The accusation made him think of the day of the rugby match, when Todd Weenink had arrived for the match at the last minute. What was it that had made him late the day that Jenny Weston had died?

Then Cooper’s mind slipped back to his room at Bridge End. In a drawer in that room was a vending machine questionnaire form, slipped under some large-scale OS maps and a Peak District caving guide that no one else would ever look at. Todd Weenink hadn’t been able to keep his mouth shut about condoms. And he couldn’t spell ‘fruit-flavoured’ either.

But Jenny Weston’s killer was dead.

From South Quarry, the old VW Transporter had finally been winched on to the back of the low loader and delivered to a scrapyard in Edendale, where its radiator, back doors and starter motor had already been removed for spares.

Calvin Lawrence had taken a job as a forecourt attendant at the Fina garage on the Buxton Road, taking people’s money and handing out car-wash tokens. Simon Bevington had discharged himself from hospital and had not been heard of since. He had disappeared into the hills, blown away like a scrap of autumn debris, like another dead leaf hurled into the heather by the gales.

Yet a single wind chime still hung from the branches of the oak tree on the edge of the quarry. It had been left where it was because it was too high for anyone to reach. The chime was cracked and its edges were starting to fray. Its note was a strange, discordant clang. It no longer created peace and harmony. Instead, it tolled for the dead, the damaged, the destroyed and the defeated.

‘Was any of it worth it?’ said Cooper.

Fry laughed. ‘You what?’

‘Did we manage to protect anything that is important to us? Did we achieve justice?’

Fry gave him a cool look. It was the look of a woman who knew that she would forever have a weapon she could use against him, the look of a woman who held him in the palm of her hand.

‘Bear the answer to that in mind when you make your decision, Ben,’ she said.

Then she turned away. Her knowledge gave her power over him now, and there was nothing else she needed to say.

Cooper stroked the top of the nearest stone, drawing a peculiar comfort in the gritty texture, finding a surprising warmth beneath his hand, as if the stones might come back to life at any moment and resume their interrupted dance.