‘What do you mean, it’s not as simple as that?’ asked Cooper.

‘What I mean is that she does have the memories. The current thinking is that she’s burying them, though. Her mind is suppressing them because they’re too upsetting. There’s a blank for several hours either side of the incident, caused by the trauma. But there might be certain triggers, certain circumstances in which the memories will surface. We need to find a trigger. It could just be a sound, a smell, the sight of something she recognizes. We don’t know.’

‘But how are we even going to hope for that – unless we can face her directly with her assailant? Isn’t there another way, Diane?’

She shrugged. ‘The counsellors tried to help, but she got too distressed. So we’re not allowed to pressure her into seeing a psychiatrist to take it any further.’

Now it was starting to get busier, with families out for the afternoon. Cooper and Fry crossed the road and began the ascent to the moor. They stopped to look at the field where the farmworker, Victor McCauley, had been working when he saw Jenny on her bike just after half past one.

They emerged above the remains of the mist, and Cooper stared across the expanse of heather and whinberry that covered the plateau. He wasn’t quite sure about this Diane Fry who talked about triggers and the current thinking. It sounded wrong. He wondered if she had been on a training course recently.

‘Jenny ended up at the Nine Virgins, that way,’ he said. ‘But we don’t know which route she took across the moor.’

‘Whichever way she went, it took nearly three-quarters of an hour from when McCauley saw her.’

‘Yes. So she probably took the long route. Towards the Cat Stones and the Hammond Tower. Then past the top of Ringham Edge Farm.’

‘Let’s go there, then.’

There was no escape from the wind once they started to walk across the moor. The uniformity and lack of distraction in the landscape meant there was no escape from your thoughts, either. Or from the presence of the person you were with.

As they approached the Cat Stones, the wind seemed to double in strength, battering at them from the rocky outcrops. Cooper shivered, and Fry pulled her collar up higher. There was no life on Ringham Moor, apart from the vegetation, itself already turning brown and brittle. The moor was empty right the way across to the outline of the tower, perched above the steep drop on its eastern edge.

‘Maybe it’s a test, Diane,’ said Cooper, after a while.

‘You what?’

‘Putting you on to Maggie Crew. You’ve got the hardest job. Maybe they’re just putting you through the wringer. They want to see whether you come out the other side.’