‘Obviously, I don’t want to put any pressure on you, Diane,’ said Blake.

‘No. I –’

‘But it would be good to talk to you again fairly soon. You know there’s a decision to be made.’

To distract herself, Fry stared at her computer screen, saw that she had some emails, and automatically clicked on them to see what they were. It was an instinctive action, with no real thought of finding anything of interest. But she noticed a message from Superintendent Branagh, and opened it.

Blake was continuing to talk, pouring a meaningless noise in her ear, as Fry read the memo from Branagh for the first time.

COOPER HAD BEEN asked to check through a copy of a statement that Peter Massey had made before his interview. It was a curious document, reading like an extract from the journal that they’d found at Rough Side Farm after his arrest. An odd glimpse into the world of 1968 and the memories that Massey had lived with for the past forty years.

Cooper thought the words were sad and thoughtful, with no apparent attempt at self-justification. It must have been a relief for him to get it all down on paper. There was even a sense of fatalism about Massey’s conclusion:

‘I thought that what they said must be wrong. At the start, Jimmy and Les and Shirley were all dead. Three of them, just the way it was bound to be. When they told me Stuart was dead, and his brother too, that was all wrong.

‘But it seems there’s a third, after all. A man I never knew, or even heard of until he was dead. But I suppose he had to die. It’s fate, and you can’t escape that. Everything happens in threes.’

Cooper wasn’t so sure about fate himself. He’d never felt that sense of an inescapable destiny waiting for him, making everything he did completely futile. Perhaps he was too young yet. It was possible that you had to reach Mr Massey’s age, before you were able to stop and look back on your life, and get that sudden terrifying perspective that convinced you it had all been in vain.

He smiled wryly to himself. Something to look forward to, then. He supposed it was better to enjoy life while he could. Best to appreciate what he had – friends, family, his relationship with Liz, the renewed prospect of promotion.

He felt conscious of Diane Fry’s presence on the other side of the room. Without looking, Cooper knew that she’d read the memo from Branagh now. The tension was obvious in the set of her shoulders, the jerkiness of her movements. He wondered what she would say, or whether she would say nothing at all. Perhaps she would store it up and hold it against him for ever more.

One thing Cooper knew. Despite his best efforts, he was no nearer to understanding Diane Fry than he’d ever been.