So he waited. But instead of explaining, Mrs Dain slid the photographs back in the drawer with an air of finality, and picked up her cigarette from the ashtray. She put it to her lips, sucked, blew, coughed, and had to sit down suddenly.

‘The Old Religion,’ said Cooper. ‘What do you mean by that?’

But it was no good. The moment had drifted by.

‘It’s all in the past,’ said Mrs Dain. ‘Beatrice Sutton is long dead. Things like that don’t exist any more, so there’s no point in talking about it.’

‘I’d be interested to hear –’

‘There’s no point,’ said the old lady firmly, ‘in talking about it.’

Cooper raised the palms of his hands in a placatory gesture. He didn’t want to antagonize her, not when he’d been doing so well. Mrs Dain had accepted him into her world, and he’d made good progress with her. She would tell him the rest of it when she was ready.

Fry took delivery of a small envelope that had been left for her at the front desk in West Street. It was a grubby white envelope, with her name scrawled on it in felt-tipped pen and her rank spelled wrongly.

She pulled on a pair of gloves before she opened it. You couldn’t be too careful. She was pretty sure it wasn’t a letter bomb, but there were plenty of people who might think of sending her other unpleasant items by way of greeting.

But inside the envelope she found only one thing – a small, cheap crucifix with part of the base chipped away.

Fry let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.

‘Thank you, Nikolai,’ she said.

Cooper took the opportunity to take a toilet break, and discovered that the toilets at the Dog Inn were reached through a series of winding stone passages that seemed to lead almost into the next village.

When he returned to the bar, it was as if Ned Dain had been given some kind of signal by his mother, or maybe it was just the fact that she’d agreed to speak with Cooper for so long that had given the official seal of approval. Whatever the reason, Dain sidled up to him before he left the pub and whispered in a conspiratorial manner.

‘I thought you ought to know, there was a foreigner in here last night, asking questions.’

Cooper stopped. ‘Oh? What sort of questions?’

‘He wanted to know what all the police activity was. What was going on up at that old farm? He wasn’t very subtle about it. His English wasn’t too good, but we could see what he was after. Nosing about, wanting the gossip.’

‘Could you get an idea of his nationality?’