David drew in a long, slow lungful of Derbyshire air. He needed this. After his trip to see Jeffrey Kinsella his head had felt like mashed potato. His mind kept replaying images of Jeffrey and his own father, each trapped in their own small and ever-diminishing worlds. He knew the moorland around Gardom’s Edge like the back of his hand. As a teenager growing up in Chesterfield he used to catch the bus out to Baslow and walk up here. While his brothers were off playing cricket or chasing their latest conquest, David was picking his way between the birch trees and the tumbled Bronze Age field walls trying to imagine what life had been like for the men and women who’d lived here then. Wiltshire might be where his heart was these days but if he had a soul this was where you’d find it.

He picked his way along the top of the gargantuan curving remains of the stone bank that the adult David now knew had been built by the first farmers almost sixty centuries before he’d set foot here. Sally’s phone call had panicked him. First Beth Kinsella, then Jack Tyler. How could that be a coincidence? But he needed to think straight. He didn’t know how he’d survived the last few months. Had he believed in a deity, he’d have given it credit for preventing him from throttling the Runt. He’d been revelling in the imminent demise of the Hart Unit. David knew that the teaching commitments the Runt had piled on him this term had been Muir’s less than subtle strategy to ensure saving the unit was as difficult as possible.

And, as a consequence, David had been forced to leave that particular responsibility entirely in Clare and Jo’s hands. And capable though they were, he couldn’t help feeling he’d let them down. He’d been the one accusing Clare and Jo of being irresponsible when the press had muscled their way onto site. But where had he been when they needed him? And now he’d let Sally down too. Well, David Barbrook, it was about time you stopped feeling sorry for yourself and started taking your responsibilities seriously.

It had taken him forty minutes to get to the top, but it took him less than twenty to scramble back down to the pub car park where he’d left the Land Rover. Grabbing his laptop bag, he shoved the envelope into the side and headed into the bar. He ordered a pint, tucked himself into a quiet corner and fired up the laptop.

Slipping the USB stick from its plastic bag, he plugged it into the laptop. There was only one folder on it, which in turn contained a single file. A video file labelled ‘Bailsgrove20150413’. He double-clicked on the file. The video seemed to take an eternity to load.