When he looked back at the screen, the webcam picture was reloading. Now the headlights of two cars were approaching the camera. But the only other colour in the image came from strings of lights hung along both banks of the river, and across the road. Some of the illuminations came close to the camera, mounted on the roof of Life in a Lens. Coloured lights also framed the iron girders of the Jubilee Bridge. The bridge was reflected on the surface water as a black, shapeless mass that disappeared into the trees on the other side of the river.

Across the river and into the trees. Where did that phrase come from? It must be a song, or possibly a book title. It made him think about the gunman who’d shot down a harmless middle-aged woman. If he was a professional, then there was something that no one was admitting out loud. He would be long gone from the area by now.

Never mind across the river and into the trees – their suspect could have been on the other side of the world before the clock even began to tick on the Shepherd enquiry.

Later that evening, Liz Petty sat in the upstairs room of Aitch’s Wine Bar in Bakewell and accepted a glass of Merlot.

‘Thanks, Ben.’

‘Cheers.’

Cooper sat down next to her with his bottle of beer. The remains of their dinner had been cleared away, and he was starting to wonder whether chocolate truffle cake would go all right with the plum-and-chilli sauce that had been on the char-grilled chicken.

‘Anyway, Quinton Downie was right,’ said Petty. ‘Fire can be one of the most difficult things to investigate. So many factors influence its behaviour that a scene can be very misleading.’

She took a drink of wine and gazed out of the window at Buxton Road. Liz lived just off Fly Hill, a couple of minutes’ walk from the wine bar, in a three-storey terraced cottage she rented from her uncle. The third-floor bedroom had a terrific view beyond Bakewell towards the golf club.

‘I remember something we were told on the course I did,’ said Petty. ‘It was a real incident, with photographs. A young child who’d died in a fire. It made me think of that case when I heard there were two children involved at Darwin Street. I know these two weren’t burned to death, but still …’

Cooper waited, recognizing that she needed to sort her feelings out before she put them into words. Whatever it was that she wanted to tell him, it might be the first time she’d talked about it to anyone. He’d learned when to listen and not interrupt.

‘You know that under the effects of intense heat, your brain expands?’ Petty said at last.

‘Yes, I think so.’ Cooper put down his glass. He had a feeling it was going to be worse than he’d imagined. Chocolate truffle cake was suddenly less appealing.

‘Well, a child’s skull is a lot weaker than an adult’s. The bones are very soft at first, you know. They showed us some photographs from this scene, where the young boy had died. The fire was so rapid and the temperature so high that when the child’s brain expanded, it burst the skull. The captions said skull failure and brain protrusionin a two-year-old fire victim. And I was thinking, if you came on a scene like that, your assumption would probably be that the child had died from a serious head injury before the fire.’

‘And that a fire had been started to conceal the evidence,’ said Cooper. ‘It happens.’

‘Right. But it would be a wrong assumption. Chances are, it might just have been the fire.’ Her voice dropped lower. ‘It might only have been skull failure and brain protrusion. Only that.’

Cooper heard the break in her voice, and let the silence settle. It was as if a bubble had formed around their table, insulating them from the rest of the wine bar. He felt he could almost reach out and touch that rare thing, the ability of two people to think the same thoughts and share the same emotions without having to speak them out loud.

Then Liz reached out for his hand. ‘You didn’t want dessert, did you, Ben?’

‘No, not really.’

‘Let’s pay the bill, then.’

Stella Searle looked away from the TV set in her bedroom towards the shower, where she could hear water running. Darren had bought her the TV himself. He’d do almost anything to keep her happy, except the one thing she really wanted.

‘Daz!’ she called. But she only heard him humming some tune to himself, like a cocky child, and she had to call him again. ‘Darren!’

‘What’s up?’

‘Come out here.’

‘I’m having a shower, darling.’

‘Come out here. There’s something on the telly you’ve got to see.’

‘It’ll wait. I won’t be a minute.’

‘No – now,’ she said, using the tone of voice she knew he’d recognize.

‘Oh, bloody hell.’

The water stopped, and after a moment he padded out into the bedroom with a towel wrapped round his middle, his hair wet and feet making damp marks on the floor.

‘What is it, Stell?’

She looked back at the screen, but the news-reader had moved on to another item, something about petrol prices.

‘It’s gone off now.’

‘Fuck’s sake, darling. If I don’t get finished in the shower, I’ll be late home. Fiona will throw a bloody fit.’

Stella took no notice of his mood, or his swearing. Darren was all mouth. She knew she had total control over him.

‘They were doing a bit about the woman who got shot in the village the other night.’

‘Oh, that. Yeah, I heard about it.’

He turned and began to head back towards the shower, clutching at the towel to keep it in place. His backside was too big, excess fat padding out his hips. Darren thought he was fit, but he spent too much time driving, or sitting around with his mates drinking beer.

‘It said the police are looking for a car. And a man that someone saw in the village that night.’

Darren hesitated with his hand on the door of the shower cubicle. ‘Good. They’ll get the bugger that did it, then. We can’t have blokes walking about shooting old women dead like that.’

‘She wasn’t all that old,’ said Stella. ‘Sixty-odd, they said. It’s nothing these days.’

‘If you say so.’

Darren slipped off the towel and went back into the shower. The water had started to trickle from the shower head, but she knew he heard her when she spoke again.

‘I reckon it was your car that someone saw,’ she said. ‘Daz, I think it’s you they’re looking for.’

‘Give over.’

‘I think you should go to the police,’ she said.

‘You must have got it wrong. It wasn’t anything to do with me.’

‘I’m only telling you what it said.’

‘Well, what did it say exactly?’ he snapped.

‘I can’t remember exactly. It was something about a blue Vauxhall Astra. That’s your car, isn’t it?’

‘Well, it might be,’ said Darren. ‘What else did it say?’

‘A man in a parka – that was it. Aged about thirty-five.’

‘I’m not thirty-five.’

‘You look it, though.’

He gave her an incredulous stare. ‘Thanks a lot.’

‘It was you, Darren,’ she said stubbornly. ‘Well, it sounded like you. Your car, and a man in a parka, seen in the village about the time of the incident. That’s exactly what it said. I think.’

‘And they reckon this man in the parka did the shooting? That’s ridiculous, Stell. That’s stupid.’

‘No, that wasn’t quite it.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake. Why can’t you remember anything properly? You’re so bloody thick, Stella. I don’t know why I bother with you.’

‘Piss off, Darren.’

He stamped off sulkily, but came straight back again. ‘I need to know exactly what they said, Stella. This is important.’

‘Witnesses, that was it. They said the police were looking for witnesses. And they particularly wanted to speak to the bloke in the parka, with the blue Astra.’

Darren didn’t reply. She glanced at him, and saw that he’d gone pale. He still wasn’t fully dressed, and the water was drying in patches on his arms. He shivered, like somebody had walked over his grave. She remembered him saying how much he hated being next to a graveyard, and all those dead bodies and stuff.