Mark and Owen stood together among the scattered stones for a minute or two. Despite his proximity to Owen, there still seemed to be too much distance between them for Mark’s satisfaction. The greeting he had received was not the one he had expected. It was not the reason he had waited in the trees until the policemen had gone. For Mark, the unfamiliar gulf between them felt like that yawning gap in the wall, waiting to be bridged by a careful hand.

‘Did you talk to the police yesterday, Owen?’ he said.

‘Yes, they’re talking to everybody.’

‘What did you talk about?’

Owen laughed. ‘You’d be surprised.’

He picked up a stone, knocked off some dirt, and held it up to the light to study it, like a diamond dealer examining the facets of a newly polished gem. Mark liked to watch Owen at work. He thought Owen was a completely different man when he was out on the hills. He never seemed at home in the briefing centre, sitting in front of the little electric heater, hunched at the assistant’s desk scattered with paperwork.

‘What was it they wanted to know, Owen?’ Mark insisted.

Owen had been Mark’s friend and mentor throughout his assessment and training as a Ranger and during his first few weeks in the job itself. Mark had become accustomed to the comforting presence of the bearded man in the red jacket; he had glowed with pride as people greeted Owen like an old friend, laughed at all his jokes and bombarded him with questions on every subject – questions he never failed to respond to with courtesy, even when he plainly didn’t know the answer.

‘It was just questions,’ said Owen. ‘They want to make use of my local knowledge. Don’t they all?’

‘The time of the next bus to Buxton, then? Or the nearest all-night chemist’s.’

Owen smiled at Mark’s tentative joke, a reference to a shared memory of an encounter with two elderly women on a remote track by a reservoir on the heights of the Dark Peak. It was enough to provide the surge of reassurance Mark needed, enough to ease the chill he had felt when he had first seen the expression on Owen’s face.

‘I wondered if the police might want to interview me again,’ said Mark.

‘You’ve told them everything, haven’t you?’

‘I think so.’

But Mark knew he hadn’t, not everything. The policemen hadn’t been as easy to talk to as he might have hoped. There were some things you just couldn’t say when they were writing down every word. There were things that sounded too stupid and strange. For a start, he didn’t know how to describe to the police the way that the woman had looked to him as she lay among the stones. The way that she had seemed to dance.