Naden’s footsteps clanged on the metal walkway. The sound reverberated around the empty shed. And bounced off the hard concrete floor below.

‘Oh, it’s not that difficult,’ he said.

Diane Fry and Luke Irvine entered the factory through the same door Cooper had used. Outside in Hartington, the last few fireworks were spluttering to a halt after a spectacular finale.

Fry kicked against a pair of wellington boots standing by a doorway and crunched through a pile of dusty leaflets on the floor.

‘What a mess,’ said Irvine in a hushed tone.

‘Let’s hope we find nothing worse,’ said Fry.

They moved steadily through the rooms and were joined by two uniformed officers. The beams of their torches illuminated the darkest corners, alighting on old filing cabinets and mysterious heaps of abandoned equipment.

‘Ben?’ Fry called.

She moved ahead, passing through a doorway, then another, following some instinct she couldn’t explain. She knew Cooper was here, because his car was parked nearby. But she didn’t know who else was.

Ben Cooper hardly knew what happened next. He and Geoff Naden were staring into each other’s eyes. He was aware of Naden’s left hand reaching out to grasp his shoulder, and Naden’s right hand coming up with a length of steel pipe he must have picked up from the floor.

Cooper instinctively grabbed his wrist. He wasn’t as heavy as Naden. He could feel the difference as soon as they made physical contact. He didn’t want either of them to go over that rail. But he was also conscious of Poppy Mellor immediately behind him. Cooper needed to turn round to see what she was doing, but he was reluctant to take his eyes off the other man. He felt for his extendable baton, concealed in a pocket of his coat.

‘Be sensible, Mr Naden,’ he said. ‘This won’t help anyone. It will only make things worse for you.’

‘It doesn’t matter to me any more,’ said Naden grimly.

And then there was a chaos of people shouting and lights swinging across the ceiling, picking up the figures on the walkway, then passing on and reflecting off the skylights, flashing like the starbursts in the sky over Hartington. Cooper heard his own name called, boots clanging on the metal steps.

In an explosion of light he saw Naden raising the length of pipe. Then an impact from behind threw him off balance and he dropped his baton as he threw out a hand to clutch at the rail and save himself from falling.

He dropped to his knees with the breath knocked out of him, expecting a blow to fall at any second. He heard Naden cry out – one loud, angry yell that turned into a scream of fear. Then a sickening impact thudded through the empty shed.

Cooper raised his head. He saw Diane Fry standing at the top of the steps, white-faced and ghostly behind the light of her torch. And Geoff Naden had gone.

42

Wednesday 6 November

Ben Cooper’s Toyota was booked in for a service on Wednesday morning. There was some problem with the suspension, which was making the steering feel unpredictable. He must have been neglecting it recently. That made him feel guilty, as if it were a person close to him that he’d been mistreating. Cooper knew you had to work at relationships. He supposed it was as true with cars as it was with people.

So today he’d walked to the office in West Street. It wasn’t far from the flat, and the brisk November air helped to clear his head and wake him up.

It was funny how the offices at E Division headquarters seemed busier today than during the whole of the inquiry that had followed Sandra Blair’s death and the subsequent killings. Officers and civilian staff who Cooper had never seen before had turned up and were working on the case, now that it was all over.

Of course, there had been a lot of people involved in the incident at the old cheese factory. That meant statement after statement to be taken, including Cooper’s own. Yet his account might be the least useful to the prosecution, in some ways. He didn’t see the moment of Geoff Naden’s death. It happened in the darkness as far as he was concerned, another life snuffed out in the shadows.

So it was lucky that Diane Fry, Luke Irvine and the other officers present were able to give coherent and consistent witness statements, confirming that Poppy Mellor gave Naden that fatal push, just as he was about to strike with the steel pipe. There had been no plan for that. In Poppy’s case, things had gone badly wrong now.

It was still unclear what the group had intended to do with the explosives stolen from the quarry by Jason Shaw. The dog unit had located them in the factory, hidden in a disused office. But the experts said they were in no condition to be used. So perhaps Knowle Abbey had been safe, though not Earl Manby himself.

Cooper thought back to that first morning at the Corpse Bridge and the way he’d been caught up in the legends around it, the stories of the coffin roads and their associated ghosts and spirits. It had seemed to him then that the Devil had manifested at the bridge. But now he wasn’t sure who the Devil was in this case.

Gavin Murfin had some news of his own to break that morning. He took Cooper aside for a quiet word. His manner was surreptitious, almost furtive, as if he feared some of the civilians around today were spies of the management and might overhear.

‘I’m telling you first, Ben,’ he said. ‘I thought you should know.’

‘What is it, Gavin?’

‘I’m calling it a day, Ben. This is the end.’

‘So you’re finally going?’ said Cooper. ‘You’ve resigned?’

‘It’s by mutual agreement, like.’

‘You’re starting to sound like a politician, Gavin. So you’re going to spend more time with the family.’

‘Not exactly. I’ve been offered another job.’

‘Really? What about the grandchildren? Weren’t you looking forward to spending more time with them?’

‘We tried it this week,’ said Murfin glumly. ‘Have you seen the amount of baby stuff you have to carry around with you these days? It’s like taking Pink Floyd on tour.’

‘I’m sorry that you felt like this.’

‘It’s all the fault of that woman,’ said Murfin.

‘Gavin, you know what happens when a police officer uses that term. You get dragged in front of a parliamentary committee to apologise for being disrespectful.’

Murfin laughed. ‘I might,’ he said. ‘Except I wasn’t referring to the Home Secretary.’

‘I suppose this means you won’t be a police officer much longer. It’s hard to grasp, Gavin. You’ve been in the job such a long time.’

‘It feels like about three centuries. I ought to be handing in my top hat and cutlass.’

‘So – a new job offer? What are you going to do?’

Murfin looked round as if about to confide a secret. ‘You’ve heard of Eden Valley Enquiries?’ he said.

From somewhere in the past, Cooper heard an echo of his own voice asking that same question. Have you heard of Eden Valley Enquiries? And a scornful answer coming back to him: A firm of second-rate enquiry agents? Divorces and process-serving, that sort of thing.

But Cooper didn’t repeat the answer that Diane Fry had once given him. He sensed it would be the wrong thing to say just at this moment, with the expression on Gavin’s face suggesting he was screwing himself up to some kind of embarrassing confession.

‘Of course,’ Cooper said instead. ‘They have an office in one of those small business centres on Meadow Road, don’t they?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Discreet confidential enquiries. No questions asked.’

Murfin looked even more uncomfortable. ‘Mmm,’ he mumbled.

Eden Valley Enquiries. Daniel Grady was only his latest contact with that outfit. Cooper recalled that one of their operatives had actually been given the task of following Diane Fry one night, as a result of her connection with a murder case. The man tailed her into Sheffield by car, then followed her on foot as far as some railway arches, only for his assignment to end in a painful confrontation when Fry realised she was being followed. Cooper himself had been obliged to tell Diane who her stalker was, after following up the name ‘Eve’. Not a friend of the victim’s, as they’d thought – but an acronym. Eden Valley Enquiries.