‘Who do you mean?’ It was DC Gardner, trying to force herself into the group. ‘Acting DS Fry is it? Her and Armstrong? There’s more to it than that, from what I’ve heard. Sisters is right.’

‘You listen to the sound of your own voice too much, then,’ said Cooper. Then he turned and saw Diane Fry herself, standing at the corner of the corridor. He wasn’t sure how much she had heard. She was pale and drawn. The wound on her cheekbone was red and angry, the stitches stretching the flesh tight below her eye.

Before anyone else noticed her, she had slipped away, disappearing back into the shadows as if she hadn’t been there at all.

Half an hour later, Diane Fry emerged from DI Armstrong’s office knowing that she had burned her boats. It was a curiously satisfying feeling. Armstrong had not been pleased at her decision not to take the job with her team. But Fry knew it hadn’t been right for her. Not now.

Sisters. It was that one word that had finally repulsed her. She had no sisters here. Not Kim Armstrong, nor any of her associates. Not Maggie Crew, nor any of the other women she was obliged to be polite to during the course of her job. They were not sisters, not even friends – merely acquaintances, or colleagues. It was the claim of sisterhood that she could not stomach, that made the bile rise in her throat.

Fry opened her bag and slipped the creased photograph out of her credit-card holder. She had only one sister, and this was her. This young woman would now be a stranger, as unrecognizable to Fry as the homeless druggies of Sheffield were. Their relationship was a dead thing, a fragment of the past, yet still remembered and treasured.

Carefully, Fry put the photo back. The things that people craved were so strange. The longing for what would do you no good at all was utterly incomprehensible.

Sisters? Like daughters, sisters were something special, not to be taken lightly. No, ma’am. You were not Diane Fry’s sister, and you never would be.

38

At one time, there had been far more prehistoric remains on Ringham Moor than there were now. But local people hadn’t always seen the value of their ancient monuments. Stones from the henges and burial chambers had disappeared over the years, to be built into the dry-stone walls that separated the moor from the fringes of the farmland. It was ironic, now, to see the vast heaps of unwanted stone that lay in the abandoned quarries.

Reaching the top of the slope, Ben Cooper turned and reached out a hand. Diane Fry hesitated, then took it, accepting his help over the last bit of the hill.

‘Are you all right?’

‘A bit stiff, but exercise is what I need,’ she said.

‘If you’re sure.’