The atmosphere in the Dog Inn had turned several degrees cooler, if that was possible. Nothing to do with the weather, but with the sudden ceasing of conversation and the hostile stares of the customers. Cooper looked around the bar, but saw only tense faces and deliberately turned backs. The sheepdog looked mournfully up at him from its place under the table, but didn’t make a move.

‘We’re looking for Mr Jack Elder,’ announced Fry into the silence. ‘Is he here?’

Watching the reactions of the customers carefully, Cooper worked out which person they were all avoiding looking at. A man with a long, grey beard and wearing a green sweater was sitting near the dartboard, pretending to straighten the flights on a set of darts. Even from here, Cooper could see that the flights were plastic ones, which didn’t need much straightening. He walked across the bar and stood in front of the table.

‘Mr Elder?’

The man pulled an irritated expression and placed a finger against the point of one of his darts.

‘Who’s asking?’

‘Police. I’m Detective Constable Cooper. This is Detective Sergeant Fry.’

Cooper produced his warrant card, but the man didn’t look at it.

‘We’d like to ask you a few questions, sir.’

He felt the silence in the bar shifting somehow. A shuffle of feet, the tap of a glass being drunk from and replaced on a table. Then someone sniggered.

‘Go on, slap the cuffs on him. He’s the one that done it, Inspector.’

There were equal amounts of curses and laughter. Elder glared along the room, but he seemed to sense that the fleeting solidarity of his drinking companions had already started to dissipate.

‘Piss off!’ he snarled at someone Cooper couldn’t see.

‘Mr Elder, perhaps we could go somewhere else for a talk.’

Elder dropped the darts on the table with a clatter, and made a great show of standing up very slowly, putting as much bravado as he could into retrieving his coat and zipping it up.

‘Where’s my hat?’ he said. ‘Has one of you buggers pinched my hat?’

There were more sniggers. But Elder’s hat was clearly visible on the settle behind him. Cooper waited patiently, glad that Fry had had the sense to stay in the background for once. Since the Dog Inn’s toilets were reached only through a winding series of stone passages, Elder didn’t have much chance of making a bolt for it through the back door.

‘All right, I’m ready.’

Elder paused in the doorway, seeming to feel that he wasn’t making as good a show as he’d like to have done in front of the other regulars. He opened the door and let a squall of rain in from outside.

‘I’m going out now,’ he said. ‘And I may be some time.’