He found the owner of the house in a garage workshop, where he had a petrol-driven lawnmower in pieces on the concrete floor. Other lawn-mowers stood against the breeze-block wall awaiting attention, along with a strimmer and a chain saw. The smell of petrol and oil was almost overpowering, but Farnham had left the garage door open to disperse the fumes. The first few feet inside the door were wet with the rain that blew in, but it was better than suffocating in petrol fumes.

‘Yes, I worked with the Sutton brothers for a few years,’ said Farnham, wiping a small component with grease. ‘Until the business started going to pieces, that is. No one with any sense stays in a failing enterprise unless they’re really tied to it, like the Suttons were. I knew when it was time to get out.’

‘It sounds a bit like a rat leaving a sinking ship, if you don’t mind me saying so, sir.’

Farnham was unruffled. ‘Well, I wasn’t the captain, so I wasn’t about to go down with my vessel, if you know what I mean. I looked around for the nearest lifeboat. Tom Farnham is no fool.’

‘You say you worked “with” the Suttons,’ said Cooper. ‘What was your role at Pity Wood, exactly?’

‘I was a sort of farm manager, you might say. But one of my main tasks was to introduce new ventures, diversify, anything to keep the business going. It never worked, though. Nothing I tried worked, in the end.’

Racks of tools lined the wall of the garage, and the work bench was scarred and stained with oil from previous jobs. It looked as though Mr Farnham was the practical type, handy to have around a farm when machinery needed running repairs.

‘So you were employed by the Suttons, sir?’

‘Mmm. Not quite. The thing is, I actually put some of my own money into Pity Wood, so I was more in the nature of a partner than an employee.’

‘You must have had confidence in your ability to turn the fortunes of the business round, if you invested your own money.’

‘Oh, I did. And it could have worked. It ought to have worked.’

‘What sort of diversification schemes did you try?’

Farnham pulled a sour expression. ‘All kinds of things. Some of them were my projects, but others … well, Raymond and Derek had their own ideas. To be honest with you, one or two of them were plain mad.’

Cooper’s ears had pricked up when he heard the phrase ‘to be honest’. It was almost invariably an indication that a person was about to lie. He wondered whether the really mad ideas had actually been Farnham’s own. No harm in passing the blame to the brothers now, was there? One of them was dead, and the other in a home.