She looked round for Irvine and Hurst. ‘Get out there and start talking to the neighbours and find out if they know where he is. We don’t want him to get a warning, in case he decides to go to ground.’

‘We’d never find him in these woods, even in daylight.’

‘Exactly. We might need to request the air support unit.’

As Fry looked around the untidy sitting room, she wondered whether she’d made a mistake in trying to make the arrest after dusk. Perhaps she should have waited until morning and conducted the operation at first light. It was galling to think that Shaw had vanished into those dark woodlands. He would know the grounds of Knowle Abbey better than almost anyone. If she didn’t locate him quickly, she might never see Jason Shaw again.

While she waited she examined the items strewn across the surface of a small table. Shaw had gathered a lot of magazines about country sports. Shooting Times, The Field, Sporting Gun. Many of them had cover illustrations of men in ear defenders aiming shotguns at unidentified targets, or dogs with dead birds in their mouths. Fry recalled a failed attempt by an animal rights organisation to get this sort of magazine banished to the top shelf in newsagents, along with the soft porn.

She pushed some of the magazines aside. Underneath she found an object she couldn’t identify. It seemed to be a hoop of something like dried willow, wrapped with a thin band of leather. A web of white string filled the space inside the hoop, decorated with tiny beads, and someone had attached a couple of feathers to the bottom.

‘A dreamcatcher,’ said Luke Irvine, jolting Fry out of her distraction.

‘Is that what it is?’

‘They’re Native American originally. But they’re popular here now.’

Fry frowned. ‘Popular with who?’

Irvine shifted uncomfortably. ‘Well, you know – people interested in spiritual things. There was one on the wall at Sandra Blair’s cottage. I think she probably made it herself. I bet she made this one for Mr Shaw.’

‘What is it supposed to do?’ asked Fry.

‘It stops you having bad dreams.’

Fry turned the dreamcatcher over and laid it back on the magazines. It looked incongruous lying against a picture of a slaughtered pheasant in the jaws of a Golden Retriever.

‘I wonder if that worked for Jason Shaw,’ she said.

‘It doesn’t look as though he ever used it.’

‘No.’

‘I came to tell you the dog unit has arrived,’ said Irvine. ‘They’ve brought the sniffer dog for the explosives.’

‘Oh, yes. Let’s get them in.’

An officer entered with a Springer Spaniel, which began to sniff its way enthusiastically around the house.

Fry checked the phone for messages, peered into the cupboards, walked out into the back yard, trying to ignore the barking dog. Becky Hurst appeared, with Mrs Mellor trailing behind her, looking alarmed but flushed with excitement.

‘Oh,’ she said, when she saw Fry, ‘isn’t Detective Sergeant Cooper here?’

‘No. But you remember me, don’t you?’

‘I suppose so,’ said Mrs Mellor, though Fry suspected it wasn’t her memory she was dubious about.

‘You’re aware that we’re looking for Jason Shaw?’

‘Yes. I told your girl here. When I saw Jason half an hour ago, he said he was going down to the gift shop. They wanted him to help out with something.’

Inside the Hartington cheese factory Cooper found that the buildings hadn’t been entirely cleared of their contents. In a corridor he passed pairs of white wellies that looked as though they’d missed their last wash when the factory closed. A few ancient bits of broken equipment stood around, with a metal filing cabinet and a scatter of Stilton cheese leaflets still lying on the floor.

The modern part of the factory was quite different from the old stone buildings. He passed through large cheese storage areas with quarry-tiled floors, and one building like the lower level of a multi-storey car park, with a low ceiling, hefty pillars and shadowy alcoves.

‘Jason? Where are you?’ he called.

There was a muffled laugh somewhere in the darkness.

‘Come on. I know you’re there, Jason. We’re long past the time for playing the fool.’

Something metallic banged against a wall. Cooper wondered if there was a shotgun pointing at him from a dark corner of the building. He moved sideways, away from any residual light that might be creeping through the doorway behind him or from the skylights in the roof.

The fireworks display still showered the sky with cascades of colour and created a background din of bangs and crackles. The blast of a shotgun would hardly be noticed on Bonfire Night. It would be just one more distant explosion to frighten the pigeons. No one would bother to dial the emergency number or come to see what was happening in the old cheese factory.

Then he glimpsed something light-coloured, moving across an opening. The figure was ahead of him in one of the cavernous rooms, slipping through another doorway deeper into the abandoned factory.

The person moved with a lightness and agility that surprised him. He recalled Jason Shaw’s description of the woman he’d seen in the woods near the Corpse Bridge that Halloween night, the ghostly white flicker and swirl as a figure dodged through the trees. Was he seeing the same phantom that Shaw had described so convincingly? Could the same apparition be right here in the cheese factory? Even for the most impressionable mind, that didn’t make any sense.

But that pale shape reminded Cooper of something else. He could see an individual sitting across the table from him in Interview Room One at West Street.

40

After that it was easy. Even Jason Shaw wouldn’t have walked into the gift shop at Knowle Abbey with a shotgun.

Fry directed the police vehicles round to the back entrance, where their presence wouldn’t be noticed from the shop. With officers outside each entrance, she simply walked in with Irvine and Hurst, told Shaw he was being arrested and read him his rights while Irvine put the cuffs on.

‘You do not have to say anything,’ she recited. ‘However, it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something that you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’

It felt odd saying it surrounded by tea towels and bookmarks with pictures of Knowle Abbey, and shelves of mugs saying ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’.

‘What’s this all about?’ said Shaw.

‘I’m sure you know.’

‘Is it Sandra?’ said Shaw as he was led out to the car. ‘I think I was in love with her, in a way. It’s not often you meet a woman like that.’

‘Save it,’ said Fry.

‘She had so much life in her. I had to avenge her.’

‘Really?’ said Irvine as they put Shaw into the back of the car. ‘Weren’t you responsible for her death?’

‘No. It was Manby to blame for that.’

Hurst grasped Irvine’s arm. ‘We can’t question him now or take into account anything he says.’

‘I know.’

‘And if you mean the quarry man Redfearn,’ he said, ‘I don’t know anything about that.’

Fry stopped the car from driving away.

‘There’s one thing we have to ask him,’ she said.

‘But, Diane,’ protested Hurst.

‘If we believe there may be immediate danger to life.’

Hurst backed off then. ‘You’re right.’

Fry leaned into the car and stared hard at Shaw.

‘Where are the explosives, Jason?’ she said. ‘You took some explosives from Deeplow Quarry. Diesel and ammonium nitrate pellets.’

Shaw shook his head. ‘I took them. But I don’t have them now.’

Fry watched the car drive away across the parkland towards the gates of Knowle Abbey. She hadn’t taken much notice of the phone call she’d received from Ben Cooper. She knew that Jason Shaw would be under arrest long before Cooper was due to meet him at the cheese factory in Hartington.