They had both needed the fresh air. Cooper had been shut up in the office for much too long, struggling to make sense of a mountain of paperwork, the grinding anticlimax that always followed the conclusion of an enquiry. He knew Fry had been imprisoned in her dismal flat, with only the walls to look at and her own thoughts for entertainment. Cooper had intended to arrange a day out walking with his friends, Oscar and Rakki. But instead he had found himself asking Diane Fry. No doubt it was another mistake. He hadn’t done much that was right recently.

‘Maggie Crew will get the appropriate psychiatric treatment,’ he said. ‘Appropriate to her condition.’

‘That’s good,’ said Fry. ‘I suppose.’

‘She had lost the ability to relate to the world. It’s just that there was nobody close enough to her to notice.’

They were two hundred yards from the Nine Virgins. Cooper could feel the first real chill of winter creeping across the moor, insinuating itself into his clothes and settling on his spirits. So many things had changed since the beginning of the month. Autumn had passed in a glance, the wind stripping the trees, baring their thin branches to the sky. The rain that had fallen in the last few days had turned the leaves underfoot into a black sludge, slippery and treacherous, full of worms and pale, wriggling insects.

‘Bloody screwed-up women,’ said Fry. And Cooper saw her smile, but he turned away quickly so that she wouldn’t see him noticing.

Mist lay in the valley below Ringham, long tendrils fading the colours of the hillsides and the trees. As the sun rose on the valley, it reflected from the surface of the mist, creating a pale bowl of light, from which the tower of the church in Cargreave emerged like the battlements of a drowned castle.

Yesterday, Cooper had heard that Owen Fox had resigned from the Ranger Service. He had decided to make way for a younger man, it was said. Cargreave Parish Council was advertising a vacant seat, but there was no competition to fill it – a candidate favoured by Councillor Salt and her ruling group would be co-opted to make up the numbers. The house in Main Street, with its wonderful view from the kitchen window, had a ‘For Sale’ sign outside.

‘What is that tower?’ asked Fry, gazing across the dying bracken to Ringham Edge.

‘They call it the Hammond Tower. It’s named after some member of an aristocratic family, the people who owned Hammond Hall. The Duke built it so that everyone could see it for miles around. A symbol of his own power and importance, I suppose.’

‘It’s where Maggie’s daughter was supposed to meet up with her on the day she was killed.’

‘And it’s where Maggie came back to. She hadn’t given up hope that Ros would reappear, even long after she was dead.’