‘I don't know what you're talking about.'

‘I think you do. Where did you really go on Saturday night, Mr Milner?’

The silence grew, with Tailby leaning down towards Andrew, glaring at him as he waited for an answer. The tapes whirred uninterrupted, waiting for the next person to speak. Andrew Milner did nothing for a long time. Then his face seemed to convulse and collapse. His hands clutched at each other, and tears began to ooze down his cheeks.

27

Ben Cooper lifted the binoculars and swung them across the hillside, resting his elbows on the warm rock. The light was starting to fade and the straggle of buildings looked grey and flat. For the first time in days, a bank of cloud had built up in the west and had blotted out the setting sun. But he could easily make out the white vehicle that had bumped up the track, and he could identify the three figures that were now moving slowly in front of the dilapidated farmhouse.

All three of them are there now.'

‘Let's see.’

He passed the binoculars across carefully, shifting his body to make his position more comfortable. He lay prone, keeping his profile below the skyline, knowing his dark clothes would make him almost invisible against the rocky outcrop.

‘Harry has the dog with him.’

As always.'

‘They just seem to be standing around at the moment.'

‘They would normally go to the pub at this time.

They're late already. Besides, why would Harry and Sam Beeley come up to the smallholding? Surely it's much easier for them just to meet Wilford down at the pub? They both live close to it, and Wilford's the one with the transport.’

Diane Fry kept the binoculars to her face. Cooper watched her, anxious to see her expression. She had agreed to come with him to Raven's Side when she came off duty, but he knew he had a long way to go to convince her that he wasn't making a fool of himself again. Two days ago, when he had sat on Raven's Side and recalled the legend of the black hounds that haunted the hilltops, he had noticed the vantage point on the east side of the tors from.which there was a perfect view of Thorpe Farm.

‘Maybe they've just come to help Wilford feed the animals,' she said.

Cooper smiled. 'What animals?’

*

Fry wondered what she was looking for as she swung the binoculars backwards and forwards again, surveying the buildings. There could be anything within those ramshackle sheds and huts. They would be a nightmare to search, if it ever came to it.

To the right of the buildings, she could just make out the famous compost heap. It lay like a vast heap of droppings freshly left by some monstrous creature passing across the hillside towards Moorhay. Even from this distance, she could see the tendrils of steam rising from its surface. She shuddered, imagining that she could even detect the smell on the evening air.

‘It's certainly quiet in the fields,' she said. 'The animals must all be in bed.’

Cooper snorted derisively, until she pulled the binoculars away and glared at him. Like him, she was dressed in denims and a dark jacket. She was uncomfortable lying on the hard ground, and uneasy about what they were doing. Memories of the incident on Tuesday night were still clear in her mind, when she had followed Ben Cooper into trouble at the poacher's hut. She could not understand why she had done it again — let him persuade her into doing something she knew wasn't right. 'Sorry,' he said. 'What are they doing now?'

‘Nothing. Probably Wilford's wife has got something cooking and they're all going to be having their dinner in a minute.’

He frowned at her. 'What did you say? Who's got what —?'

‘I said having dinner. Just like we should be doing, Ben.'

‘OK, OK. I'll buy you a Chinese meal later on. How about that? We'll go to Fred Kwok's. It's the best Chinese in Edendale. Fancy some deep-fried won ton later?'

‘Make it right now, and I'd even accept meat pie and mushy peas at the Drover.’

He was silent. But she knew that he would simply be looking at her with that pleading expression that baffled her and made her angry at the feelings it stirred up inside her. They were feelings she had long since tried to suppress. Feelings that she had already allowed to surface once recently, with humiliating consequences. She wasn't about to let it happen again.

‘I'm sure I'm right, Diane,' he said.

Looking at Cooper's face now, she knew that this was what it was really all about for her. This was why she had let him persuade her into this mad expedition, this spell of unauthorized surveillance. It was the sheer strength of his conviction, the intensity of his belief in himself. All he had done was put a few facts together with a whole load of half-baked ideas, instincts and feelings that were entirely his own, and as a result he was filled with a pure, heartfelt certainty that he was right. She could see that Ben Cooper was a man who believed strongly in things; he had faith, he had genuine passion. It was ridiculously attractive.

‘Ben — you've made this mistake once already. You're not even on the case any more. You should back off now, or you'll regret it.’

And what exactly have I got left to lose?' he snapped. 'Shh. You'll let everybody down there know we're here.'

‘I promise you I'm right.'

‘OK, OK.’

Immediately below their position was a patch of woodland clinging to the side of the hill. It was full of the quiet noises of creatures settling down for the night or stirring, ready for their evening's hunting. The woods petered out fifty yards away, where the millstone grit erupted from the hillside and the ground became bare and rocky. At their backs were the 'tors' themselves — gritstone outcrops sculpted by geological forces and the weather into strange, twisted shapes. Their names owed a lot to the dark imagination of the rural Peak dwellers — the Horse Stone, the Poached Egg Stone, the Mad Woman.

But I'm the mad woman, thought Fry. I'm mad for even being here.

*

Cooper knew he had to handle her carefully. She was like a coiled spring — one wrong word and she would walk off and leave him. But it was difficult to avoid the wrong word with Diane Fry. Besides, there were so many things he wanted to ask her, away from the office. Number one on his list was what had happened between her and DI Hitchens on their trip to Yorkshire. But it might be wise to save that one for later.

‘Is Mr Tailby still hopeful of Andrew Milner?' he asked, steering the way into a safer subject.

‘Your diagram encouraged him. That and the lack of evidence against Simeon Holmes. If Harry Dickinson was protecting somebody, it has to be Milner.'

‘Yeah. Harry doesn't think much of Milner, but he'd protect him for the sake of his daughter. For the sake of the family.'

‘Family loyalty. As you say, a powerful motivation.’

‘Yes, it fits,' said Cooper sadly.

‘Milner had been pushed to the limit by Graham Vernon. Maybe he finally cracked and took revenge.’

‘Not only was he pushed to the limit by Vernon, but he was also reminded of his failure by his own family. Harry in particular taunted him with his weakness. If Harry found out what had happened, he would have felt guilty — partly responsible, in fact. He would try to make amends. I can see that.’

Cooper cast his mind back to his first visit to Dial Cottage. He remembered the bloodstained trainer standing on the kitchen table on a copy of the Buxton Advertiser, the atmosphere of tension lying on the cramped rooms like a thick blanket. He remembered the old lady, distressed by something beyond the innocent discovery of a missing girl's trainer.

‘I wonder if that was what the row was about,' he said. 'And, if so, who was on which side?’

Fry frowned, but let it pass. 'Anyway, Milner's account of his whereabouts was crap from the start.'