On his way home, Cooper called at the old cemetery in Edendale. The rain had stopped, but a cold wind was blowing across the grass and funnelling through the avenues of stone memorials. The gates were kept padlocked at night, but on the darkest edge of the cemetery there were gaps where the iron railings had been pulled apart. The damage had been done by someone going in, rather than coming out. Or so he hoped.

It was six forty-five and there was still half an hour to go before the cemetery closed. But Cooper could see no one in the grounds, except a woman walking a cocker spaniel on a lead. The dog’s ears were blowing backwards in the wind, like the ragged ends of a woollen scarf. As he watched, the dog began casting from side to side with its nose to the ground, sniffing for interesting odours among the lines of gravestones.

The sight made Cooper think of one of the traditional beliefs that still clung to rural burial grounds – the deadly graveyard miasma. Buried, decomposing bodies were supposed to give off a noxious gas that made its way up through the soil and formed an invisible fog. It hung over the graveyard and tainted the air, poisoning anyone who came near. But surely that was just another superstition to justify keeping away from graveyards and avoiding the presence of death.

Cooper shook himself to dismiss the morbid thoughts. These occasional quiet moments at the end of a shift were usually the time when events of the day ran continually through his head. All the most uncomfortable moments would repeat themselves, nudging him into worrying whether he could have done things better. Today, there had been several such moments. He thought he understood Tom Jarvis pretty well, at least. But he couldn’t help wondering whether Fry would have handled Madeleine Chadwick better, or if she’d have been able to deal with the steamroller technique of Freddy Robertson.

He could clearly remember the first time he’d met Diane Fry. He could see her now, walking into the CID room at West Street. She hadn’t met his eye at first, but had glanced from side to side as if searching for evidence of his faults, traces of any weakness she could exploit. Though she’d been leaner than Cooper had grown up expecting women to be, it was clear from the start that Fry was no weakling.

He only wished she would smile sometimes. A smile would relax her face and erase those dark shadows that always lurked in her eyes. Even in life, people could transform the look of their faces.