Fry stepped over a pothole in the car park that was slowly filling with water, and found herself thinking about the patch of disturbed ground that Jamie Ward had pointed out at Pity Wood Farm. It had been nagging at the back of her mind the way things did when she’d overlooked them, or not acted when she should have done.

She took out her phone and called DI Hitchens, who was still at the farm.

‘Yes, I feel we should try to make it a priority,’ she said. ‘As soon as possible. Yes, I understand, sir. Resources … Well, Jamie Ward believed it was important enough, and I think I agree with him.’

Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine

Apart from the pub, the village’s facilities seemed to consist solely of a small post-box lashed to a fence post. When he’d finished his calls, Cooper sat in the car and watched the rain soaking the walls of the chapel.

‘There’s no post office,’ he said, when the others returned. ‘That would be the place to go.’

‘So?’

‘The next village has one.’

‘We could give it a try.’

He saw there was a Town Head Farm at one end of the village, and Town End Farm at the other. He supposed it helped visitors to Rakedale to know whether they were coming or going.

Most of the farms along this road were well kept. Of course, they were fully functioning enterprises, with neat signs displayed at the roadside – the name of the farm, the family who owned it, the type of cattle they bred. Friesians and Holsteins mostly, with the appropriate illustration of a proud beast under the family name. There had been no such sign at Pity Wood.

The post office in the next village was open for business only from eleven a.m. to one p.m. on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. Like so many rural post offices, it was operating what were officially called ‘satellite hours’. Villagers here were lucky – many areas had lost their facilities altogether. But, since this was Friday, it was no less closed.

Most of the buildings seemed to be either holiday cottages or offering B&B. They were deserted in mid-winter, dormant and empty, awaiting an influx of tourists in the spring, their owners praying there wouldn’t be a repeat of 2001, when the foot and mouth outbreak had destroyed their business.

The only other notable feature in the village was a farming heritage centre, which looked quite a new development. An interesting avenue of diversification, preserving the heritage instead of farming.

‘Any other suggestions?’ asked Murfin.

Cooper unfolded a map of the Rakedale area. ‘There’s another farm up the road, away from the village. We oughtn’t to miss that.’