‘But they heard about the latest body, and they knew perfectly well who it was. It seems I was the only one in ignorance. I had gone along to the cattle market still hoping. I was so blind – but only because I didn’t want to give up hoping.’

‘Hoping that Ros would turn up?’

‘I thought she might have appeared at the cattle market – it was her sort of thing, direct action. The plan was to slash the tyres on the vehicles of the people that had been targeted. That’s why we were all given knives. They almost didn’t let me have one, you know. It was a kind of sign of acceptance. Ros would have been pleased to see me there.’

‘Even though you were actually committing a crime yourself this time, Maggie.’

She nodded. ‘You see which instinct won? Besides, it was already too late for anything else by then. Too late for the old Maggie Crew. You can’t go backwards. You can’t get parts of your life back, once they’re dead.’

Keith Teasdale and five others had been arrested, despite the distractions at the cattle market. They were all believed to have been involved in the dog-fighting ring at Ringham Edge Farm. Under questioning, Teasdale told the story of the night Ros Daniels had staged her single-handed fire-bomb attack and the chaos that had followed as men and dogs spilled out on to the hill in a mad chase lit by flames from the burning pick-up.

Teasdale had admitted that he and Warren Leach had made a search of the area near the Hammond Tower at first light next morning and had found the body of the young woman on a ledge under the most northerly of the Cat Stones. They had moved it deeper into the cavity to conceal it, he said. At the same time, Yvonne Leach had stumbled across Maggie Crew, injured and incoherent from the hours she had spent on the moor. Ben Cooper wondered if Yvonne had guessed what had happened that night.

After that, Warren Leach had lived for the best part of two months with the fear and expectation that an injured woman’s memories would return. He had tried to live a life under those circumstances, seeing every visitor as an enemy, recognizing the potential for betrayal even in his own wife. Perhaps especially in his own wife. Cooper knew that no one could live with that kind of uncertainty. No wonder Leach could see no point in carrying on.

Maggie Crew had been a serious threat to Leach, that was obvious. Yet there had been someone who had seen Jenny Weston as the main target. Had that been Leach? Or had that been Maggie herself?