‘They matter because one was found under the body of Ros Daniels, as well as near where Jenny Weston was killed. You know that. We think the killer smoked those cigarettes and dropped them – the one careless thing he did. And the one they found in the bin at Partridge Cross was identical.’

Cooper paused. He wished he could still see the Commandments for inspiration. His lips moved silently. He had been about to ask Owen if he had noticed the cigarette stub in the bin before the police search. If nobody smoked at the Ranger centre, it was something he ought to have noticed.

‘Where did the cigarette in the bin come from, Owen? The bin had been emptied, but the ash was stuck to the bottom. Who uses that bin for their rubbish?’

‘Anybody could.’

‘And the rucksack. I know it’s yours, Owen. But could anybody else have used that rucksack?’

Owen said nothing. He stared at the high windows, as if wondering why the birds perched in the branches of the yew were silent, why the stained glass saints said nothing, why the whole world was waiting for his reply. A realization had come over him like the passing of a cloud.

‘Could anybody else use it?’ repeated Cooper.

And then Owen said: ‘Yes. Mark uses it.’

Owen Fox sat alone in one of the pews when Ben Cooper had gone. His head was down, his hands clenched together until the knuckles whitened. He had his eyes closed, like a man praying. But he wasn’t praying – he was remembering. Remembering the little girl.

She had been about six years old, and she had been alive at first. He had pulled her out of the back seat of the wrecked car, with his lungs full of fumes from the petrol pouring out of the ruptured fuel tank, and his eyes averted from the bloody and shattered bodies of the little girl’s parents, particularly the sight of her mother, with the branch of a tree skewering her cheek to the seat.

Owen had seen the car go out of control and hit the tree, and a second later he had heard screams that had died suddenly in the noise of the impact, lost in the crumpling thud of metal and the splintering of glass. He used his radio as he ran. But by the time he got to the road, he had no doubt the man and woman were dead.

The stench of the petrol panicked him when he saw the child still alive in the back seat. He barely knew what he was doing as he pulled her out, clumsily dragging her by her leg and a fistful of her blue dress, a thin summer dress that tore in his hand.