Cooper was peering through the window, watching the two men moving around outside. They seemed to be trying to separate the bonnet of their car from his, and they were having trouble with the bumper. One of the men was tall and dressed in a black coat and jeans. The other was smaller and thicker set, but they both wore balaclavas that hid their faces, so even without the fog, identification would be impossible.

Or would it?

Cooper watched the taller figure. His dark outline looked vaguely familiar, but the associations being set off in Cooper’s mind were all wrong. Ridiculous, in these circumstances. He was actually thinking of the vicar at All Saints, Here we are … Dying to sin … And he was thinking of himself, laughing at a private joke and being glared at by Liz for sniggering in church. And if they don’t like your face, they’ll cut off your hand.

‘Oh, shit,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘Diane,’ he whispered. ‘Cast your mind back. Did you say Joanne Brindley was in a pantomime?’

‘What on earth do you mean?’

‘Think. Was it the one at the Royal Theatre? Aladdin?’

‘Well, she was in something. I interviewed her while she was dressed in a police tunic and tights. But what has that got to do with anything?’

‘And a sort of Fu Manchu moustache?’

‘That’s right. She said she was only in the chorus to make up the numbers, but there are some really good actors in the cast.’

‘One very good actor, at least,’ said Cooper. ‘He plays Abanazar, a difficult role to get right. He’s Mrs Brindley’s husband, Alex.’

‘Mr Brindley is an actor?’

‘Yes. And you said yourself a good actor would be the only person who could lie without giving himself away.’

Fry joined him at the window. ‘Is that him? Brindley? I don’t believe it.’

‘He’s in character,’ said Cooper.

‘Alex Brindley was the only person in Rakedale I thought wasn’t lying to me.’

‘He played a good part, then. Keeping his grasp on the magic lamp.’

The two men had moved back towards the door of the house, and they were pulling their nine millimetres out of their pockets again. This was probably it, their last moments. Cooper wondered whether he should pray. He felt ridiculously glad that he’d been to church on Sunday.

Then one of the men dropped his torch in the mud, and both of them stopped, just outside the door. For a second, before it died completely, the light of the torch caught the paleness of a face, gleaming with water. And a voice came out of the darkness.

‘You should never have come on to my patch.’

Cooper was deafened by the boom of a shotgun fired at close range. The blast stunned his ears, and the flash made him screw his eyes tight shut, anticipating a spray of pellets entering his flesh, ripping open his face.