‘You’re like all the others really, aren’t you? You sneak your way into the van, thinking you’ll get something on us. Well, just leave off Stride. He doesn’t do anyone any harm, not now.’

‘Not now?’ said Cooper gently.

But Cal turned on his heel with a scowl and walked back to the van. Cooper looked at his watch. He had spent too long at Ringham Moor already. He had an appointment with another set of stones, and there would be trouble if he was late.

Like most things in Edendale, the cemetery was built halfway up a hill. Over the bottom wall, beech trees ran down Mill Bank to an estate of new housing off Meadow Road, where white semis clustered round the back of the council highways depot. A squirrel foraged among the leaves and dead branches on the floor beneath the beeches.

Sergeant Joe Cooper was buried in the new part of the cemetery, brought into use four or five years ago, when the old one became full. In the new cemetery, there were no visible graves, only rows of headstones, with the grass mowed smooth right up to them. The dead were no longer allowed to be untidy. These headstones would never loosen and tilt and grow moss with age. They were orderly, almost regimented, a picture of civic perfection. Sergeant Cooper was far tidier now than he had been at the moment of his dying, when his blood had run out on to the stone setts in Clappergate, leaving a stain that had taken council workmen weeks to remove. His killing had darkened the reputation of the town for months afterwards. No wonder they wanted to tidy him away.

Occasionally, a jam-jar full of spring flowers or petunias appeared in front of the headstone. The Coopers never knew who they were from.

The brothers had said nothing to each other as they drove to the cemetery. By the time they were out of the car and back in the open air, Ben was beginning to feel uncomfortable with the silence between them.

‘We went to see Warren Leach again yesterday,’ he said as they followed the path towards their father’s grave. ‘I just wondered if you found anything out . . .’

Matt didn’t answer. His shoulders stiffened a bit, and his stride quickened.

‘There must be somebody who knows him, Matt.’

‘I dare say.’

But Matt sounded so dismissive that Ben knew not to press it. The silence had grown even deeper by the time they reached the right spot. On every occasion they came, the row of graves had extended a little further, as if their father was somehow physically receding into the past.