Thorne said, ‘No. I don’t know. Maybe…’ He was in much the same spot he’d been in a few minutes earlier, shining his torch around the garden, raising it to throw the beam on to the base of the mountain directly behind. Markham did the same, though neither torch was powerful enough to see much beyond the line of rocks and small bushes twenty or thirty feet up.

‘So, how’s it looking inside?’ Markham asked.

Thorne turned and looked back at the cottage. ‘Well, it’s not exactly five-star,’ he said. ‘Probably still better than a Travelodge though.’

‘You got all the beds sorted?’

Thorne shook his head. ‘Just had a look around and put the lights on, basically.’

‘Come on,’ Markham said. ‘I’ll give you a hand.’

She pushed open the back door and Thorne followed her through the two kitchens into the parlour. She took one look at the fireplace and immediately began opening cupboards until she found a small cache of old newspapers and kindling, a few logs and a box of firelighters.

‘Woman make fire,’ she said.

‘What’s the point?’ Thorne asked. ‘Once we’ve brought the others over from Chapel House, we’ll be going straight to bed. I’m not envisaging cocoa round the fire.’

Markham knelt and began tearing off sheets of paper, twisting them into knots and tossing them into the grate. ‘Might as well,’ she said. ‘Even if we just keep it going for half an hour or so now, it’ll take the chill off. You’ll all be sleeping in your overcoats otherwise.’

‘I suppose,’ Thorne said.

Before he could do a great deal to help, Markham had got a decent blaze going. She stood up and admired her handiwork.

‘You’ve done this before,’ Thorne said.

She said, ‘It’s all fairly basic,’ then looked and saw that Thorne thought it was not basic at all. ‘God, you’re a real city boy, aren’t you?’

Before Thorne could answer her, another of the ghostly seal-calls echoed from the other side of the island. ‘Can you blame me?’ he said.

Markham threw another log on to the fire and wiped her hands off on the back of her jeans. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Let’s go and have a look at these bedrooms.’

They moved from room to room, lighting the lamps; pulling pillows, sheets and duvets from protective bin-liners, turning mattresses and making up beds.

‘We had a place in the country when I was a kid,’ Markham said. ‘Me and my brother hated it most of the time. Moaned like mad and drove my mum and dad barmy, going on about how boring it was. Still, I learned how to make a fire up, how to skin a rabbit, all that.’

Thorne looked at her.

‘I’m kidding,’ she said. ‘This was the Cotswolds, for God’s sake. You were never more than fifty feet from Waitrose or a tea shop.’

Thorne tossed a pillow on to a single bed. ‘No, I’m not the biggest fan of the countryside. My ex used to talk about getting out of London. She was Job too, so we talked about relocating every so often, but I just can’t imagine being a copper and not being in a city.’ He began stuffing a second pillow into its pillowcase. ‘I mean, what the hell are you supposed to do all day in the countryside if you’re a copper? Nick people for being pissed in charge of a muck-spreader?’ Markham laughed and he enjoyed hearing it. ‘Patrol the village fête and make sure there’s no drug-cheats at the duck racing?’

‘Trust me,’ Markham said. ‘I’ve been at plenty of seriously nasty crime scenes in places like this.’

‘Really?’

‘Well, not like this. You know, the countryside, but in places where there are actually some people around to do things to one another.’

Thorne dropped the second pillow down, straightened it. ‘It’s not for me,’ he said. ‘Too much fresh air, I get dizzy.’

‘Your ex…?’ Markham said.

Thorne looked at her. Each was holding two corners of a duvet cover; the final one of six. They shook it out.

‘Ex, because she was a copper too? I can understand how tricky that is.’

‘No, there was other stuff,’ Thorne said. Stuff he had no intention of talking about. That he had only recently begun talking to Helen about.

A lost baby.

A grief that had gone unexpressed until it was far too late.

He let go of the duvet cover, stood back and watched Markham wrestle a duvet into it. ‘Actually, I’m with another copper now,’ he said. ‘So…’

‘Helen,’ Markham said.

‘Right.’ Thorne guessed that she had got the name from Karim. ‘Yeah, she’s great.’

Markham looked at him and nodded, as though she knew he had said that to try and counteract the potent fantasy that was unfolding in his head and working elsewhere. Images that had been taking shape and growing more elaborate since he and Wendy Markham had walked into that first bedroom.

To water down the guilt a little.

Once the final duvet had been laid in place, they made their way back downstairs. In the parlour, the fire had died down somewhat, but it was noticeably warmer.

‘You were bang on,’ Thorne said.

They stared at the flames for a few moments, the shadows moving on the wall behind them; across painted stone and watercolours of seascapes in heavy, wooden frames.

‘So, who gave you that then?’ Markham asked.

‘Sorry?’

She lifted a finger, touched it to Thorne’s chin. The short, straight scar that ran along it.

‘Ah… that was a woman with a knife.’ He nodded when he saw Markham grimace. ‘Believe it or not, a woman I was actually in bed with at the time.’

Markham’s eyes widened. ‘Blimey. You must have seriously under-performed.’

‘No, it wasn’t that.’

Something else Thorne most certainly did not want to get into. The wound a prelude to an event that even Helen did not know about yet.

‘She got stroppy,’ he said, ‘when I refused to sleep in the wet patch.’

A log crackled and spat and Thorne bent to grab tongs and retrieve a smouldering ember. When he straightened up, Markham was smiling and now it wasn’t only his proximity to the fire that was making Thorne’s face hot.

‘Some women are just plain bloody selfish,’ she said.

FORTY-NINE

When Thorne and Markham got back to Chapel House half an hour later, dinner was finished and Karim had returned to his less than pleasant duties at the chapel itself. Holland – relieved in every sense – was talking to Bethan Howell while Barber, having finished clearing things away, had continued the necessary arse-kissing by volunteering to wash up in freezing water.

Once Thorne was back, people began gathering in the cottage’s large sitting room. Extra chairs were pulled in from the parlour and around the dining table. The fire was in need of some attention, which Markham was happy to provide and, within a minute or two, she had worked the same incendiary magic as had been conjured at the Old House a short time before.

‘That’s lovely,’ Nicklin said. He raised cuffed wrists, as though to warm them at the fire. ‘No crumpets in those plastic bags, were there?’

There were nine of them crowded into the room. Markham had been quick to get one of the bottles of wine open and pour glasses for herself, Howell and Barber. With everyone else present on duty or in handcuffs, they were the only ones drinking anything stronger than tea. Thorne was on the last of the coffee from the school, already resigned to the fact that he would not be getting a great deal of sleep.

Truthfully, Thorne was uncertain as to the best way to proceed. It was only a little after nine o’clock and, though he was not exactly comfortable with everyone sitting around as though they were all on holiday together, it was still too early to go to bed. There was an hour or so yet before he would want to move the prison party across to the Old House for the night and he was happier killing the time somewhere warm.

‘We’ll stay here for now,’ he said. ‘It’s more comfortable and I’d prefer it if we all stayed together as long as possible.’