‘It’s always been there, right under our noses. It’s on the plate. The pentacle is engraved on the plate, but we couldn’t see it because it was covered in pine. I sent someone to take it for evidence.’

‘Great work, Rob.’

Chapter 48

Harry O’Connor was entered twice into the police national computer as a person of interest in the two animal cruelty cases, and it was Emma Hide’s job to revisit the investigations, page by page, and report back to Kelly.

In 2005, his name was logged as living in a caravan on the edge of Birkett Mire campsite, thereby avoiding the site fees. It had caused great annoyance for the site at the time, because the travellers gave the area a bad name. The injured animals had been reported by a tourist, cycling with his family in the area immediately around the site. The first responders took statements from all the residents (legally and illegally camping) and Harry O’Connor was one of them.

The statement informed Emma that Mr O’Connor was parked illegally on National Trust land, but refused to move on, until he was requested to give permission to search his vehicle, which was denied, then he moved on of his own free will.

In 2013, his name popped up again as a witness to another animal cruelty case, this time in the High Rigg area, just barely two miles away from Birkett Mire. Another tourist had reported a pile of sheep and other animals seemingly discarded underneath the packhorse bridge over the beck, next to High Rigg. Mr O’Connor stated that, despite camping overnight on National Trust land, he hadn’t been a witness to any maltreatment or discarding of the animals’ bodies. No one recognised the name because Kendal handled the second case. Besides, with a gap of eight years, the staff had probably changed too. She couldn’t understand why HOLMES hadn’t flagged it up, and assumed it hadn’t been inputted correctly.

It was frustrating. They had no usable address, and no photograph of the man. The travelling community was notoriously difficult to trace, but occasionally they held down a job, or even sent their kids to local schools for a while. Sometimes they had criminal records, but Harry O’Connor was clean. She looked at some of the other names linked with the two cases and ran checks on those as well.