‘Dr Rosa Kane,’ she said. ‘Do you know anything about her?’

The list of accredited experts and consultants had recently been updated. Someone had wielded a new broom and put his own stamp on the list, bringing in people with fresh ideas.

‘Not a thing,’ said Hitchens. ‘But we have an appointment to meet her tomorrow.’

Fry took note of the ‘we’. She made a show of writing down Dr Kane’s details before handing back the card. If the psychologist turned out to be fat and forty, or a wizened old academic with grey hair in a bun, Fry suspected that she’d become the liaison officer, not Hitchens.

She stood up and moved to the window. The view of Edendale from the first floor wasn’t inspiring. There were rooftops and more rooftops, sliding down the slopes to her right, almost obscuring the hills in the distance, where the late afternoon sun hung over banks of trees.

Whoever had designed E Division’s headquarters in the 1950s hadn’t been too worried about aesthetics. Or convenience either. The public were deterred from visiting West Street by the prospect of an exhausting slog up the hill, and the lack of parking spaces. Because of its location, Fry missed the sensation of normal life going on outside the door. There had always been that feeling when she served in the West Midlands – though maybe not since they’d started building their police stations like fortresses.

‘You haven’t finished the transcript,’ said Hitchens.

‘I think I’ll wait for the tape, sir, if you don’t mind.’

‘There isn’t much more, Diane. You might as well finish it.’

Fry bit her lip until the pain focused her mind. Of course, even in Derbyshire, all the darkest sides of human experience were still there, hidden beneath the stone roofs and lurking among the hills. This was the smiling and beautiful countryside, after all.

The transcript was still in her hand. Holding it to the light from the window, she turned over to the last page. The DI was right – there were only three more paragraphs. The caller still wasn’t giving anything away about himself. But she could see why somebody had thought of calling in a psychologist.

Detective Constable Ben Cooper watched the dead woman’s face turn slowly to the left. Now her blank eyes seemed to stare past his shoulder, into the fluorescent glare of the laboratory lights. The flesh was muddy brown, her hair no more than a random pattern against her skull, like the swirls left in sand by a retreating tide.

Cooper was irrationally disappointed that she didn’t look the way he’d imagined her. But then, he’d never known her when she was alive. He didn’t know the woman now, and had no idea of her name. She was dead, and had already returned to the earth.

But he’d formed a picture of her in his mind, an image created from the smallest of clues – her height, her racial origins, an estimate of her age. He knew she had a healed fracture in her left forearm. She’d given birth at least once, and had particularly broad shoulders for a female. She’d also been dead for around eighteen months.