Cooper coasted to the corner of the track and stopped the car. He turned towards the driver’s window, as if having difficulty adjusting his seat belt. From here, the roof and upper storey of the Jarvis house were still visible through the trees. But the movement he’d seen in an upstairs window failed to resolve itself into more than a pale blur. It was the face of a person standing too far back from the window to be recognizable in the shadows. Was it Mrs Jarvis? Or just her husband, anxious to see whether Cooper had left the premises? Of course, it could be someone else entirely. There was no way of telling.

Cooper closed the window, pressed the accelerator and bumped the Toyota back up the track from Litton Foot. When he was fifty yards from the house, he pushed a CD into the player and filled the car with the sound of Runrig’s ‘Hearthammer’.

As a result, he just missed hearing the grumble of a motorcycle engine as it moved hesitantly through the damp woods of Ravensdale.

When Cooper walked back into the CID room, Fry was listening to the tapes again, with her headphones over her ears and an expression of concentrated loathing on her face.

‘What’s that, Diane?’ Cooper asked as he took off his coat, shaking a few drops of water on to the carpet.

She paused the tape and slipped off her headphones. ‘Our talkative psycho. These clues he’s given us in his second call have got to be his big mistake.’

‘Is he a man who makes mistakes, do you think?’

‘No,’ said Fry. ‘Bastard.’

She began to put the headphones back on, but Cooper stopped her.

‘Hold on. Can I listen? I haven’t had a chance to hear it yet.’

Fry nodded. She unplugged the headphones and started the tape again. Cooper listened to it for a few moments, trying to filter out the words from the distortion that robbed them of any recognizable humanity. Then he remembered Audrey Steele’s dental records. If they hadn’t arrived, he’d have to make another call to Moorhouse’s. He checked the fax machine, and gave a murmur of satisfaction.

‘Diane, I’ve got the dental records for Audrey Steele.’

‘Are you going to send them to Sheffield?’

‘It’s already done. I got the dentist to send them direct, and this is just a copy. Trouble is, all this stuff doesn’t mean anything to me.’

‘You’ll have to wait until we hear what the experts have to say.’

Cooper was looking at the fax when the voice coming from the tape machine penetrated his concentration.

‘What was that bit?’ he said.

Fry looked up in surprise. ‘What?’

‘What did he say just then?’

The tape was still running, and Cooper waved his hand urgently. ‘Wind it back a bit, Diane. Let me listen to that last part again.’