That seemed a long time ago now. Palfreyman had been answering a question about whether there had been an argument between the Sutton brothers. ‘Not within living memory.’ That was exactly what he’d said.

Well, Cooper supposed that living memory resided in the older generation, people like Raymond Sutton and Mrs Dain. But it wasn’t everything, not in an area like the Peak District. When living memory died, the landscape still retained an imprint of times that had passed. The lead miners might be long gone, but their workings still shaped the contours of the hills and valleys. Their shafts and soughs survived, directly under the feet of modern visitors. Their ghosts, perhaps, still lingered where those Red Soil men had died, choking in the blackness, their lungs full of sulphurous smoke.

The flat at number eight Welbeck Street felt lonely that evening. Cooper was due to meet Liz later on, but the time he spent on his own was difficult to bear.

Thinking of PC Palfreyman made him turn to the framed picture that hung on the wall over his mantelpiece. Not within living memory? This picture was a part of his life that would stay in his memory for ever, even if it disappeared now. He was familiar with the face of every man on each of the rows, even with the pattern and texture of the wall behind them and the concrete yard their boots rested on.

Sergeant Joe Cooper, and the rest of Derbyshire Constabulary’s Edendale section, had been lined up for an official visit, back in the 1980s. Those were the days when the police dealt with criminals and victims. In twenty-first-century policing, there were only offenders and injured parties. Worse, victims had become infected with acronym disease, and were routinely referred to as IPs.

Without looking, Cooper could have described the picture in detail, the way each officer held his arms, which of them was smiling, who looked suspicious of the photographer, and who hadn’t fastened his tie properly that morning. He knew the feel of the mahogany frame, the smoothness of the edges, the slight ridge in the wood, like a necessary flaw. He could remember the scratch in the glass that was only visible when you turned the picture towards the light.

As he looked at the photograph of his father, Cooper was wondering whether, in a few years’ time, he would himself have turned into one of those police officers who wanted to go back to the old days. The officers who wanted to abandon PACE, delete the Human Rights Act from UK law, and bring in mandatory jail sentences for burglars. Wanted to, but daren’t say so.