But the statistics told a different story, and it wasn’t funny. Despite the road being lined with Think Bike signs, a motorcycle rider forming each ‘i’, a map behind the Pavilion car park kept a record of the rising toll. New markers were added frequently to show where bikers had died in Derbyshire. Last year, two had lost their lives in one day in the Matlock area. That had been in October, too, but on a Sunday. One of the victims had been in his forties, the other in his fifties.

In fact, this stretch of the A6 was one of the designated ‘hot routes’ – the most popular roads among bikers, especially on bank holiday weekends. There was another section between Buxton and Taddington, but it was the Cat and Fiddle road into Staffordshire that had received most attention, ever since a bikers’ magazine described it as more exciting to ride than the Manx TT. The latest figures showed motorcyclists accounting for a quarter of all fatalities and injuries on the roads in the county. No surprise, perhaps, when they seemed to be drawn to the most dangerous places.

Despite their appearance, some of these bikers would be riding circuits around the valley later in the day. And if it was a good day, no one would actually die.

‘So where are these people who think they saw the shooting victim on Saturday?’ said Murfin, yawning extravagantly.

‘Rose Shepherd was seen at the Riber Tea Rooms on South Parade, and the Aquarium on North Parade. Oh, and the Masson Mill shopping village. That’s a bit further down the road from here.’

‘We’ll have to split up, I suppose.’

‘It’ll be a lot quicker, Gavin.’

‘Hey, we’re not going in all these shops, are we?’

‘We ought to go into any that are close to where Miss Shepherd was seen. We’ve got to be thorough, while we’re here. The DCI wants a picture of what the victim was doing here, and who she met in the hours before she died.’

‘Shopkeepers, eh? I just hope they’re friendly.’

‘You’ll survive.’

Murfin wasn’t the only officer Cooper had heard expressing reluctance to enter shops on duty. Talking to shopkeepers had been part of the routine in his father’s time. But that was before they started measuring police performance against key indicators – which didn’t include retail crime. So shoplifting had become low priority. The larger businesses hired their own security guards and adjusted their budgets to account for ‘slippage’. Small businesses couldn’t do that. And an unsuspecting police officer made a handy target for a shopkeeper’s frustration.

He managed to park the Toyota on the roadside between Hodgkinson’s Hotel and a shop called The Biker’s Gearbox. Then he and Murfin took a parade each.

‘Tell the missus I died a hero’s death,’ said Murfin as he got reluctantly out of the car.