‘Matt, you’re the one who’s like him. Everyone says that. People always told me I took after Mum. But Dad and me, we were like chalk and cheese. It infuriated him every time he saw me reading a book. He nearly threw me out of the house when I got interested in music and joined the choir. For Heaven’s sake, I barely came up to his shoulder. I was a pigmy in his eyes.’

Matt stood up. When he towered over him, with that exasperated frown, Matt looked more than ever like Sergeant Joe Cooper come back to life.

‘Maybe you never saw the similarity, Ben,’ he said. ‘But everybody else did. I can see him in you now, over this case you’re involved in, this woman who was killed on Ringham Moor.’

‘What on earth has that got to do with it?’

‘You stand here by his grave, today of all days, and you start asking me about this bloody Warren Leach. As if I cared about all that. But Dad would be proud of you, all right. Your head’s full of the same big ideas that his was, like justice and truth. You think you have to put the world right on your own. Just like him. You’re exactly like him.’

Before his brother could reply, Matt walked away to stand over the grave, leaving Ben on the bench. Matt rearranged the flowers at the foot of the headstone and re-read the inscription.

Ben stood up. ‘I’m sorry, Matt,’ he said.

Matt half-turned his head. His eyes glistened, and he wiped the heel of his hand across his face. ‘You can’t help it, Ben,’ he said. ‘Neither of us can help it.’

They walked in silence back through the cemetery, passing a workman sweeping up leaves. When they reached the car, Matt paused and looked back at the cemetery. Their father’s grave was no longer discernible from here. It had merged into anonymous rows of headstones, swallowed up among centuries of Edendale dead.

‘Ben . . . this Warren Leach,’ said Matt.

‘What about him?’

‘They say his farm is in big trouble. Creditors are calling the debts in, the usual story. He’s very close to bankruptcy, they reckon, but he won’t admit it. Leach is the type who’ll try to pretend it’s not happening until it’s much too late. It’ll only take one small thing to be the last straw.’

Cooper thought back to the two occasions he had met the farmer. ‘He isn’t exactly a barrel of laughs. But it can’t be much of a life up there.’