DI Hitchens walked over to Ben Cooper. ‘I want Diane Fry to go to the cattle market with you, not Todd Weenink,’ he said. ‘You’re too close to some of these people. That’s your problem, Ben. Diane sees things that you don’t.’

Across the room, Fry was watching him already. Cooper couldn’t read the expression in her eyes, but then he never had been able to read her. Maybe she did see things he didn’t – but from the look on her face these days, they were things that he didn’t want to see.

The two farmers had been just about to leave the cattle market. The sale was over for the day, and most of the vehicles had left the car parks, but for a few transporters still waiting to load. The men were dressed in overalls and flat caps and smelled as though they had spent some of their money in the bar before setting off home.

‘You couldn’t buy a pint of beer for those prices I got,’ said one of them.

‘Bastards,’ said the other. ‘All pissing in the same pot, these dealers.’

Ben Cooper nodded sympathetically. ‘I know what you mean. The farmer has to put up with lower prices all the time when meat is still selling for the same amount in the supermarkets.’

‘Bloody right. There’s no justice to it. What will they do when every farmer in the country has gone to the wall? That’s what I want to know.’

Cooper was waiting for Diane Fry to finish taking a call on the radio in the car. He was the sort of person that people always chose to talk to, especially when they had problems. Maybe there was something about his face that encouraged them.

‘They’ll buy all their bloody meat from abroad, that’s what,’ said the second farmer. ‘They don’t need us any more. They can get anything they want cheaper somewhere else. These prices are just a way of killing us off one by one.’ He spat into a drainage channel. ‘Bastards.’

‘If we had another war like the last one, they’d be buggered.’

‘Aye, good and proper.’

Finally, Fry came back from the car and stood listening to their conversation in amazement. ‘Have you finished writing the script for Farming Today? If so, I wonder if any of you know where Keith Teasdale is?’

The first farmer opened his mouth as if he might say something, then closed it firmly.

‘You’ll have to ask Abel Pilkington,’ said the other man. ‘He’s inside somewhere. What’s Slasher Teasdale done, then?’

‘Slasher?’

The farmer said: ‘It’s a nickname.’

‘What does it mean?’

‘Ah. You’ll have to ask him that.’