Brinkbonnie was quiet, its people shocked and in mourning. There had been tragedies in the village before—many years before a young boy, the son of a fisherman, had been swept from the beach by a freak wave and, more recently, the teacher’s wife had been killed in a car crash on the Otterbridge Road—but on those occasions the grief was shared. People came together to remember the dead and fight off the sense of their own mortality. After the murders of Alice Parry and Charlie Elliot, that was impossible. There was nothing left to hold people together and households turned in on themselves, sometimes regarding members of their own family with doubt and mistrust. They spoke of Alice Parry and Charlie Elliot as little as possible and regarded the press and the police, who insisted on prying with questions, with equal hostility. Only the very old men, who saw the death of people younger than themselves as some sort of victory, continued to go to the pub and talk about the case with a grim humour.

On the farm on the hill Robert Grey worked as normal until the late afternoon, when he, too, went to the pub and got thoroughly drunk. At home he seemed preoccupied by some secret trouble of his own and he hardly talked to his wife and son. Ian was still at home from school and watched his father with curiosity, as if expecting some sudden, unpredictable outburst. He would have liked to go up to his father and offer him comfort, support, one man to another, but he knew that might offend his mother and he loved her too much for that. So Ian sat in the kitchen and watched his father across the farmyard.

Celia Grey was in the kitchen making bread. She stood at the table pushing and tearing at the dough while the smell of yeast filled the house. Ian was reminded of his grandmother, who had lived with them for as long as he could remember, but who had recently died. When he was younger, the old lady had baked every week. It occurred to Ian then that for generations women who looked like his mother had stood in the kitchen running the farm. In the only sense that mattered, the farm belonged to her. His father’s name, scratched on the five-bar gate, was only a gesture of possession and independence. When the bread came out of the oven and Celia Grey knocked it out of the tins, it was, as he knew it would be, perfect. She was incapable of doing anything badly. She moved the kettle onto the hot part of the range.

“Go and fetch your father,” she said. “ Tell him I’m making some tea.”

He nodded, pulled on Wellingtons, and went outside.

Robert Grey was in the far end of the tractor shed, in the shadow. He stood quite still, with his back to the boy.