‘In case a member of the family had killed her and hidden her body?’ said Cooper.

‘It happens,’ said Palfreyman. ‘A space under the floorboards, the bottom of a wardrobe, a cupboard below the stairs. Just somewhere to stash the body until the coppers have been and gone. It gives them time to decide how to dispose of her permanently.’

‘Did you find anything?’

‘No. The bosses turned up – and your lot, CID. They decided she was a genuine case of suspicious circumstances. They pulled out all the stops for a while.’

Cooper looked at him. ‘You didn’t agree with that assessment?’

‘It didn’t matter what I thought. I was just a young response bobby, wet behind the ears.’ Palfreyman shrugged. ‘I had no evidence anyway, just a bit of an odd feeling about the parents. The way they reacted seemed off, somehow. They were bothered about the wrong things – asking where we were going to look, when we’d be coming back to talk to them again, that sort of thing. Do you know what I mean?’

‘You had a gut instinct,’ said Cooper.

‘Right.’

‘And what happened to the child?’

‘Oh, they found her, six months later. She was unrecognizable by then, though. The father thought he’d suffocated her in her sleep, and they both panicked. So they waited until we’d gone, and they buried her under the garden shed. I always wondered if she might still have been alive when we first arrived.’

‘There’s no way you could tell that.’

Palfreyman watched his visitors for some reaction, and seemed disappointed. ‘A gut instinct doesn’t count for much these days, does it? Some of the old school might have listened to me back then, but not the SIO who was put on the case. He was too full of himself. Done all the courses, got all the certificates. If I’d said anything to him, I’d just have made a fool of myself. I still had hopes of promotion then, you see.’

‘I understand,’ said Cooper.

Palfreyman laughed. ‘Sad, isn’t it?’

‘No.’

‘Yes it is. Those are the decisions that come back to haunt you years later, you know. The ones where you chickened out, bottled it, or betrayed your own beliefs.’ He looked more closely at Cooper. ‘Has it happened to you yet, lad? Don’t let it, if it’s not too late already. Be true to yourself. Say what you think.’ He nodded at Hitchens. ‘Don’t play their game. You’ll regret it later, if you do.’

‘I’ll remember that,’ said Cooper.

But Palfreyman leaned across and gripped his arm. ‘It’s important. You know there are lots of coppers who feel like I do. They just daren’t say so.’

As they were leaving Hollowbrook Cottage, Palfreyman held Cooper back for a moment until he was out of earshot of his DI.