‘Nobody’s blaming you, mate,’ said Murfin.

‘We gave him a bit of a hard time, put too much pressure on him. He’s an old man, after all.’

‘Gavin’s right, Ben,’ said Hitchens. ‘No one is blaming you.’

‘Are you sure, sir?’

‘Yes, absolutely.’

As the DI left, Fry put her phone down and caught up with the news.

‘Raymond Sutton? Poor bloke. I suppose this is your fault, Ben.’

Cooper slumped in his chair, crushed into silence.

‘Me, I blame the scapegoats,’ said Murfin. ‘They’re always responsible for anything that goes wrong, I find.’

‘Shut up, Gavin.’

‘Yes, boss.’

‘So who is this Victim C that everyone’s talking about?’ asked Fry. ‘Any theories?’

‘There were undoubtedly male workers at the farm,’ said Cooper.

‘Another migrant who met a sticky end?’

‘Well, who else?’

‘The mysterious Alan,’ said Fry. ‘Haven’t we been told that he disappeared seven or eight years ago? I know everyone tries to claim that he left home because he didn’t get on with his brothers, but we have no proof of that.’

‘You’re right,’ said Cooper.

‘You know I’m right, Ben. You’ve known from the moment that Alan was first mentioned that he didn’t just leave home. You understand these people better than me. But I remember you saying that they could be protecting someone.’

‘Yes, I did say that.’

‘Well, I’ll ask you again: protecting who?’

Cooper hung his head. ‘I don’t know, Diane. Perhaps the whole family. Perhaps the village. I really don’t know.’

‘We ought to have been making some effort to trace Alan Sutton, don’t you think?’

‘It didn’t seem a priority before.’

‘But things change, Ben,’ said Fry. ‘Around here, things change all the time.’

Cooper saw Murfin wink at him as he got up to attend his personal interview with the new superintendent. He was first man over the top, and he looked like a condemned criminal on his way to the scaffold, trying to stay cheerful but knowing he was doomed.

It was a bit like the family at Pity Wood Farm. Yes, Cooper felt sure the Suttons must have thought they were doomed. Cursed, anyway. Aside from the personal problems between the brothers, plague and pestilence had followed the changes in farming over the last couple of decades. BSE, foot and mouth, and now bird flu – each one like a dark cloud on the horizon that could break into a storm at any moment and wipe an entire industry away.