‘Are you a member of the Eden Valley Hunt?’

‘Me? Are you kidding?’

‘Could you tell me where you were on Tuesday morning, then?’ asked Fry.

‘What are you saying?’

‘It was a simple question.’

‘If it’s any of your business, I was here, on my own. I work part-time at the Devonshire Hotel in Edendale, but Tuesday was my day off this week.’

She said it in the tone of somebody accustomed to being asked for an alibi. If you told the police you were on your own at the time, then nobody could be asked to back up your story and get the details wrong. It was difficult to prove a negative.

‘And I think I’ve heard enough now,’ said Naomi. ‘If that’s all you have to say, I’d like you to go.’

Fry turned to leave. Then she stopped, as if to ask one more question.

‘Widdowson is quite an unusual name. Are you related to the huntsman of the Eden Valley Hunt?’

‘John? He’s my cousin.’

‘I see.’

‘What?’ said Naomi. ‘Is that a crime as well?’

MURFIN SNIFFED DISMISSIVELY as they got back to the car. ‘If you ask me, that woman has spent far too much time talking to her horses, and not enough time learning how to make conversation with other human beings.’

‘She was certainly a bit lacking in social graces,’ said Fry.

‘She smelled, too,’ said Murfin bluntly.

‘I’ve got so used to that smell in the last few days that I didn’t really notice, Gavin.’

‘Well, don’t forget to check the soles of your shoes before you go back into the office.’

‘Oh, God,’ said Fry, recalling her interview with Superintendent Branagh. ‘You’re right.’

‘And did you notice her fingernails?’

That was something Fry had noticed. Black, every one of them. That was due to too much mucking out, or too much time spent running her fingers lovingly through the coats of horses.

‘Gavin, did we ever get results from forensics on the prints from that gate on Longstone Moor?’

‘No, we didn’t. I’ll give the lab a nudge.’

‘Yes, with a cattle prod.’

Chapter Twenty-six

MEANWHILE, COOPER HAD found himself working backwards and forwards between calls to the horse owners on his list, and the conversation going on around him in the office. They were two worlds, existing alongside each other in the same place. The voices of strangers in his ear, speaking of their anger and loss. And the background sound of his colleagues in the CID team, familiar and somehow prosaic, just doing their day-to-day job.

‘. . . I thought those wretched horse passports we all had to buy at great expense were supposed to stop this sort of thing. Mind you, have you seen some of those passports? Mine looks like an A4 school project. It would only take a photocopier and a cheap binding machine, and a small child could forge one.’