At the door Molly stopped and turned back to the room. ‘If Joanna Barton comes, will you ask her to wait for me? I want to talk to her. She might seem a little overwrought but she’s just unhappy. She’s not dangerous.’

As she left Back Rigg and began to walk down the lane she saw the smoke rise above the hill. It hung in the still air, like a grey curtain, blotting out all that was going on beyond it.

When Vic Liddle began to burn the heather Danny Craven was still there to help him. Benwell had decided against an immediate arrest after all. He said he would go back to Appleworth and try to get an analysis done on the syringe he had found at the Lodge. He seemed to have been affected by George’s doubt.

‘You’ll be here, George, won’t you?’ he had said when they sat in the car outside Back Rigg after searching Craven’s house. ‘You can see them working from here. If Craven makes a move you can give me a ring.’

George, who had always taken responsibility seriously, said he would go on to the hill and watch what was happening, but he thought if Craven had intended to run he would have gone by now.

When he arrived at the strip of long heather Vic Liddle was preparing to start burning. He had unloaded his equipment from the Land Rover. Danny Craven and Jeremy Grenville stood, listening to his instructions, obviously impatient to start.

‘I’ve never had a fire get away from me yet,’ Vic said. ‘And I don’t intend to start now. We’re in no rush.’

He gave them long-handled, wide-bladed beaters that he had made years before from flattened oil drums.

‘Don’t go waving them about,’ he said. ‘You’ll just fan the flames. Shuffle them along the ground like this to keep out the air.’

Craven swore under his breath.

‘Have you got a problem, lad?’ Vic demanded.

Craven shrugged. ‘I know what I’m doing,’ he said. ‘That’s all. I don’t need to take orders from you.’

‘You can do as I say,’ Vic said. ‘ Or you can get out.’ He turned to Jeremy. ‘ That’s right, isn’t it? He does what he’s told or we manage without him.’

But Jeremy was staring down the valley at the lane and seemed hardly to notice what Vic Liddle was saying.