Ben Cooper took a swig from his bottle, conserving the beer carefully, anxious about drinking too much. He didn’t want to become a solitary drinker, though the temptation was strong.

A few minutes ago, he had rung Control to find out what was happening. They said the body of a woman had been found on Ringham Moor, fifteen miles south of Edendale. A suspected murder. The control room operator didn’t need to mention the other attack that had taken place not a mile away from the same spot six weeks before. In that case, the victim had survived – just about.

Now Cooper’s mind was no longer with him as he sat in the sweaty rugby club bar. It was elsewhere, drifting across the moors towards a flutter of tape and the flashing lights, the sound of urgent voices, and the scents and the electric crackle in the air that never failed to give him a buzz of excitement. That sense of satisfaction from taking his place in the team was a thing that couldn’t be explained to someone who had never experienced it.

Yet tomorrow morning, he knew he would be sitting in the monthly Crime Strategy Meeting for Edendale Section. He would be discussing the section’s annual local objectives, the implementation of liaison policies and the measurement of performance. Occasionally, in these meetings, they talked about crime. But they hardly ever talked about the victims.

Cooper watched the rugby players reach the traditional highlight of the evening, when they began to pour pints of beer over each other’s heads. The bare wooden floor of the bar was already awash and turning sticky underfoot. Some of the students looked irritated at the way their clubhouse was being taken over by the more boisterous and more aggressive celebratory style of the police. Soon it would reach the point when it might be better not to have to witness a colleague committing a breach of the peace.

It was time for Ben Cooper to leave. He needed to be awake and alert for the meeting in the morning, and he had a stack of burglaries to work on, as well as a serious assault on a bouncer at one of Edendale’s night clubs. With officers seconded to the murder enquiry, no doubt there would be someone else’s workload to take over as well. Besides, if he stayed any longer, he would drink too much. It was definitely time to go home.

But home was Bridge End Farm, in the shadow of Camphill. Though he was close to his brother Matt, Matt’s young family were gradually making the house their own, until their video games and guinea pig cages left little room for Ben. So for a while he sat on in the bar, like an old man in the corner watching the youngsters enjoy themselves, and he thought about the body on Ringham Moor.