They climbed into one of the cars. It was big enough to hold six people, but it was a quiet day. The doors closed, and the cars rotated slowly before suddenly swinging out of the station, into the light. They immediately began to climb steeply up the cable, soaring high over the river and the rapidly dwindling traffic on the A6. The sides of the car were clear perspex from ceiling to floor level, so it was possible to look straight down at the ground, already hundreds of feet below and getting further away by the second.

‘Dyavol da go vzeme. Oh, God.’ Kotsev covered his eyes and gripped the edge of the seat tightly.

‘Are you sure heights aren’t a problem for you?’

‘I’ll be OK. OK, OK.’ He risked a peep through his fingers. ‘Mamka mu!’

By the time they had reached the highest point above the valley, Kotsev was sweating and breathing deeply to calm himself. This was the point on the journey where the cars slowed down and hung stationary for a minute or two, high above the valley floor.

‘Are we broken?’ said Kotsev nervously. ‘Do we need rescue?’

But then the wheels whirred again, and the cars approached Masson Hill through an avenue of trees as the cable passed over the first gantry. From there, it was an easy coast in, past the base of the stone tower to the hilltop station.

‘You can look now,’ said Cooper.

Kotsev took his hand away and opened his eyes. ‘Yes, OK. It was a little too high.’

Fry found Jed Skinner in the garage at the distribution centre outside Edendale, where he worked as a mechanic. He was wearing disposable gloves like a scenes of crime officer as he worked on the engine of a large van. No more dirty rags and oily hands for car mechanics these days, then. Gavin Murfin had been exaggerating.

‘Do you happen to know where your friend Brian Mullen is right now?’ asked Fry when they’d taken him into the supervisor’s office.

‘He’s staying with his parents-in-law. They live at Darley Dale.’

‘He’s not there any more.’

‘Oh?’

‘When were you last in contact with him?’

‘Yesterday. They wouldn’t let me visit him while he was in hospital, but Brian rang me yesterday afternoon to say he was out. He was pretty fed up, so I went to see him in the evening.’

‘At Darley Dale?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did he say anything to you about leaving to stay somewhere else?’

‘No, not a thing.’

‘You live at Lowbridge, don’t you, Mr Skinner?’

‘Yes, but you won’t find Brian there. He could have come and stayed with me, if he’d asked, because we’re mates. But he didn’t ask.’

‘All right.’

‘Phone my wife if you don’t believe me.’

‘We might do that,’ said Fry.