He turned towards the town. The high street was only a few yards away and some of the shops were still open. Even at the beginning of November, there were groups of young people sitting out in the beer gardens of the pubs. The smoking ban had made some of them quite hardy.

Cooper thought he might even walk down to the Hanging Gate for a drink before he went home to Welbeck Street. It was certainly a tempting thought.

Sally Naden was having a bad day with the pain. Sometimes the tablets weren’t enough to keep its excruciating surges suppressed all day long. By the middle of the afternoon the pain could break through its anaesthetic restraints like a deranged killer ripping out of a straitjacket. Once loose, the agony swept through her body in uncontrolled waves and left her exhausted and helpless.

So her mind was distracted and she wasn’t quite thinking straight by the time the phone rang and Geoff began to tell her this garbled story about people being killed and the police looking for someone. She thought he was describing the plot of some TV programme he’d been watching. He was a great one for sitting in front of episodes of Lewis and Midsomer Murders and trying to guess who did it. In fact, he would get really tetchy if you interrupted him at the wrong moment and he missed a vital clue.

As she listened to him gabbling down the line, she thought he must finally have lost touch with reality. That was the risk of watching detective drama stories all the time. You ended up confusing them with the real world. Life wasn’t actually like that. People didn’t get killed every day, the way they did in Inspector Barnaby’s world.

Finally, Sally began to realise what he was telling her.

‘Seriously? You mean—’

‘We were there,’ said Geoff.

‘It’s not possible.’

‘Well, I think it is. What are we going to do?’

Geoff had calmed down a bit and she could hear him trying to formulate a plan. What was in his own best interests? That would be the concern foremost in his mind.

‘The chances are, they’ll find out we were in the area, one way or another,’ he said. ‘Someone will have seen us or our car, or … Well, you know – it will come out sooner or later. And it will look bad if we haven’t mentioned it.’

Sally laughed, but winced with the pain it caused her. ‘You mean they might suspect you of murder? That’s a joke.’

‘Both of us,’ said Geoff firmly. ‘We were both there.’

Sally felt another surge of pain as she thought about what they’d have to do. But, for the first time in many years, she knew that her husband was right.

It was a difficult decision for Jason Shaw too. That evening, after he’d listened to the news, he sat in his little cottage in Bowden and stared at the log fire for quite a while, gulping from a can of lager. When that one was finished, he went to the fridge to fetch another. He needed something to help him think.

He remembered very clearly the figure he’d seen running through the woods near the Corpse Bridge. That pale shape in the twilight dodging through the trees. Its unnatural appearance had made him wonder whether his eyesight had been blurred by the rain.

More worrying had been the noises. The sound of something crashing through the undergrowth and that wordless yell. Who had been shouting and who were they calling to?

Jason had heard many noises in the woods at night. Often they were nocturnal animals. Foxes or badgers, or even owls. Their screeching could be unnerving if you weren’t used to it. But at least their presence was natural in the darkness. Sometimes there were gamekeepers or poachers. But they didn’t shout to each other like that. Or at least, the poachers didn’t. They wanted to remain unnoticed, so they moved as quietly and unobtrusively as possible. Jason knew that as well as anyone.

But now and then, he knew there were other people out in the woods at night. Sometimes there were kids playing games.

Popping the tab on another can, Jason took a swig. Yes, perhaps that was who it had been near the bridge. It was Halloween, after all. They might have had to go off and mess around on their own. But the bridge was a long way from anywhere. And it had been raining. Kids weren’t so tough these days, were they? The first drop of rain and they were back in the house with their PlayStations.

So that just left the final group. The ones who were doing things he didn’t understand, and didn’t want to. He’d glimpsed them from time to time, whole groups of them, sometimes silent, but other times talking or singing. He’d found dead animals too – animals that hadn’t been caught by a poacher or trapped by a keeper. Neither would do those things to a sheep that he’d seen, or leave such a bloodied mess. The reasons for that were beyond his imagination.

Jason heaved himself up from the armchair and stepped to the back window of his cottage. He heard his dog grumble outside in the kennel where it slept. Lights were on in most of the cottages in Bowden. Behind their curtains people were watching TV, maybe just hearing about the body found at the Corpse Bridge, wondering if anyone would come forward.

The bridge was too close to Bowden for anyone’s comfort. People would soon find themselves asking each other if the killer might be nearby. They would be afraid. They would wonder whether they and their families were safe. Jason was wondering the same thing. Because he was frightened too.

Suddenly, the lager tasted sour in his mouth. It made Jason feel sick with fear to think that someone might have been watching him from the trees near the Corpse Bridge last night, especially if it was one of those people – the ones who did evil, inexplicable things in the woods.

Well, he’d seen someone and the chances were high that they’d seen him. Jason put the lager can down and picked up the phone.

Ben Cooper was walking back through the streets of Edendale when his phone rang. A mobile number he didn’t recognise. Should he answer it? It might be a wrong number or a sales call, even at this time in the evening. He should let it go to voicemail.

But something made him answer the call instead.

‘Yes?’ he said cautiously.

‘Ben? That is you, isn’t it? You don’t answer your phone very professionally these days. You sounded very surly.’

Cooper stopped walking. He’d suddenly found that he couldn’t walk and talk at the same time.

‘Diane?’ he said.

‘Who else did you think it was?’

‘You’ve got a new phone. I didn’t recognise the number.’

‘It’s me, nevertheless. How are you doing?’

‘I’m okay. Hold on, though … what do you mean by “surly”?’

It sounded trivial, but he was so surprised that he couldn’t think what else to say. The last thing he’d anticipated was a call from Diane Fry. So he fell back on the first thing that came into his mind.

‘Rude, ill-tempered, unfriendly. You sounded as though you didn’t want to speak to anyone.’

‘Not the old Ben Cooper you know and love, then,’ he said.

But as he said it, the sharpness in his tone was obvious, even to himself. Blast her, she was right again – he was getting surly.

Fry sighed down the line. ‘Well, that’s the pleasantries over with,’ she said.

Cooper thought he detected actual disappointment in her voice. Surely she couldn’t have expected a delirious greeting, given their history?

He bit his lip. Well, not all of it had been bad. Fry had shown some loyalty over the years, even been the one who understood him and came to his aid when he needed it. But somehow she’d always managed to ruin things and sour their relationship again. He’d always assumed she wanted it that way.

‘So what are you doing at the moment?’ asked Fry.

‘Nothing much.’

‘Are you in town?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Why?’

‘I’m packing.’

‘What? Oh, yes, I heard. You’re moving, aren’t you? Leaving Edendale.’