last. “There’s something in his hand. Someone reckoned you might recognise it.”

Gareth didn’t move. That wasn’t a normal call. Not even for him. “What kind of something?” he asked.

Another pause. Then:   “Looks like a scale.”

Gareth closed his eyes briefly. The word sat wrong. Out of place before he’d even begun to think about it. His mind moved quickly, too quickly, through possibilities. Fish. Reptile. Something local. Something explainable. None of them settled.

“Send me the location,” he said. He ended the call without waiting for a response and remained where he was, the quiet pressing in around him, thicker now, heavier.

The house no longer felt still. It felt expectant. Then he stood. He pushed the bedroom door open a little further this time. Lowri was awake. Propped on one elbow, watching him.

Her hair was loose around her shoulders, her expression somewhere between concern and resignation, like someone who had been here before and knew how it usually ended. “You’re going out,” she said. Not a question.

Gareth nodded, pulling a shirt from the back of a chair. “Call from the police.”

That shifted something in her face. Not alarm. Recognition. “Serious?”

“Don’t know yet.”

She gave a small, almost disbelieving exhale. “You never know yet,” she said. “That’s always how it starts.”

Gareth didn’t respond immediately. He pulled the shirt on, buttoning it without looking.

Lowri watched him. “You could say no,” she said.

He paused. Just for a moment. Then continued. “I could.”

“But you won’t.”

“No.”

She pushed herself upright, the duvet slipping slightly as the cold air crept in. “What is it this time?”

“Something by the river,” he said. “They think it might be… relevant.”

“To what you do.”

“Yes.”

Lowri studied him carefully. “You said you were done chasing this kind of thing.”

Gareth rested his hand briefly on the back of the chair. He had said that. More than once. Usually, after something had gone wrong. Usually, after he’d come home quieter than usual. More distant. Harder to reach. “I said I’d slow down,” he replied.

“That’s not the same thing.”

“No.”

She held his gaze. “Do you even believe that?” she asked quietly.

Gareth didn’t answer. Because he wasn’t sure he did. The silence stretched. Not uncomfortable. Just familiar. Worn smooth by years of conversations like this, circling the same truth from different angles, neither of them quite willing to say it outright.

Lowri looked away first. “Do you remember that case in Carmarthen?” she asked suddenly.

Gareth frowned slightly. “Which one?”

“The farm,” she said. “The badgers.”

He went still.“Yes.”

“You said that one would be quick,” she went on. “In and out. Just a piece for the paper.”

“It was supposed to be.”

“It never is,” she said.

Gareth sighed, pulling on his coat. “This might be different.”

Lowri gave a small, humourless smile. “That’s what you said last time.”

He didn’t argue. Because he had.

“Be careful,” she said at last.

Gareth gave a small, almost apologetic smile. “I always am.”

She didn’t return it. Because they both knew that wasn’t true.

Outside, the cold hit him immediately - sharp enough to wake whatever part of him still lingered in that half-sleep state. He locked the door behind him. The click echoed faintly along the quiet street.

Newport was only just beginning to stir. A car passed at the far end of the road, tyres hissing on wet tarmac. Somewhere, a bin lid clattered. The distant hum of early traffic rolled in like a warning of the day to come. He got into his car but didn’t start it straight away.

His hands rested on the steering wheel. Mid-fifties. Married. Still answering calls like this. Still stepping into things that had nothing to do with him… Until they did.

He exhaled slowly. Then started the engine.

The riverbank had already been churned into thick, clinging mud by the time he arrived.    Blue-and-white tape stretched unevenly across the grass, marking a boundary that didn’t quite hold. A couple of early onlookers lingered nearby, pretending not to stare but failing. A dog walker kept their distance, though the dog itself strained forward, nose low, eager for scents it couldn’t understand. The River Usk moved slowly beside them, swollen from recent rain. It carried debris along its surface, twigs, leaves, the occasional indistinct shape, drifting past with quiet indifference. 

Gareth stepped out of the car. The smell reached him first. Wet earth. River water. And beneath it, faint, but unmistakable, metallic.

A uniformed officer glanced up as he approached. “You Rhys?”

“Depends who’s asking.”

She didn’t smile. “Down there,” she said, lifting the tape just enough for him to pass beneath it. “And don’t touch anything.”

“I won’t.”

He moved carefully down the embankment, his boots slipping slightly in the mud. He had been to scenes like this before. Too many. The details always changed. The ending never did.

The body lay near the water’s edge, half turned onto its side as though it had tried, at the last moment, to pull away from something. Mid-forties, Gareth guessed.

Well dressed, once. The clothes were expensive, or had been. Now they were soaked through, stained, clinging in a way that stripped them of any status they might once have suggested. Gareth barely glanced at the man’s face. He had learned, over the years, that faces stayed with you longer than anything else. Instead, he looked at the hand.

A forensic officer stood nearby, watching him with thinly veiled impatience.

“You’re Rhys?”

“Still depends.”

A flicker of irritation crossed the officer’s face. “Take a look.”

Gareth crouched slowly, the movement deliberate, controlled. Between the dead man’s fingers was something small. Curved. Dull brown.

At first glance, it could have been anything. A fragment. A piece of debris caught there by chance. But Gareth had spent a lifetime looking at things that didn’t belong. He leaned closer. The texture caught what little light there was. Layered. Ridged. Organic.

Recognition came quickly. Hard. Immediate. “No,” he murmured.

“What?” the officer asked.

Gareth didn’t look up.“It’s a scale.”

“We figured that.”

Gareth straightened slightly, his eyes still fixed on it. “Not from anything you’d find here,” he said. A pause. Then, more clearly: “That’s pangolin.”

The word settled into the air like something dropped from a height. Heavy. Foreign. Wrong.

The officer frowned. “You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“What’s it doing here?”

Gareth finally looked up. Past the officer. Past the body. Out towards the slow-moving river. “That,” he said quietly, “is the wrong question.”

The officer said nothing.

Gareth’s gaze hardened slightly. “The question is: how did it get here?”

Because pangolins didn’t live in Wales.

They didn’t live anywhere near Wales.

And men like this, men who ended up dead by the river, didn’t die clutching their scales unless someone wanted it to mean something. Gareth rose to his feet. The cold felt sharper now. Cleaner. As though something had shifted in the air.

Behind him, the city was waking. Ahead of him… something already had.