‘Some of the workers started to panic, but Tom Farnham quietened them down. He said there was plenty of room on the farm to dispose of a body where no one would ever find it. And who would come looking for her? Like I said, those people move on all the time. They want to be untraceable.’

‘So you buried her on the farm?’

‘Yes.’

‘And the Sutton brothers didn’t object to this?’

Rourke snorted. ‘How could they? They’d done exactly the same thing themselves, three years before.’

Cooper had never felt so bad about questioning a witness. Though they’d achieved what they set out to do, there was no sense of satisfaction in getting Raymond Sutton to confirm what he suspected. It had been a knowledge that he didn’t really want to have to share, but now he couldn’t keep it to himself any longer.

In a way, he supposed he’d been hoping, deep down, that Sutton would deny it, that he’d be able to prove somehow that it had never happened. Well, it might have been better if he’d never asked. But then he would have had to live with the doubt. Cooper knew there had been no way of winning in this situation.

And there was certainly no way of achieving justice – not justice in the terms of the law, nor justice in any subjective sense. Even if Derek Sutton had still been alive, what would have been the point of punishing him? His brother was an accessory to the crime, of course. After the fact, if not before. No matter how contemptuous he’d been, no matter how many disapproving silences he’d indulged in over the kitchen table, Raymond had gone along with his brother’s superstitions, and had told no one about the skull.

Well, of course he hadn’t. Sharing a house with a crazy brother was one thing. Watching that brother get carted off to spend the rest of his life in a psychiatric institution while you were left to cope entirely on your own – that was a different thing altogether. The decision wouldn’t have been an easy one for most families, let alone the Suttons of Pity Wood Farm. In fact, there was no decision involved. Blood was blood, and you stood by your own. End of story.

Cooper finished his report and stood up. Yes, it would have been the end of the story. If only Raymond Sutton had died himself before the farm was dug up. That had been his plan, Cooper was sure.