‘You ought to talk to Tom Farnham,’ said Palfreyman. ‘He worked at Pity Wood. He was the only one who worked there any length of time, I think. But then, he’s local. All the rest of them stayed for a few months, then moved on.’

‘The rest?’

‘Casuals. Short-term labour.’

‘Are you referring to itinerant workers?’

‘Oh, aye. Lots of them have turned up at Pity Wood over the years. Coming and going all the time, they were. It made it difficult to keep track, from my point of view. I never quite knew who was living in the area at any one time. Well, I tried to persuade Raymond to keep better records, but it was a waste of breath. It’s amazing to me that they didn’t get into trouble. They wouldn’t get away with it now, the regulations are too tight. So much bureaucracy. But then, you must know that, in the job.’

‘Did you find the Sutton brothers difficult to deal with, Mr Palfreyman?’

‘Difficult?’ He sniffed thoughtfully. ‘Well, they were a funny bunch, the Suttons. I was round there once, in the days before Tom Farnham appeared on the scene. Derek and Raymond were just sitting in that room there, one either side of the table, not speaking a word to each other. Weird, it was. Like they were afraid of breaking the silence, as if they thought something terrible would happen if they were the first to speak.’

‘Was there bad blood between them? Did the brothers have an argument of some kind?’

‘Not that I know of. Not in living memory, anyway. I think that’s just the way they were. Awkward, pig-headed buggers. You know the type.’

‘Yes, I think I do.’

Another car passed on the road outside, and Palfreyman turned his attention away.

‘I see you have a cat,’ said Cooper on the way out, noticing an elegant ball of fur curled on a rug in the kitchen.

‘Yes. He’s a Burmese.’

‘Did the Suttons have a lot of cats?’

‘God knows,’ said Palfreyman. ‘Well, probably. All farms have cats, don’t they?’

Fry and Murfin were invited in, too. But the property they’d arrived at wasn’t a farm, not any more. Someone had bought the farmhouse and converted it into a nice family home, but had let the land go to neighbouring farmers. If there had been outbuildings on the property, there was no sign of them now. This was pretty much what Pity Wood was intended to be, Fry thought.

A nice new Range Rover stood on the drive, the only car she’d seen for a while that wasn’t plastered with mud. Inside, the home was immaculate – probably kept in that condition by the small, Asian-looking woman that Fry had glimpsed passing like a ghost from the kitchen into the passage when she arrived.