‘A quick resolution would be nice,’ he said, though to no one in particular.

‘Amen to that,’ said DC Luke Irvine, who happened to be standing closest. ‘You know I have all these other cases, Ben—’

‘So have we all.’

‘Fair enough, I suppose. What do you want me to do?’

Cooper looked at his watch. ‘You can get up to Earl Sterndale and visit Rob Beresford’s parents. Find out whatever they know about Sandra Blair. Obviously, we need an address for her, any family, the next of kin.’

‘Got it.’

‘Oh, and you can let them know their son is still with us, making a statement back at the station. He’s phoned them already, but they’re probably worried about him.’

‘I’m on my way.’

Cooper looked round. DC Carol Villiers would be at West Street to take Rob Beresford’s statement when he arrived. Becky Hurst had a rest day. That left just one member of his team.

DC Gavin Murfin was slouched against a stone wall, his body ballooning like the Michelin Man under several layers of clothing. Murfin looked detached, or at least semi-detached. But Cooper had known him to have the best insights at these moments, some nugget from more than thirty years of experience.

‘What are you thinking, Gavin?’ he asked.

Murfin shifted reluctantly from the wall. ‘In the old days I’d be thinking, I wonder how much overtime I can make from this one.’

‘No overtime now, Gavin.’

‘Exactly.’

Cooper watched him slump back again. So did that mean Murfin wasn’t thinking about anything at all? With Gavin, it was possible. Though there was also a likelihood that he was just contemplating food.

Another police Land Rover was working its way down the track, bumping over the ruts and splashing through a miniature lake of muddy water that had gathered on the bend before the final descent. Its white paintwork was already filthy and the wipers were struggling to keep an area of windscreen clear for the driver.

‘You had a review with Personnel, didn’t you?’ said Cooper. ‘What’s going to happen?’

Murfin groaned. ‘If I stay on any longer, it’s bad news.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘I mean they might send me to Glossop,’ said Murfin, with a note of despair.

‘It’s not the end of the world, Gavin.’

‘No. But you can see it from there.’

‘So, what? You’re chucking in the towel? Collecting your pension and waving goodbye?’

‘It seems so. Though I’ve got a different type of gesture in mind.’

The Land Rover had been forced to stop a hundred yards up the ancient, potholed trackway. There were already too many vehicles down here near the scene. No one was going to stand a chance of turning round when they came to leave. The back-up crew from the Land Rover had decided to take a shortcut across the field to reach the riverside.

Cooper watched them with interest, guessing they were from one of the bigger towns, Chesterfield or even Derby. One officer, climbing over a stock fence on to wet grass, took a couple of electric shocks. Perhaps, thought Cooper, he should have warned them to get the fencing turned off before they did that.

‘So what are you going to do with yourself, Gavin?’ he asked. ‘I don’t suppose Jean will want you getting under her feet all day long at home.’

‘How right you are. I don’t even have any hobbies that will get me out of the house. There’s no shed for me to hide in. If I took up gardening, she’d think I’d gone mad and get me certified. Besides, I’ve just laid a new patio over the flowerbed.’

‘A few cruises?’

Murfin sighed again. ‘Have you ever been on one of those? You get all the same daft biddies and boring old farts on every boat. It’s like Death on the Nile, but with fewer laughs. When we’re not actually on shore trailing round tacky souvenir shops in ninety-degree heat, I spend my time propping up the bar. And I can do that just as well at home, not to mention that the beer’s better round here.’

‘You have a couple of young grandchildren now, don’t you?’ said Cooper. ‘Surely you’re looking forward to spending more time with them?’

‘There is that,’ said Murfin, without any great enthusiasm.

Cooper felt sure there was something Murfin wasn’t telling him. What did he actually have planned for his years in retirement? Something he was embarrassed about, perhaps. Maybe Jean had it all mapped out for him and Gavin had no say in it at all. That would be possible. She might have decided her husband should go to adult education classes to learn Spanish or salsa dancing, or t’ai chi. Or even all three. That would keep him busy, all right.

But the leap of the imagination to picture Gavin Murfin as a Spanish-speaking salsa dancer and t’ai chi expert left Cooper feeling mentally exhausted. His brain wasn’t ready for such a shock.

Above the trees Cooper could see the upper slopes of the hills now. On the Derbyshire side there had been a series of disturbing incidents recently – increasingly frequent reports of animals being found slaughtered on the moors. Sheep with their eyes gouged out and their genitals mutilated, a cow with its ears slit, a horse with its tail amputated. People were talking about Satanists and ritual sacrifice. But it didn’t take much for Derbyshire people to start talking like that. In Peak District villages they didn’t seem to believe in religion very much these days. But they believed in everything else.

Cooper realised they were going to have to extend the search area considerably. Who knew what had been going on in these woods? He would have to speak to the DI to get that organised.

‘Still, you won’t miss me when you’ve got these bright kids,’ said Murfin. ‘Look at young Luke there. He’s the future. Happy as a pig in clover he is, with this sort of thing.’

‘Do you think so?’

‘He follows you about like a dog, Ben. He knows you’ll find him a nice juicy murder case.’

‘Could you actually get some work done, Gavin?’ said Cooper.

‘Like what?’

‘Get across the border and see if you can assist our colleagues from Staffordshire.’

5

DC Luke Irvine was breathless by the time he reached the top of the trackway where his car was parked on a grass verge. He was driving a Vauxhall hatchback, and it was his current pride and joy. He hated the idea of scraping its paintwork on a dry stone wall in one of these narrow lanes, or having some uniformed bobby snapping his wing mirror off with a Transit van.

As he climbed into his car, he wondered if there was a reason he’d been tasked with finding out about the victim’s family. It might mean that he’d end up having to inform bereaved relatives of a death. It was the job everyone dreaded the most. Would Ben Cooper delegate that responsibility to him?

Irvine was conscious of certain subjects he mustn’t mention to his DS. It was murmured around the office that Ben Cooper might still be vulnerable to an ill-judged comment. No one knew how he might react to the wrong word. Some said he was on a knife edge, though so far he seemed to be hiding it well. Irvine was even nervous of mentioning the Scenes of Crime department, or crime-scene examiners, or even some forensic detail. It was the department Ben’s fiancée had worked in. Would it bring back intolerable memories?

But Irvine wondered whether he was being over-sensitive about this. Cooper was a professional. He could surely deal with these things; separate his job from whatever happened in his private life outside the office. Even the death of a fiancée.

With the car started, he checked his satnav for Earl Sterndale. Ben Cooper would have used a map, of course. He was an obsessive user of Ordnance Survey maps. No, scratch that. Ben would have known exactly which way to go without having to look at any map. Irvine had to accept that he wasn’t as familiar with these remoter areas as his DS was. He wasn’t a Derbyshire boy like Cooper. He’d grown up in West Yorkshire. Parts of that county were very similar to the Dark Peak, but it didn’t help when it came to navigating these back roads.