‘But you’re right. We need to look more closely. Extend the area of search. You know, I was thinking about the Fred and Rosemary West case. Those girls who were offered cheap accommodation in the Wests’ house, and never left. If I remember right, not all the bodies were found at the house. There was a second burial site, at some property connected with the Wests.’

‘I remember. Any ideas, then?’

Cooper sat down, looking suddenly tired. ‘Well, I’ll need to go through the files again, Diane.’

‘Do that. If there is a third victim, she might be the one who makes the connection with all the others.’

‘It’s another Catch-22. We need to make the connections first to find her. And we need to find her to make the connections.’

Mentioning it to no one, least of all Ben Cooper, Fry took half an hour to visit Edendale Museum for herself. She had to show her warrant card to get admission, because the museum was closing for the night.

‘The hand of glory, Sergeant?’ said the attendant. ‘One of our most popular exhibits. The kids love it. Little ghouls, most of them.’

‘Is this a real human hand?’

‘Certainly, certainly. I’ll show you.’

Fry followed the attendant to the display case. So Cooper thought she would never have heard of such a thing as a hand of glory, did he? Well, there he was wrong, for once. She was from the Black Country, and the area had its own mummified hand of glory, so called. That one had been taken from inside the chimney of a pub when it was being renovated. The White Hart at Caldmore Green.

Everyone knew the White Hart in the Black Country. Back in the sixties, the A34 Murderer had been caught because he was overheard asking a victim the way to ‘Karma Green’. Until then, police had thought he was a Brummie, from the neighbouring city of Birmingham. But only Black Country folk pronounced Caldmore as ‘Karma’. A killer’s origins had given him away.

Once, Fry had seen the object itself in Walsall Museum, above the central library on Lichfield Street. It had been just one artefact among the scold’s bridles and Second World War gas masks, a historic collection of iron locks, and some gaucho spurs and stirrups. She’d heard that the museum had taken it off public display at one time because it was frightening the children too much, but you could still see it if you asked. It had become a sort of under-the-counter hand of glory.

‘This is one of Edendale Museum’s most popular exhibits,’ said the attendant. ‘Well, one of the most viewed, anyway. Not everyone approves of it.’

‘A bit controversial, is it?’