He didn’t respond immediately, as if he didn’t understand the question, and then: ‘Randolph and Emiline? They seemed like nice people.’

‘Did you talk to them a lot?’

‘About as much as all the others at Black Gale, I guess.’

I flicked back through my notes again.

‘And you said Randolph used to live in York?’

‘I think so,’ Ross said, ‘although I’m not one hundred per cent sure.’

Tori was right: people didn’t seem to know as much about Randolph and Emiline as the other villagers, but being represented by Seiger and Sten didn’t mean a thing unless I could prove that it did. At the moment, their ties to the law firm were there, but – if Ross was right – they were pretty overt. However, I made a note to confirm where Randolph had lived before moving to Black Gale.

And there was still the missing camper van.

‘What about the name Isaac Mills?’ I asked him.

‘Who?’

‘Have you ever heard of him before?’

‘No,’ he said, ‘never.’

And yet Mills had claimed he talked to Ross frequently about Randolph and Emiline’s property. That meant one of them was lying to me – and, for now, I was more inclined to believe it was Mills.

‘He never called you on behalf of Seiger and Sten?’

‘Not that I ever remember, no.’

‘Maybe Jacob Pierce mentioned him to you?’

‘I don’t think so. Jacob and I just talk about houses.’

I’d idly written Mills’s name down on the top sheet of my notebook, circling it so many times the paper had begun to wear thin. I didn’t want to cold-call Seiger and Sten or turn up at their doorstep asking questions until I figured out what Mills’s interest in Black Gale was, and if he even worked for the law firm. I was having a hard time reconciling the genial hero cop in the papers with the man I’d talked to at the farmhouse – the same man who might have bugged the homes of nine missing people – so if part, or all, of his persona was an act, it was just as possible that he’d lied about his employer. Perhaps the only way to be certain of who he was, and what he might be hiding, was to see him in his own environment, when his guard was down: his home in Keighley was eleven miles south; from here, that was an easy twenty-minute drive.

I changed tack.

‘Your dad was a keen photographer, right?’

‘Yes,’ Ross said, ‘he enjoyed taking pictures.’

‘When did that start?’

‘Late on, I guess; definitely after he left journalism.’

I thought about Patrick Perry heading out on to the moors, and always when Francesca was on shift at the hospital. I thought about Laura Gibbs seeing him, and telling Tori all about it – and I thought about the idea that it was some kind of affair.