“It was a tall man swathed in a huge, heavy-looking coat. His face was slack but his eyes — hidden in the shadow from his hat’s frayed brim — were nervous, darting across the scene in front of him. The man and the woman standing stock-still, the girl playing with her dog in the car, a trickle of anxious yipping. His lower face was covered with a short, ill-kept beard the same shade of dirty brown as his shirt. He leaned on a thick walking stick, topped with a twist of wood like a claw. Michael felt Margaret come a step closer, her hand hovering at the small of his back. He stared at the man, almost sure he was a trick of the shadows and the evening’s mounting dark. If not for the door’s opening growl, he may have simply appeared. Michael swayed a little in the breeze, his body’s inner machinations ready to take a step forward.

The man’s mouth pulled itself open. ‘I am Torgo,’ he bleated. His voice, like his eyes, was shaking and furtive, rising and falling as he forced out the words. ‘I take care of the place while the Master is away.’”