This time, he noticed that the whole kitchen had a curious yellow tinge. The wallpaper above the table might have been lemon once, and the cupboards were made of that golden pine which never seemed to darken completely. But there was also a sort of patina over the ceiling and the walls, particularly near the armchairs. Cooper guessed the Sutton brothers must have been heavy smokers. He could picture them sitting in those two armchairs in the evening, one either side of the fireplace. They would be puffing away, not talking to each other much, if at all. Thinking their own thoughts, but keeping those thoughts to themselves.

Turning away from the kitchen to look back into the sitting room, Cooper found himself disorientated. With the black range and the dripping tap behind him, and the smell of paint and fresh cement in front of him, he felt as though he was standing on the threshold between two worlds. For a moment, he wasn’t sure whether he was standing in the present, looking back into the vanished past, or somehow occupying a brief second of history, sharing the forgotten warmth of the Suttons’ kitchen while getting a glimpse of the future.

He wished he could pin down his sense of life and the lack of it, why some of the rooms were different from others. He was sure there were no scientific data that would back up his impressions. It was more a question of a feeling in the walls, a faint gleam that reflected the generations who’d survived an uncomplicated existence here, accepting life and death as it came. So why was that feeling lacking in some parts of Pity Wood Farm? Why was the gleam missing from the kitchen, why did the shadows seem blacker and more permanent in that middle bedroom on the first floor?

Outside, it was getting dark quickly. No surprise, since it was almost the shortest day of the year. At this time of year, darkness snuck up on you almost without you noticing, so that suddenly it was pitch black. Cooper could just make out the corrugated-iron roof of the shed and the faint gleam of the cars parked in the yard. The mountain of silage bags seemed to be spreading dark shadows across the farm.

But someone had pulled their fingers out and got the floodlights up. Now, part of Pity Wood Farm was bathed in a yellow glare that turned the muddy ground into a corner of the Somme. Mud and trenches and decomposing bodies.

The anthropology team were still working, but Scenes of Crime had gone home for the night, and only a couple of uniformed officers were left on scene protection duty. Soon, the farm would be settling back into its ancient silence.