I thought upon all of the different lives that would have had to bounce off one another in order for Flick and I to gaze upon his dead body beneath the broken stones of the Kinmont tomb. Was it possible? And if Fairfax had been aware there was a corpse in the mausoleum that shouldn’t have been there, was his complicity an act of cruelty or kindness? Could he have been protecting Pike? And if he was, how would Pike respond when he learned that his neighbours had been digging into his crimes?

I heard the rumble of an approaching train. It wouldn’t stop. No trains would stop in Gilsland ever again. The line cut the village in two as precisely as the Romans did two millennia before but the station itself had been closed down on the orders of Dr Beeching. A team of navvies had come in the night a few months before and dismantled half the rural stations on the line.

I watched the engine as it trundled past: steamed up windows and a few glimpsed faces – pink circles scribbled with blurry features. Could the dead man have been sitting on the train and seen a face from the past? Somebody he once knew? Is that what persuaded him to get off the train and go speak to the man who knew everybody? Had that decision cost him his life? Had he been trying to protect his own identity or revenge himself upon a past abuser?

More than anything else, I wanted to know whether it was possible that a wartime sadist had found his way to this tiny part of the world in order to inflict revenge upon the Resistance fighter whose evidence had secured his incarceration. Was there even the slightest chance of such a thing? I needed to know more. Needed to learn what had happened to the man called Favre after Nuremberg. And what of Abel? Was he our victim?

My head span. I tried to focus on what I could see. Broken down houses and damp stone; tatty outbuildings and the distant grey blur of the church. Somewhere a bell chimed the hour. The distant bleating of a sheep carried on the wind and the cold breeze played with my fringe.

‘Tea?’

I turned and saw James. He was dressed and ready for school. He’d combed his hair and fastened his tie right to the top. I could smell toothpaste coming off him. He handed me a burgundy mug and I shifted up to let him sit on the step.

‘Sleep OK?’ he asked, getting comfortable.

‘Bit chilly but I got a few hours.’

‘I’d have brought you more blankets.’

‘I don’t think there’s enough blankets to keep me warm at the moment,’ I said, watching a little bird, sharp as an arrowhead, flitting into the eaves of Fairfax’s house across the road. ‘Feels like the cold’s got into my bones.’