‘Right.’ Murfin seemed to turn away from the phone for a moment. ‘I think she’s on to it. So when we get the records for Mr Two Phones, what are we looking for?’

‘Local numbers, in or out. He must have been in touch with someone up here, both after he arrived and in the days before he came.’

‘Got it,’ said Murfin. ‘By the way, we’ve got initial forensics on the Mitsubishi. No prints except Rawson’s and his wife’s.’

‘A shame, but no surprise.’

‘He did leave a paper trail all over the Eden Valley, though, by using his credit card for everything. Hotel bill, restaurant, petrol station . . . So we know where he slept, where he ate dinner, and which way he was heading. If we hadn’t found him already, we’d have a head start.’

‘There’s a lesson in that, Gavin. If you don’t want to be found, pay cash.’

‘I’ll bear it in mind when I decide to do a runner.’

Chapter Twelve

COOPER DROVE BACK into the centre of Eyam. Of course, most of the village seemed to have slipped out of real time. The seventeenth century was so powerfully present that he wouldn’t have been too surprised to see the Reverend Mompesson striding down the path from the church in his black robes, Bible in hand, filled with unselfish determination to protect his flock. Or what remained of it.

Cooper remembered from his school visit a couple of plague tableaux in the museum. One represented the last days of John Daniel, plague victim number ninety-two. Number ninety-two? A sentence from a TV series had run irreverently through Cooper’s head – ‘I am not a number.’ The bubos were clear and livid on John Daniel’s neck, illuminated by a candle burning at the head of his bed.

But the exhibit that had impressed him most was the long list of all the plague victims. Among all the Thorpes, Syddalls, Rowes and Thornleys were the names of two boys, the sons of a widow who had taken in a journeyman tailor as her lodger. It was a delivery of cloth from London for the tailor that had brought the plague to Eyam. The two sons had been dead within a month.

He looked at his list. Two more calls to make in Eyam, following up reports of a disturbance during the night. His instinct was to suspect drunks. The timing was surely too early to be related to the death of Patrick Rawson. But Fry was right to give them to him – everything had to be checked at this stage. Next week could be too late.