Fry met his eye for a moment, and he held his breath. He had a sudden fear that he understood her. Was it possible that he and Diane Fry might be close to the same, inevitable conclusion? The thought made Cooper shiver at a premonition of disaster, at a vision of a dark, grinning cloud hovering over his horizon. He could hear the wind in the heather and the rumble of machinery in the limestone quarry outside Cargreave. The sound of the cows munching the grass in the fields below the Virgins seemed very loud.

Uneasily, he watched Fry square her shoulders and push the collar of her jacket further up around her ears. She was staring at the stone circle without seeing it at all – neither the cold reality of its lumps of gritstone, nor the martyred maidens of local folklore.

‘The psychiatric reports said that Maggie Crew would probably never regain her memory for several hours either side of the assault, which is normal in trauma cases,’ she said. ‘Those files were readily available. If you knew that little detail, you might not worry too much about Maggie. Jenny Weston, on the other hand, knew all about Ringham Edge Farm and what went on there. It was Jenny who told the RSPCA what she had seen. Jenny had the photographs, too. She could identify people.’

‘Right.’

‘You’d think Jenny would have told the police, wouldn’t you? Even if it was only to ask advice from an officer she was friendly with.’

‘Maybe,’ said Cooper.

‘And yet there she was that afternoon, back on the moor, in the same vicinity. And she had those photographs with her – the ones she said she was going to hand over as evidence. Why did she have them with her, do you think?’

‘For safety?’

‘Safety? Or was she expecting to meet someone? Someone she could hand the photos to. And might that same someone have decided they couldn’t leave her alive any longer?’

‘But she was only ever a threat to the dog-fighting ring, no one else.’

‘Right. And did you not wonder why they were never raided, Ben?’

‘They stopped meeting at Ringham Edge,’ said Cooper.

‘Yes. Because they knew they were under observation. They knew exactly what was happening, all along.’

‘Did Teasdale say all this, Diane?’

‘Keith Teasdale is saying nothing more than necessary. The only person he’s prepared to implicate is Warren Leach. But we knew Leach was involved, anyway.’ She paused. ‘And, besides, Leach is already dead.’

‘So Teasdale is loyal, then,’ said Cooper.

‘Yes. But it’s a misplaced loyalty.’

Cooper felt Fry’s eyes on him, assessing him, seeing right through him to his innermost thoughts. Suddenly, there was contempt in her face, and her whole body seemed to draw away from him, as if she had seen something she could not bring herself to touch.

‘You’ve always been very big on loyalty yourself, haven’t you, Ben?’ she said.