Kelly was almost at the Penrith turn-off when DC Emma Hide called her. She listened with interest and mulled over her priority list. It was perhaps a five- to ten-minute drive from Threlkeld Quarry to the address given by Emma, and Kelly put in a request for the same squad car to visit the abandoned property called Great Raven Farm.

‘Have a snoop around, see if the place is empty.’

She turned off at the Penrith junction and called Emma back. ‘Get going on the arrangements for Fred O’Reilly and Jock Harris to come in and make formal statements, will you? And get me the exact dates of those two animal cruelty cases.’

‘I can tell you without looking, I’ve been working on them all morning,’ Emma said. ‘The 2005 one was February first, and the 2013 case was February second.’

‘Thanks, Emma, I’m five minutes away.’

Kelly ended the call and her pulse rate quickened slightly. She knew that she was on to something. Fred had tried to explain to her the eight festivals of the year, and she’d struggled to keep up. The beginning of spring had stuck in her mind because the name was so memorable. Imbolc. It was Gaelic and meant ‘lamb’s milk’. It was the day of the year when ewes began to lactate in time to feed their spring lambs. It was a hugely important time because it celebrated the end of the dark winter and the beginning of the light.

Light and dark again. Balance.

Each year it changed slightly and lambing could come a week either side of the date. It was usually from the first to the third of February, beginning on the eve of the end of January.

When she parked at Eden House, she went first to the switchboard and asked if any information had come in on the photofit released of their main suspect. The names Harry O’Connor and Kirk Junker had been released alongside the picture.

They’d had several calls, all giving different names, creating more work for her already stretched staff. As usual, the information would take time, and valuable resources, to process.

As she took the lift upstairs, the squad car reported back to her from Great Raven Farm. The place was deserted but some of the buildings were padlocked, with vehicles inside.

‘What type of vehicles?’

‘Old tractors and the like. We can’t see inside all of them, but it looks pretty dead around here.’

‘Thanks.’

They hung up.

Chapter 50

She watched Jock drive up the long track, and her heart broke into tiny little pieces.