‘We can establish cause of death in that case, then,’ said Fry. ‘Pity we can’t do it for more recent deaths.’

‘Dickie of Tunstead possesses supernatural powers to prevent anyone moving him out of his home,’ said Cooper, with a note of awe in his voice. ‘When the skull is left in place, everything goes right at the farm. He even acts as a guardian, warning when strangers approach. His real claim to fame was getting the course of the railway altered.’

‘Oh, come on. Railways are fairly solid and practical,’ said Fry.

‘It was in the nineteenth century, when they were building the Buxton to Stockport line. There was a compulsory purchase order for land belonging to Tunstead Farm. The railway company wanted to build a bridge and embankment on the land, but building work collapsed, and men and animals were injured. Engineers said the ground was unstable, but local people credited Dickie. In the end, the company diverted the line, and the new bridge was named after him. It’s still there, Diane. The bridge is real, and so is the skull.’

‘All right. And there was one of these skulls at Pity Wood Farm?’

‘Mr Goodwin says so. He was shown it, when he viewed the property. But it was one of the few things that had been taken away when he completed the purchase.’

‘A severed head inside the farmhouse.’

‘Yes, Diane.’

‘And this poor, gullible Manchester solicitor was told some ghostly legend about it, to keep him quiet?’

‘Well, there was definitely a skull,’ said Cooper.

‘So does Mr Goodwin know where the head went?’ asked Fry. ‘Has Raymond Sutton got it?’

‘In the bottom of his wardrobe at the care home? Hardly, Diane.’

‘Where, then?’

‘Mr Goodwin says the man who took it away claimed to be the farm manager.’

‘Tom Farnham?’

‘The very same.’

‘Let’s go, then.’

‘Right. Oh, Diane – aren’t you supposed to be on missing persons?’ said Cooper.

‘Sod missing persons. They can stay missing.’

Cooper had forgotten that there were areas in this part of the Peak where the viability of farming was already borderline even before the fall in prices, before foot and mouth even. It was obvious when you drove through. Many of the dry-stone walls were badly maintained, farms had scrap heaps of old machinery standing in their yards, and there was a generally unkempt feel to the landscape. Foot and mouth had shown how much tourism and farming depended on each other in a place like this. A rural way of life that had disappeared from most of England had survived here until quite recently.

Cooper recalled his father telling him about farms out this way that didn’t have electricity or running water until maybe twenty years ago. The 1980s, the decade of prosperity.