Ramsay went back to the barn. There was still snow on the side of the roof that was in shadow, but it was beginning to melt and water dripped on his head and down his neck as he paused at the entrance to get an overall view of the scene inside. Most prominent was the powerful motorbike, stolen from the industrial estate in Otterbridge. The body was in a corner, poorly lit by a gap in one of the boarded-up windows. Ramsay took off his shoes and stepped carefully into the barn. He did not want to confuse the scene of crime team with the mud from his shoes or his prints, but he wanted a closer look at Charlie Elliot. He was lying, facedown, on a makeshift bed of a sleeping bag spread over paper fertiliser sacks half filled with hay. He had been stabbed in the back and the knife had been removed, so there was a lot of blood.

Had he been stabbed when he was sleeping? Ramsay wondered. If so, why was he lying on top of the sleeping bag instead of inside it?

He straightened and looked around the barn. Because it was the end of winter, most of the feed was gone. It had the domestic tidiness of a child’s den. There was a Primus stove, a saucepan, a spoon, and a tin mug. On a rough shelf nailed to the wall were neatly stacked tins of beans, soup, and beer, a box of tea bags, and small jars of coffee and powdered milk. There was even a small bucket and a bottle of washing-up liquid in one corner. He was expecting to stay there, Ramsay thought, for some time. On the floor, next to the bed, the only sign of disorder: an empty beer can. Ramsay looked more closely at the shelf and realised that most of the beer cans stacked there were empty, too. Had Charlie drunk them all himself? Or had he shared them with a guest?

Ramsay put on his shoes and walked out into the sunshine. He stood, leaning against the rough stone wall of the barn to wait for his colleagues. Above him the brown heather moor stretched to the distance, the skyline broken occasionally by a shooting butt where the gentry would come in the autumn to shoot grouse. Below was the improved land, grazed by sheep, the short, cropped grass sprouting in damp places with juncus grass and soft reed. Beyond that, down the line of the valley he could see the village. There was Henshaw’s monstrous bungalow, Grey’s Farm, and to the north, as much a part of the landscape as the rock and the moor, was the Tower. On the horizon, a thin line of reflected light, was the sea.