‘Sure. And it was also one of their blokes we pulled down from the top of a tree with his long lens. He’d already been up there a day or so, in camouflage gear. He slept tied to a branch. He said he learned how to do it at an eco-warriors’ protest camp in Berkshire.’

‘That’s a neat trick,’ said Jepson, half-admiringly.

‘I don’t know about neat. Twenty-four hours is a long time. You should have seen the state of the grass at the bottom of the tree. That’s how we located him. Even our bobbies know human shit when they see it.’

Jepson pulled a face. Then he looked suspiciously at Tailby, who had been listening silently.

‘What have you got to say, Stewart?’

‘It’s a pretty depressing story, I’m afraid.’ Tailby sounded resigned. ‘The sixteen fires we found remnants of, they were all set during the last three months. Some of the people who made them built them properly. Others . . . well, others were lucky not to have set fire to the whole moor. There are the animal bones we found buried nearby, too. First indications suggest a medium-sized dog.’

Cooper remembered seeing the slides of the animal bones. It hadn’t been immediately obvious what they were. They were just slivers of something pale caught in the dark fibrous peat, like those burnt stems of heather, crumbling and white. Then the slide had suddenly come into focus, and the shapes of the white splinters came together in a vaguely familiar shape. He had thought of the farmyard at home, of rats caught by the sheepdogs, and the discarded evidence of foxes hunting in the fields. But this wasn’t quite the same. This was something much bigger, something with a heavier and wider skull than a rat.

‘Do those two gypsies go in for animal sacrifices?’ asked Jepson.

‘The youths in the van? They’re not exactly gypsies,’ said Hitchens.

‘Whatever they are.’

‘They’re just travellers, sir,’ said Cooper.

‘Travellers, my arse. They’re not going anywhere. What makes them travellers?’

‘They’re classed as having no settled home, sir. A Volkswagen van doesn’t count as a home under the law, even if it’s broken down.’

‘So what do they live on down there, Cooper? Nuts and berries, or what?’

‘Our information is that Calvin Lawrence catches the bus into Bakewell once a week to collect his benefit money.’

‘Ah. So he’s a Social Security scrounger. What about the other one?’

‘Simon Bevington isn’t even registered for benefits,’ said Cooper. ‘He seems to stay in the vicinity of the quarry or on the moor. He doesn’t claim anything. I suppose they must share what little they’ve got.’

‘Oh, love and peace, hallelujah,’ said Jepson.

‘It must be enough for both of them – they hardly have an extravagant lifestyle. But they’re not gypsies.’