Cooper and Fry had parked at the back of the cattle market, close to where a double-decker transporter was reversed up to the loading area, its tailgate lowered on to the concrete apron. They scrambled up on to the concrete, but could see no one among the rows of steel pens. They crossed an iron platform that moved underfoot, and found themselves looking at the face of an enormous weighing scale. It recorded their combined weight at just over twenty-three stone.

‘You’ve put a bit of weight on,’ said Cooper.

‘What?’

‘Well, it isn’t me. I’m thirteen stone and always have been. I never change.’

Fry stared doubtfully at the scale. Cooper wondered whether she knew he was joking. She looked genuinely worried. ‘I shouldn’t bother about it too much,’ he said. ‘They sell ’em by the kilo here, anyway. The more you weigh on the hoof, the more money you fetch in the ring.’

Fry wasn’t amused. ‘Tell you what,’ she said. ‘You hold on here and talk to yourself about the price of beef while I find this Pilkington character.’

‘If you say so.’

Cooper waited by the transporter while Fry crossed the concrete and stood on the vehicle’s steel ramp. Inside the market, the silence of the building was strange after the bellowing cacophony of Tuesday. The starlings gathered on the ledges were whistling plaintively and darting in and out of the gaps in the roof. All traces of blood and urine and the soft, green faeces of frightened animals had been hosed away into the gutters behind the pens. Here and there the floor was still wet, drying very slowly in dark, glistening patches.

‘Where is everyone?’ asked Fry, hushing her voice automatically at the first bounce of the echo from the breeze-block walls.

‘In the back, probably,’ said Cooper. ‘Near the sale rings.’

‘OK.’

She set off down the passageway opposite the ramp, walking between the steel pens.

‘Are you sure you want me to wait here, Diane?’

‘Yes. Just keep an eye out.’

‘I might be able to show you the way,’ called Cooper, his voice getting louder and more insistent, echoing in the roof space.

‘For God’s sake,’ she snapped. ‘I can find my way through an empty building without your assistance.’

Fry had hardly got halfway down the passage when a gate clanged open somewhere. She heard Cooper call something else to her, a single word that sounded like an insult. She couldn’t quite hear what he said because of the noise, a crashing of gates and the thudding of hooves on concrete. But she reacted angrily to the sound of the word, and turned to answer him.

‘Did you say “bollocks”?’ she yelled.