Mark put out a hand to hold him back for a second. ‘I’d rather that nobody found out who passed that on to you,’ he said.

‘Why?’

‘I have to live and work round here. If people think I’m spying for the police, it won’t make any difference to them whether what they’re doing is right or wrong. No difference at all.’

Diane Fry had a phone call she wanted to make before she got involved in anything else. It was to Maggie Crew’s sister. Her name was Catherine Dyson, and her phone number was in the file – a number in the Cork area, in the south of Ireland.

‘Yes, I know Maggie is having major problems bringing back the memories,’ said Catherine when Fry got through to her. ‘If you’re asking my opinion, the more you press her to remember, the more she’ll bury the memories. I think it’s automatic with her now. It’s her instinct to push things away, not to dwell on the past.’

‘She is suffering partial amnesia from the assault,’ said Fry. ‘The doctors say she may never recover memory for the period several hours either side of the incident.’

‘Well, if they say so. But Mags was always frightened of memories coming back out of the past. She’s built up a whole system of defences. Her memories are locked up more securely than Fort Knox. Sometimes I think she barely remembers me.’

Catherine’s voice was very like her sister’s, but softer and more comfortable. There was even a faint hint of an Irish accent creeping into the vowels – more, anyway, than might be expected for a woman from Chesterfield. Fry conjured a picture of a white-painted cottage reflecting the sunlight on a hillside over an Atlantic fishing port, and Catherine Dyson in an armchair with a cat on her knee as she gazed out of the window. She pictured a large woman, her body allowed to run to fat after four children, her time taken up with washing and ironing, baking and tending the garden. A woman nothing like Maggie Crew. A woman who was happy.

‘Are you thinking of any particular memories from your sister’s past?’ asked Fry. ‘Apart from the assault, I mean?’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Catherine. ‘I was thinking of her daughter.’

24

That morning, the dowser was working his way backwards and forwards across the edge of the birch wood, treading carefully as if he was walking an imaginary white line, his eyes fixed on a forked twig held in front of him. He held it strangely, with his palms turned upwards. Every now and then, the twig twitched, and the dowser would stop and scuff at the ground with the toe of his boot. Then he would move on. He looked cold and disconsolate.