‘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.

Guiltily, she’d been imagining Cooper waiting at the derelict building for hours in the cold and the darkness, hoping for his coup, while she was busy doing the real work here at Bowden.

But if it was true that Shaw hadn’t killed George Redfearn, who had? And who was Cooper meeting in Hartington?

Though the tall, athletic figure was familiar to Cooper, she was no longer the young woman who’d sat nervously in Interview Room One staring at a cup of cold coffee. He couldn’t imagine this woman being intimidated by her surroundings. Her hands were steady now and the rings on her fingers glinted in the glare of a rocket as she stood in the darkness of the abandoned factory.

‘Poppy,’ said Cooper. ‘I wasn’t expecting you.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Cooper peered into the gloom, trying to make out her face. ‘What for?’

‘Everything, I suppose. It wasn’t meant to be like this. It all went wrong.’

There was no light in here, except for a few patches of greenish light from the fog-shrouded moon filtering through the skylights in the roof. Poppy Mellor stood on the edge of one of the rectangles of light, making the shadows around her seem so much darker.

‘Are the rest of the group here?’ asked Cooper.

He looked round, but could see nothing in the darkness. It was another of the large storage areas. The low ceiling and heavy pillars seemed to press in on him and made him feel claustrophobic, though he knew the room must be extensive.

Poppy didn’t answer him. It was as if she weren’t really listening, but just wanted the opportunity to talk.

‘The group have been like a family to me,’ she said. ‘Closer than my real parents or my brother. And just like a proper family, I didn’t really choose them.’

Was she armed with something? Her right arm was pressed too close to her side for him to be sure. Cooper realised he would have to let her talk. He needed her to stay calm and relaxed, and then he might find out what was going on. He also needed time for his back-up to arrive.