‘You’re Ben Cooper, aren’t you?’ said the young man, after putting through the order and taking his money.

‘That’s right.’

Cooper looked more closely. He didn’t forget faces easily, and this one did look vaguely familiar. Gelled hair with blond streaks, a stubble of beard, a nose that had perhaps been broken once, but mended well. There was something about the eyes, now that he took the trouble to look the young man in the face. Perhaps it was an arrest he’d made some time in the past?

‘I’m sorry,’ said Cooper. ‘I know I’ve met you, but I can’t remember where.’

‘I’m Nick Summers. My dad’s a friend of your brother Matt’s.’

‘Of course. Your father works for the agricultural merchant’s. You’ve been to the farm a few times with him, haven’t you? But I thought I heard that you’d gone away to university.’

The young man looked up as the door opened. But it was only two customers leaving. He relaxed, and leaned on the counter.

‘I graduated in the summer. I got a BSc in Environment and Ecology from Leicester.’

‘Congratulations.’

Cooper watched the teenagers sitting at the corner table with their Cokes and large fries, and listened to the sound of laughter coming from the kitchen. Inside, he could see two more youths in red baseball caps opening packets of buns.

‘So – what are your plans now, Nick?’

‘Oh, I’m waiting for the right job to come up. In the meantime, I earn a living as a crew member here. It’s not so bad. They wanted to promote me, but I don’t really need that. Something will come up before long that suits my qualifications.’

There was a burst of noise as a group of customers came in, straight from the pub across the road. Nick straightened up and moved back to the till. Cooper’s food arrived and he moved towards a table.

‘Good luck, anyway,’ he said.

While he ate his burger, Cooper watched Nick Summers serving customers. He seemed like a natural for the job. It didn’t matter what academic qualifications he had or didn’t have, provided he could wear the uniform and use the till.

Cooper remembered his own holiday job as a teenager, cleaning caravans with a bucket of soapy water and a long brush. He’d been studying hard at the time, determined to achieve his ambition of joining the police. But he’d still been grateful for the tips given him by the tourists, who’d treated him as if he were the village idiot. He’d never bothered to disabuse them of the idea.

The fries had smelled better than they tasted. Cooper spread a bit of tomato ketchup on them to see if it helped. The sauce was thick and aromatic, and some of it stuck to his fingers.

That was the trouble with preconceptions. They allowed people to pretend they were something else entirely, without even trying.

The thought brought to Cooper’s mind an image of the preparation room at Hudson and Slack. He pictured a naked body on the table, the blood draining from a vein as corrosive fluid was pumped in to replace it. He thought of a corpse with formaldehyde flowing through its tissues, coagulating the proteins, fixing the cells of the muscles, soaking into the organs, halting the processes of death like a hand stopping a clock. And yet, in a way, it was still a human being on the table, someone who looked years younger than they did a few days ago. Years younger.