Cooper had learned to keep quiet about his thoughts at times. Most senior officers, like DCI Tailby, prided themselves on being practical, logical men. Tailby was from Nottingham, raised in suburban streets and comprehensive schools. He preferred to leave it to people like Ben Cooper to be imaginative – he seemed to regard it as some kind of local idiosyncrasy, a queer characteristic inherited from the distant Celtic ancestors of the Derbyshire hill folk.

Cooper watched his fellow officers. Some of them certainly looked as though they felt disorientated and isolated from the realities of the twenty-first century up here. As if to emphasize the point, the sound of a steam train starting up seemed to reach them from the valley below.

‘There’s the train,’ said Cooper.

‘What?’ said Tailby.

‘It’s the Peak Rail line. They run restored steam engines on it. For the tourists, you know.’

A white plume hung across the lights in the bottom of the valley, drifting with the breeze back towards Matlock and vanishing into the darkness as the chug of the engine receded.

Tailby spun on his heel. ‘Time to talk to the Rangers,’ he said.

‘We’ll need to get proper lights set up here, you know,’ said the Senior SOCO, ‘if you really want photos of that inscription.’

‘Believe me,’ said Tailby, ‘I want everything.’

4

The young Ranger looked vaguely familiar to Ben Cooper. But then, he knew lots of Ropers – one of them had been his Maths teacher at school, another ran the garage on Buxton Road; and he had once arrested a Roper for indecency. They were all certain to be related.

Mark was a tall young man, with wide shoulders that didn’t quite fit the rest of his body. His muscles had some catching up to do, but he was wiry and fit. Cooper noticed he had a small streak of vomit staining the front of his red Peak Park Rangers jacket. Somebody at the Partridge Cross Ranger Centre had made him several cups of tea. The tea had done nothing for his pallor, but at least his kidneys were working at full capacity. He emerged from the loo just as the police arrived.

Mark sat down unsteadily when DCI Tailby introduced himself and opened the questioning.

‘I was patrolling the moor,’ said Mark. ‘Ringham Moor. I was on the path from the east, going towards the Virgins.’

‘That’s the stone circle.’

‘It’s just one of the stone circles. But it’s the one that everybody knows.’

‘All right.’

‘I was near the Virgins when I saw a bike.’

‘Hold on. Before that, did you see anyone else on the moor?’

‘Nobody at all. It was quiet.’

‘Nobody? Think right back to when you first left the centre.’