A few minutes later, Eric Weston followed Fry into the hallway to show her out. He hesitated at the foot of the stairs near the heavy oak door, looking back over his shoulder where his wife could be heard piling crockery in the kitchen.

‘The accident to Gavin Ferrigan . . .’ he said. ‘You have to understand it was a very difficult experience for me.’

‘Yes, I’m sure it was.’

‘It’s just that . . . some people never forget. Some people like to make you go on feeling ashamed for ever.’

The clattering in the kitchen had stopped, and Mr Weston suddenly seemed to notice the silence.

‘Well, goodbye, then,’ he said. ‘Sorry we couldn’t help any more. Anything we can do, of course.’

He ushered Fry outside and stood on the step with the door half-closed behind him.

‘The Ferrigan thing – do you really think it’s relevant to . . . you know?’

‘We can’t say at the moment.’

‘It would be very bad if it was,’ said Weston. ‘Very bad.’

He had stepped back inside the house before Fry had reached the gate. Fry heard Mrs Weston’s voice raised querulously, and a subdued murmur in return, followed by the slamming of something against a hard surface.

She went back to her car and looked at her map. She wanted the quickest way out and back on to the hills.

Unlike Ben Cooper, Fry felt no desire to defend the underdogs – not when they were people like Eric Weston. But she was angry and embarrassed to find that Weston’s words had awakened a deep echo in her own mind. She was appalled that a couple of sentences he had uttered had matched so exactly her own feelings, from a period in her life that was not so very long ago.

‘It made me feel ashamed, although I knew I had done nothing wrong,’ he had said. ‘Everyone made me feel it was my fault. Everyone.’

16

‘White vans and more white vans,’ said Chief Superintendent Jepson, waving a handful of report forms. ‘Do you know how many white vans there are? How many within two days’ drive of here? Millions?’

‘Quite a few thousand, certainly,’ said DCI Tailby.

‘Do you propose to check out every one? Are you going to send my officers out on a van-spotting tour of the country? Perhaps you could give them those little I-Spy books and tell them not to come back until they’ve ticked off one with a rusty wheel arch?’

‘We could ask local forces to do that for us, of course.’

‘Oh, of course. My colleagues in ACPO will love me. They’ll call me the White Van Man for the rest of my career.’

‘That would be rather unkind.’