Then Cooper lifted his head in despair as a high-pitched scream shattered the silence of the woods.

29

Dial Cottage was almost in darkness. The only light behind the curtains of the sitting room was a flickering pattern of shifting colours, a light that died against the window before it reached the garden or the blackness beyond.

Two torches shone on to the flagged path, throwing the shadows of shrub roses across the flower beds like skeletal fingers reaching towards the house. In the background was the sound of another siren approaching Moorhay from the Edendale road. The flashing blue lights of an ambulance were reflected off the night sky.

Ben Cooper and Diane Fry knew the ambulance would not be needed. Fry still had a clear picture in her mind of the old man hanging from a branch ten feet above the ground, the toes of his black work boots pointing to the earth, his head lolling to one side in a last mocking gesture. When she had moved reluctantly closer to the swinging body, she had seen that his right hand was clenched tight around an old leather dog lead.

She was aware that she had screamed when the wind had swung the dark, rustling shape towards her head and the dangling feet had bumped in her face. Then Ben Cooper had been there, cannoning into her at full tilt in answer to her cry. And somehow she had recognized him instantly, an instinctive response to his scent or the sound of his breath, so that she reacted not by attacking him as she would a stranger rushing at her from the darkness, but by clinging to him desperately, finding at last the reassuring solidity that her body craved.

Then finally, together, they had cut the body down. Cooper had climbed up to the branch and sawed through the nylon rope with his penknife. The old man had clearly been dead long before they got him to the ground. It had been a neat, clean job, with the knot of the noose tied properly and positioned below the angle of the jaw, with plenty of height to the drop. His neck had been snapped cleanly.

*

Ben Cooper hesitated as they reached the old wooden gate at the bottom of the garden, wondering if the same thought was in both their minds. But he didn't want to be the first to say it.

‘So Sam Beeley had the dog,' he said instead.

‘The Border collie, yes. Kept well out of sight in a shed at Thorpe Farm.’

They had waited only while the machinery of an official response to a sudden death had swung into action. The first area patrol car had already arrived with two uniformed officers following Fry's call to the incident room. An ambulance had been summoned, closely followed by the police surgeon to officially certify death. They had all been obliged to step carefully round the small heap of roses and carnations tied up with ribbons, slowly fading and shrivelling on the ground, marking the spot where Laura Vernon died.

Then Cooper and Fry had walked together up the path towards Moorhay. Cooper was following the route for the third time that week. But this time he was conscious of Diane Fry close at his side, her hand unsteady now as she pointed her torch towards the row of cottages.

Cooper knew that she had taken control at some point. It had been immediately after they had discovered the body, immediately after that spontaneous embrace, when her fear had seemed to empty itself into his arms like a dam bursting, relieving some unimaginable pressure. She had naturally taken command of the scene then, issuing instructions clearly and professionally, like someone born to the role.

And then he had discovered that she had already been to Thorpe Farm and spoken to Sam Beeley, and had already found the dog. She had already phoned in to the incident room, and she had organized the back-up. Everything done just right. The credit would be all hers.

But it was almost too perfect. Almost as if the reason she had agreed to come with him tonight was not to support him, but just to seek that moment when she typed her own name on the report that cleared up the Vernon enquiry.

‘Who's going to do it?' she asked.

Cooper nodded, relieved that she had said it first. 'I will, if you like.’

They walked up the path. From inside the cottage came the dull, distorted sounds of artificial laughter.

Cooper knocked. It was late, and the noise sounded too loud. When Gwen Dickinson answered the door, the sound from inside the cottage increased and it became clear that she had been watching television.

‘Mrs Dickinson, when did you last see Harry?' asked Cooper.

‘You'd better come in,' she said.

She took them through the sitting room, where a talk show was on the TV, into the front room of the cottage. Here, in the semi-darkness, the same smell of pipe smoke lingered that Cooper had noticed in the woods.

‘I knew there was something going on,' said Gwen. 'We've found a body,' said Cooper. 'Hanging from a tree on the Baulk.'

‘Oh my goodness.' Gwen clutched at her bosom as if her heart would stop with the shock. She fumbled her way to an armchair behind her and sat down heavily. She stared across the room at the opposite chair.

‘You know who it is, of course,' said Cooper. But he wasn't speaking to Gwen.

‘Of course I do,' said Harry. His pipe was in his mouth and his head was resting upright on the antimacassar of his chair. But in the half-light of a single lamp in the corner, his stare was derisive. 'He always knew to do the right thing, did Wilford.’

Jess lay at Harry's feet, her black coat gleaming, one eye turned apprehensively towards the visitors, sensing the atmosphere.

Are you saying he committed suicide?'

‘Obviously,' said Harry.

And why would he do that, Mr Dickinson?’

‘Because he killed that girl. The Mount lass. It was the only way out. He couldn't have faced prison, you see. Not being kept in a cell, out of the daylight. He couldn't have stood that.'

‘He killed Laura Vernon. And you, Mr Dickinson —you helped him all along?'

‘It's what you do, for a friend.’

Cooper perched on the edge of a hard chair. The Labrador stirred and lifted her head to study Fry as she moved restlessly across the room. A low growl began in the dog's throat, but Harry silenced her with a sound that was barely a hiss of breath.

‘Do you want to tell us about it?' asked Cooper. Harry was silent for a moment, looking from one to the other. He seemed not to be considering his words, but weighing up what effect they would have. 'I saw Wilford on the Baulk that night, that Saturday,' he said. 'He was upset, and he told me what had happened. I said I would help him, of course.'

‘So you delayed things.’

Aye, I left it for a bit before I found the body. And I hid the other shoe thing.’

Harry looked down to the side of his chair, where the small mahogany cabinet stood. The shoe polish, cloth and brush were no longer on the floor in front of it, but had been tidied away, presumably in the little cupboard. Cooper remembered that he had thought them incongruous and untidy in that well-ordered room when he had seen them there on Wednesday. He realized they had not been put away then because there was no room in the cupboard. The space had been taken up by a size-five Reebok trainer.

‘I chucked it in the garden of the Mount on Wednesday night. It was supposed to make you think it might have been Vernon who did it himself.' He sighed. 'It doesn't always work like it does on the telly, though. It took you a long time to find it. And that other lass had stuck her oar in by then.' He laughed sardonically. 'That was a right turn-up for the books.'

‘You mean Becky Kelk. The girl who claimed you'd attacked her.'

‘Nasty bit of work, she is. Never been taught how to behave, if you ask me. Still — I suppose I ought to look on it as a compliment.'