‘Ah, but you’re wrong there, Mark. If Jenny was already dead when you saw her, then obviously there was somebody.’

‘Yes, all right. There must have been. But I didn’t see them.’

‘I expect you’re quite good at following the signs, though, aren’t you, Mark?’

‘The signs?’

‘Signs that anybody has been around. Tracks, damage to plants, the rubbish they leave. You must have learned to see that someone has been past that way.’

Mark shrugged. ‘It’s obvious, sometimes.’

‘And that day?’ said Hitchens. ‘Could you tell someone had been on the moor?’

‘I could see the bike tracks,’ said Mark. ‘A mountain bike. But they were hers, weren’t they?’

‘Yes, we think so.’

‘She’d been out to the tower and back across to the Virgins. That was obvious. I picked some rubbish up at the tower. I don’t know if it was hers or not.’

‘Did it annoy you that she was there?’

‘It’s private land,’ said Mark. ‘There’s an access agreement, but there shouldn’t be mountain bikes up there. It’s against the by-laws.’

‘Would you have told Jenny Weston that? If you had seen her alive, I mean.’

‘Of course I would. Some people think they can just go anywhere they like, and they can’t.’

‘Isn’t there a Right to Roam Act or something now?’

Mark snorted. ‘Right to roam! Responsibilities go with rights. But some of them have no sense of responsibility. They think they just have rights. And the women are the worst.’

Now Mark looked confused. He watched the tapes going round. So many people seemed to do that in the interview rooms, as if somehow they could will their words to erase themselves from the recording.

‘Owen again?’ said Hitchens.

Mark looked stubborn. ‘He talks to me a lot. He’s joking most of the time.’

Hitchens nodded. ‘But can you tell when he’s not?’

‘Sometimes,’ said Mark. ‘Have you talked to Warren Leach? Was I right about the dog-fighting? Is Owen involved?’

Nobody answered him. Hitchens produced an evidence bag made of clear plastic, bearing a yellow label. He showed it to Mark. ‘We found these in a locker at Partridge Cross,’ he said. ‘We think they’re yours.’

Inside the bag was a plastic wallet full of newspaper cuttings and photocopies. Some of them were ageing and yellow. They referred to incidents that had taken place over a period of several years – rescues and accidents, the recovery of dead bodies from the moors, searches for missing children.

‘They’re not important,’ said Mark.

‘We checked them out with your headquarters at Bakewell. The newspaper reports don’t say so, but it seems all these incidents have one thing in common – they all involved Peak Park Rangers, and in every case one of the Rangers was Owen Fox.’

‘Yes. That’s right.’