Cooper knew exactly what to do. It was as if the past few days had drawn him inexorably to this point, as if he had reached an inevitable conclusion without knowing any of the steps he had taken along the way.

He looked at the decomposed arm for a while, without surprise. There didn’t seem to be any hurry to do the next thing. In a dying landscape, one more death seemed completely natural.

32

With the forensics team already fully occupied at Ringham Edge Farm, the news of another body mouldering away among the rocks just over the hill set up a howl of complaint about the shortage of resources. Little could be done until the next morning. By then, the lock on the big shed at the farm had been cut and the doors had finally been opened to let in the light. Leach’s chaotic kitchen was being sifted through, and it looked like a long job.

Ben Cooper was helping the SOCOs to reconstruct the dog-fighting pit. They had found a heavily bloodstained area of floor and were placing straw bales from a stack in the shed around it on the assumption the bales might have been used for spectators’ seating. They discovered that some of the straw was itself splashed with animal blood. And the trousers of the people who had sat on it must have been marked, too – here and there, you could make out the outline of their legs against the straw. It was obvious that efforts had been made to clean the place up, but the distinctive smell of blood still filled the shed, undisguised by the disinfectant.

‘It’s positively medieval,’ said Diane Fry, appearing in the doorway behind him.

‘It’s fairly nasty,’ said Cooper.

‘The RSPCA have drawn us up a list of names – suspects they think may have been involved in this dog-fighting business. There could be some action at last.’

‘Fine. But what about Ros Daniels? Did she come here before she died?’

A few yards away from the shed, police tape had been used to cordon off the burnt-out pick-up. Traces of petrol found on the decomposed hands of the corpse under the Cat Stones suggested one possible connection to the farm, at least. But with the scenes of crime staff already at full stretch, it was anybody’s guess when they would get round to examining the vehicle and making comparisons.