It was the second signal he’d picked up from Tom Farnham. Referring to yourself in the third person was a sure sign of evasion. Tom Farnham is no fool.

‘The body we’ve found was buried on a bit of spare ground in the eastern corner of the property,’ said Cooper. ‘Not far from the house.’

‘Spare ground?’ Farnham frowned. ‘Can you show me where you mean?’

Cooper took the piece of paper offered to him and drew a rough map. He was no Leonardo, but it would do for the job.

‘We used to park trailers and other pieces of equipment on that bit of land,’ said Farnham. ‘I can’t imagine how anybody would dig a grave there, even if they wanted to. The soil must have been pretty solidly compacted.’

‘It wasn’t easy to dig out again either, by all accounts.’

‘Well, the grave must have been there a long time, then. Since before I went in with Raymond and Derek. The old boys must have used that patch of land for something else, back in the past.’

Cooper didn’t respond to Farnham’s invitation to put the body well outside his own time at Pity Wood. Instead, he looked at his map, noticing how the swirls he’d made looked more like a lake than a farmyard. And very appropriate it was, too, in the present weather.

‘Wasn’t this one of the areas considered for a reservoir some years ago?’ he asked.

‘Oh, that would be way back in the sixties or early seventies,’ said Farnham.

‘If there was a possibility this valley would be flooded, the value of properties must have crashed.’

‘Yes, for a while. Blighted by the spectre of compulsory purchase, eh? The fate of the little man steamrollered by governments and local authorities.’

‘So there would have been no chance of selling Pity Wood Farm during that time. If the Suttons had wanted to move on, they couldn’t have done. They must have thought they were cursed.’

‘But it didn’t last for ever. Carsington was chosen for the reservoir instead.’ Farnham laughed. ‘The curse moved on to someone else, then.’

‘There were protests, I think?’ asked Cooper.

‘Small-scale stuff. A bunch of farmers from the Carsington area got together. They never stood much chance, in my opinion.’

Cooper had sympathy for protesters, provided they stayed within the law. If it hadn’t been for vigorous campaigning, there’d have been housing and industrial developments in Winnats Pass and a motor-racing circuit in the dales around Hartington. The Peak District would have been cut in half by a motorway.

He imagined the feelings of the Sutton family, watching the fate of farmers across the hill as they fought in vain to save their land. Schadenfreude. That would have been the only word for it. There but for the grace of God.