Even the identification of the body was only tentative. The victim was the right age and the right general appearance to be Ros Daniels, though the injuries to the head and the process of decomposition made it difficult to be precise about facial features. She had been dressed all in black – jeans and a sweater, with a nylon cap lying nearby. And she had been wearing a silver disc on a chain round her neck, like a military dog-tag, with a stylized symbol engraved on it of an animal behind prison bars. The body also bore tattoos that would help identification, and the dreadlocked hairstyle was unusual.

There had once been debris under her fingernails, which might have been traces from an attacker. But as the skin of her fingers had shrunk away from her nails, the debris had loosened and fallen away. Although it reacted to tests for human blood, the sample was too small to hold any prospect of obtaining a grouping or DNA profile.

To Cooper, it seemed that the investigation constantly took one step forward and another one back. They had already been looking for anything that might connect Warren Leach directly with Jenny Weston, or with Maggie Crew. Now they were faced with the task of establishing what had happened to Daniels, and when. Because there was one thing that was obvious even from a cursory examination of the body that Cooper had found. Ros Daniels had been dead for weeks.

‘What is it with you people in this area?’ said Fry. ‘Don’t you know how to adapt to civilization? I mean, dog-fighting, for God’s sake. Hasn’t the world moved on from the Middle Ages? What do people like Warren Leach get out of it?’

‘Maybe we should be asking what drove him to it,’ said Cooper. ‘Maybe it was people like you.’

Diane Fry walked across the yard towards DCI Tailby and DI Hitchens. They were sitting on an upturned piece of agricultural machinery, a red steel object with vast prongs that dug into the ground.

‘Well, it’s very unsatisfactory,’ said Tailby. ‘I mean, Warren Leach being dead. It makes it look as though everything we’ve done has been too slow. Too late.’

‘There was no obvious sequence,’ said Hitchens. ‘The pieces didn’t fit. If we just react to pressure, that’s when mistakes are made.’

‘Leach may still be a mistake,’ said Tailby.

‘Jenny Weston used to go up on the moor regularly,’ pointed out Fry. ‘She must have passed by Ringham Edge Farm many times. And she was a great animal lover.’

‘So she might actually have faced up to Leach and his friends and told them she was going to report what was going on?’

‘Some people feel very strongly about these things.’

‘It would be a really stupid thing for her to have done,’ said Hitchens.

‘But she did tell the RSPCA that she had some incriminating photographs,’ said Fry.