They were about to call it a day and head back to the station a bit early when Gerry Masterson rang Annie’s mobile.

“Where are you?” Gerry asked. “Where are you right now?”

“Wensleydale,” said Annie. “We’re just packing in for the day. Why?”

There was a pause at the end of the line. For a moment, Annie thought she’d lost the connection. It happened often out here. “Gerry?” she said. “Are you still there?”

“Have you visited Stirwall’s yet?”

“No. We’re saving them for tomorrow.”

“You’re not so far away.”

“No, but—­”

“I’m sorry to do this, guv, really I am, but I think you should go there now.”

“Gerry, what’s going on? It’s been a crap day, to put it mildly.”

“I know, I know. And I’m sorry. But I’ve been checking reports and speaking on the phone all day, and Stirwall’s reported a penetrating bolt pistol stolen about two years ago. We need more details.”

Annie swore under her breath. “Can’t you get them over the phone?”

“It needs an official visit. There’s always something else comes up you’d never think of on the phone. Employee records, for example. Someone might have some names for us. Besides, you’re a senior officer on the case.”

Annie knew she was right. “OK, we’ll go now.”

“I’m really sorry.”

“Forget it. Got a name for us?”

“Ask for James Dalby. He’s the head supervisor, and he’s there waiting for you.”

As Annie turned the car around, Doug Wilson gave a heavy sigh.

“What’s up, Dougal?” she asked. “Hot date tonight?”

“Something like that,” said Wilson. “Actually, it’s my sister’s eighteenth-­birthday do. We’ve booked a table at that new steak restaurant in town.”

Annie looked at her watch. “Don’t worry, you’ll make it in plenty of time.”

“Aye. Smelling like an abattoir, no doubt.”

“Well, you’ll be eating steak for dinner, won’t you?” said Annie with a sweet smile. “If what we’ve seen so far today hasn’t put you off, then why not watch a few more cows getting slaughtered first? Who knows, maybe you’ll even see your dinner before it’s dead.”

“Ha-­ha,” said Wilson, then he scowled and looked out of the window at the dark gray moors.

Soon the long squat shape of Stirwall’s loomed before them. There had been complaints that it had been built too close to the nearby village, and residents complained of the smell and noise at all hours of the day and night. But it was still there, still operating. Stirwall’s was one of the larger abattoirs in the area, too, with vans coming and going at all hours, stacks of boxes on pallets in the yard.

They parked in the area marked vISITORS and asked the first worker they saw where they could find James Dalby. He pointed to the front doors and told them to turn left up the stairs and they’d find Mr. Dalby’s office on the first floor.

They thanked him and walked toward the open entrance. The outside of the building was surrounded with lairages, as one of the workers at the previous slaughterhouse had called them, holding pens where the animals languished awaiting slaughter. At the moment, some of them were full of lowing cattle and others were being sluiced out according to health regulations before another batch was led in.

The smell got worse inside. And the noise. As each animal came individually through a chute from the lairage, it was rendered unconscious by a knockerman’s bolt gun, then strung up by its hind legs on a line. Three monorails of dead animals slowly moved down the length of the abattoir. At each stage of the way, slaughtermen performed their specialized tasks, such as slitting the throat for bleeding, spraying with boiling water to loosen the skin, then the actual skinning and disemboweling, careful removal of valuable organs, such as the liver, kidneys, pancreas and heart. The stench was awful. Annie tried to keep her eyes averted as she climbed the metal stairs to Dalby’s office, but it was impossible. There was something about ugly violent death that demanded one’s attention, so she looked, she watched, she saw. And heard: the discharge of the bolt guns, the buzz of the mechanical saws, and the change in pitch when they hit bone as the head was cut off and the animal split in half. It was almost unthinkable that someone had done this to Morgan Spencer.

Annie knocked on Dalby’s office door, and they were admitted just as a screeching noise far worse than fingernails on a blackboard rose up from the killing floor. Annie didn’t know what it was, and she didn’t want to know. She was glad to close the door behind her and find that the room was reasonably well soundproofed and that the air smelled fresh. No doubt Dalby’s exalted position had its perks. Annie had been worried that he would have been patrolling the floor in a white hat and coat keeping an eye on the workers, and that they would have had to walk by his side to interview him, keeping pace with the line, as they’d had to do at the previous place they visited. But he was the one who supervised the supervisors.

Dalby was a roly-­poly sort of fellow in a rough Swaledale jumper, with a ruddy complexion and a shock of gray hair. “Sit down,” he said. “Sit down. I apologize the place is such a mess, but I don’t get a lot of visitors.”

Annie had wondered about that when she had parked in the visitors area. It certainly wasn’t very large, she had noticed. There were two orange plastic molded chairs, and Annie and Doug sat on them. Dalby went behind his desk. Through the window, over his shoulder, Annie could see the moors rolling off into the gray distance. It was a calming view.

“I’ve just been speaking with a DC Masterson,” said Dalby. “Nice lady. Terrible business, this, though. One wonders where to begin.”

“How large is this operation?” Annie asked first, when Doug had taken out his notebook.

“Stirwall’s is a large abattoir,” Dalby replied, leaning back in his swivel chair and linking his hands behind his neck. “We employ about a hundred personnel, sometimes more when things are especially busy in autumn.”

The lambs, Annie thought. The Silence of the Lambs. “That’s a lot of ­people,” she said.

“We manage to keep busy. We’ve a good number of meat processors to supply. Not to mention butchers and supermarkets.”

“As you’re aware,” Annie went on, “we’re interested in an incident of theft that took place here around two years ago.”

“That’s right,” said Dalby, nodding gravely. “We did report the theft to the police at the time.”

“What exactly were the circumstances?”

“It was a penetrating bolt pistol. This model.” He took a loose-­leaf binder from his desk and flipped to a picture for her. It was exactly the same as the kind the forensics ­people said had killed Morgan Spencer.

“Where was it kept?”

“There’s a metal cabinet fixed to the wall down on the floor where we keep all our stun guns.”

“Locked?”

“Of course.”

“Who has keys?”

“Well, I do. The supervisors do. And the knockermen and slaughtermen, of course. I mean, to be honest, almost anyone down there can get to them if he wants.”

“That sounds very secure.”

Dalby gave her a suspicious look. She knew her sarcasm wasn’t lost on him. Nor was it appreciated. “It worked,” he said. “We’ve only had the one theft in sixty years.”

“It’s enough,” said Annie, “if it was used to kill someone. A human being, I mean.”

Dalby narrowed his eyes and peered at her. He didn’t look so roly-­poly anymore. “You don’t approve of what we do, do you?”

“Whether I approve or not is irrelevant.”

“Right. Yes. I thought so. You’re one of them there vegan tree huggers, aren’t you?”

Annie flushed. “Mr. Dalby. Can we please get back to the matter in hand? The bolt gun.”

“Right, the bolt gun. Well, as I said, it’s the penetrating kind.” He leered. “Know what that means?”

Annie said nothing.

Doug Wilson looked up from his notes. “I wouldn’t use innuendos like that with the boss,” he said. “She’s been known to get quite nasty.”