But this was something he couldn’t really share with his colleagues. He looked at them now, more of them entering the house, intent on their jobs, professional and calm. Did any of them experience the same feelings?

Long before his prisoner was in the car, the female suspect had stopped screaming. Yet the sound still seemed to echo in Cooper’s head long after the shouting had died down and the barking had stopped, and the adrenalin surge had drained from his body.

BY THE TIME the ME and the crime-scene manager allowed her to get near the body in the field, Diane Fry was glad to climb into a scene suit. She followed the line of stepping plates laid down by the SOCOs and examined the victim as closely as she could. There would be much more detail in the SOC and ME’s reports, and in the photographs. But personal impressions could still be vital, whatever the benefits of science.

The first thing she noticed was how much blood there was on the victim. His hair was matted with it, and it had run down his temple and into his ear. His shirt collar was stained, and the waxed cotton was darkened by more than rain.

‘The victim is in his mid-forties,’ said Murfin, rustling alongside her with his notebook. ‘He seems to have been in reasonably good health, though a little overweight. Well, that describes a perfect specimen of manhood, if you ask me.’

Fry glanced at him, noting the way his scene suit bulged and sagged unflatteringly around the middle.

‘Matter of opinion, Gavin.’

Murfin sniffed. ‘Approximately six feet tall, brown hair, brown eyes; the blood is from a rather nasty head wound.’

‘I can see that.’

Scalp wounds always bled dramatically, even a surface cut. But in this case, Fry could see the damage to the skull, where it had been crushed a few inches above and behind the left ear.

‘No ID in his pockets,’ said Murfin. ‘That’s the bad news.’

‘Nothing?’

‘No wallet, no chequebook, no car keys. And no mobile phone.’

‘A robbery victim? Out here?’

‘Could be. Or it might have been an attempt to prevent us identifying him.’

‘The postmortem might find something for us. It would be useful if his fingerprints or DNA are on record, of course.’

The body had been moved by the ME during his examination, but now lay on its back, face turned upwards to the rain, which was being deflected by the roof of the body tent. The coat the man was wearing turned out to be one of those green waxed affairs, similar to one that Fry had seen Ben Cooper in sometimes, though this one looked a bit newer and probably more expensive. Underneath the coat, there was a blue body warmer and a cotton shirt with a thin green check. Dark blue corduroy trousers led down to that pair of nice brown brogues. Dark blue and brown never went well together in Fry’s opinion, but the shoes looked much too good for yomping across sheep-infested hills.