A potential for violence seemed to hang around the moor like low clouds. Cooper had been dwelling too long on the fate of Jenny Weston, on the question of why death had picked her out and flung her lifeless among the stones. It was as if she had been just one more bit of dead foliage among the masses scattered on the moor – her veins full of toxins, her living tissue turned brown and useless. But there was one difference. Leaves were sacrificed for the sake of a new beginning, the start of new life. The death of Jenny Weston had no such justification.

Cooper wondered about himself, too. Had he really joined the police because of his father? Was everything he did aimed at outdoing the memory of the Hero of Edendale? Or were people like Jenny Weston also part of his motivation? He hoped so. But it was hard to be sure.

Cooper wasn’t surprised that his reception in the quarry was twenty degrees cooler than the last time. Cal and Stride had become a centre of attention since then – they had met the press, the police, and no doubt some of the less sympathetic elements of the public. It was surely enough to make them shut themselves off from the world.

Only Cal appeared in answer to Cooper’s knock. This time, there was only a crack in the door for him to peer through.

‘You. What?’

‘Just a word of advice, sir.’

‘Oh, wow. Surprise me, man.’

‘Those things up there . . . those sculptures, or whatever you call them. The phallus farm.’

‘Yeah?’

‘I don’t think they’re very wise, just at the moment. Best to remove them. Put them out of sight somewhere.’

‘They’re a tribute to Gaia. We’re using her space, so we say thank you. We make her gifts with our own hands. We wish her fertility.’

‘Yes, fine. I’m not interested in all that. It’s the appearance of the things that’s the issue. People might get the wrong idea. They might be considered provocative.’

‘Provocative?’

‘There are lots of folk around here with different views to your own. They don’t understand. Think about it.’

‘OK, OK. We’ll think about it.’

‘It’s in your own interests. For your own safety.’

‘Our own safety! Cool.’

‘You should seriously –’

Cooper found himself staring at the panel of the closed door. Directly level with his eyes, there were scratches in the paintwork, a few letters gouged right into the metal. They spelled: ‘Perverts’.

When she was back in the car, Diane Fry remembered Catherine Dyson’s sigh at the other end of the phone line in Ireland, just after she had let slip the fact of Maggie Crew having a daughter.

‘She’ll know it came from me,’ she’d said. ‘But it doesn’t matter. She’s barely speaking to me anyway these days.’

‘Did you say a daughter?’