Stride had started measuring the days. When each one arrived, it was shorter than the last. And the moor was changing as he watched; it was dying slowly on itself, folding and shrivelling, transforming like a chameleon to adapt itself to the new season. As the days shortened, the green chlorophyll broke down in the leaves. Its gradual ebbing away revealed the underlying colours – the yellows, oranges and reds that had been masked all summer. Toxic waste products excreted into the dying leaves made the trees shrink away from their own foliage. They were rejecting parts of themselves as superfluous, recoiling as if from something alien and repulsive, so that their stems dried and loosened on the branch and the wind carried the unwanted leaves away.

But Stride knew this wasn’t really death he was seeing. It wasn’t an ending, only the preparation for another beginning. The leaves that drifted to the ground in their millions would slowly decay and disintegrate, returning nutrients to the soil and into the tree roots, ready for growth to begin again next spring. The great recycling system had started up. Millions of organic systems would break down and be renewed on a scale far beyond anything that Derbyshire Dales District Council could dream of.

In some places, though, he had found the foliage of the mountain ash and of more exotic, imported species, like the Russian vines that climbed the walls of roadside cottages. These leaves were red. And they made Stride think of death – of real death. He tried to avoid them, drawing back the toes of his Doc Martens as if touching the dead leaves would contaminate him. He hated the way they spread in soft, wet layers on the ground. He hated their colour and their slithery consistency. They looked to him like ever-widening pools of congealing blood.

21

By Thursday, four days after Jenny Weston’s body had been found, the enquiry team were starting to dissipate their energies fruitlessly, like men urinating into a strong wind. There were no answers to be obtained any more. The morning briefing seemed to consist entirely of questions.

‘This young woman, Ros Daniels. Are there no indications to her whereabouts at all?’ said DCI Tailby.

‘We’ve got a decent description, but matching it to missing persons is hoping for a lot,’ said DI Hitchens. ‘Most of these young people who leave home are never reported missing in the first place. But Cheshire Police are still working on it. And we do have a couple of lorry drivers who saw a girl hitch-hiking out of Macclesfield towards Buxton on the A537.’

‘That’s the Macclesfield Forest road,’ said Ben Cooper. ‘It’s a bit isolated up there. She was taking a risk hitching, a girl like that on her own.’

‘That’s why the truckers remember her particularly, Cooper. But one of them said she looked as though she wouldn’t be frightened of much. He said she looked like Tank Girl.’