Instead he went into his study and tried to finish the article he had been writing for this week’s ‘Voice of Vangmoor’. He had unlocked the back door but even so he left the study door open so that he wouldn’t miss the sound of a knock or ring. After a while he went across the passage and looked across the street from his bedroom window. The Simpsons’ bedroom lights were on and the lights elsewhere in the house had all gone off. The curtains were drawn across the Newmans’ living-room window but through them he could see the light still on and the bluish glow of the television screen.

Back in the study he found it hard to concentrate. Why had they made three or four attempts to get hold of Lyn during the afternoon and then, in the evening, abruptly stopped? Suppose they suspected him of killing her and were keeping quiet over there, lying low, because they had told the police of their suspicions?

That was impossible. Why should they suspect him? It was more likely that they were simply offended. But their silence, their non-appearance, he began to find more disquieting than answering any questions of theirs could have been. At twenty past ten the downstairs lights in the Newmans’ house went out and the landing and bedroom lights came on. Stephen was staring out with the light on behind him, when suddenly Mrs Newman’s face appeared between her parted bedroom curtains. They looked at each other, their eyes meeting. Then Mrs Newman blanked out her window by jerking the curtains together, but Stephen had had a distinct impression, from the brief glimpse he had of her face, that she was very angry and aggrieved and that she had looked at him as at someone particularly blameworthy.

He couldn’t sleep. As he lay down in the dark his body began to jump and there were stars and floaters before his eyes. He thought how terrible it would be if he were to fall asleep and be awakened by a thundering on the front door, if he were to creep out of bed with pounding heart and see the police car outside, its lights blazing, Manciple and Troth at the gate. He couldn’t sleep but he was uneasy about turning his bedlamp on. Just as he could see Newman and Simpson lights from his side of the road so they could see his from theirs. He wanted to lie lower than they, to lie so low, if only that were possible, as utterly to be swallowed up in the earth and hidden.

But in the small hours he couldn’t stand it any longer. He got up and walked about the house, made himself tea, tried to read, tried even to complete his piece for the Echo. ‘After such a deluge as we have seen in these past days, a considerable greening of the moor may be expected to take place …’ The paint on Tace was dry, he looked as good as new. It had stopped raining and as the dawn came the sky was brindled in many shades of grey.

Stephen went back to bed then, but he lay sleepless and at eight he got up again. This was going to be another of those days he took off work. He felt ill and worn. If Mrs Newman didn’t come across the road in the next half-hour he would go to her. Had he ever before done that of his own volition? Probably not, but these were exceptional circumstances. His wife had left him. Have you heard from Lyn? We’ve split up, she’s left me, gone off with some man she says she’s in love with. Did that sound right? A frightening thought came to him. If Lyn really were alive, if she really had left him, wouldn’t she have told her mother? Wouldn’t she have got in touch with her?

The cat made him jump by coming in through the flap with all the bursting suddenness of a circus animal leaping through a paper hoop. A dog would have made it plain he was looking for Lyn, would have run into corners, poked under furniture, sniffed at doors. Peach walked sedately through the rooms with tail erect, hardly moving his round handsome head, hardly vibrating a whisker. He made a graceful leap on to the window sill to watch for Lyn to come from inside or out. Wouldn’t Mrs Newman wonder that Lyn had gone and not taken Peach with her?

It got to nine and no one had come. Stephen tried to phone Dadda to say he was ill, he had a virus infection, but Dadda didn’t answer. He saw Kevin go off to work, he saw Mr Newman go. At 9.15 Joanne came out of her front door, pushing a high-sprung shining white pram which she put on the front lawn. Stephen put on his walking boots and his zipper jacket. As he came out of his house Mrs Newman came out of hers and hesitated on the step, looking towards him. What happened next made his heart lurch. She shrugged her shoulders, slowly turned her back and went indoors again.

Stephen forced himself to continue down to the gate, to close the gate after him, to walk along Tace Way and into the village. There was a roaring in his head that seemed to get in the way of coherent thought. And his legs felt flaccid, boneless. Once or twice even he found himself stumbling on the smooth dry road. Again, though, difficult as walking was, awkward as that most familiar and satisfying of all his activities had become, he found himself being drawn a great distance, being compelled to that part of the moor where Lyn’s body was. His awkward stumbling walk was leading him in the direction of Bow Dale and Knamber Foin.

After the crossroads he moved in among the birch trees. He refused to lift his eyes to the ridged, boulder-strewn summit of the foin or the grey-green sweep of the dale beyond it. It was here that he had seen Rip, for the first and only time, seen him dancing to entice him. Stephen felt that Rip would know what to do, if only he were here, if only he would come out into the open and join with him and be his friend. Act normally, Stephen thought, was what Rip would surely say, for that must be what he himself did when he had done his murders and after spending a night in the mine, returned to his blameless and respectable life as a citizen of the Three Towns. Act as if you knew nothing. In your case, act as if your wife had really left you and gone away you don’t know where.

Stephen wandered among the trees whose leaves, no matter how still the day, were always faintly and delicately tremulous. He leaned against one of them, resting himself, supporting his arms on its thready thin branches, for it was too damp to sit down. The pale trembling leaves and his own pale face were reflected in the pools of water which lay everywhere between the tree roots and the hussocks of grass. So far, perhaps, he had acted normally. For someone like him it would be normal not to go crying to his wife’s relatives, to lie to them even, to wait until they asked him directly before confessing she had left him for another man. Fear began to trickle off him like sweat. He felt cooler, cleaner, freer. Being on the moor always made him feel better. Last night, hadn’t the atmosphere of the moor at Thirlton positively saved him from losing his mind? He hung against the tree, closing his eyes, resting there, inhaling the clean green scent of the leaves and grass with raindrops on them.

And the rain began again as he came out of the Banks of Knamber and began to walk back. A gentle warm rain it was, dropping out of the thousands upon thousands of tiny white clouds that streamed across the sky like galaxies. He walked slowly, lifting his face to the rain. No one would suspect him, even though he had been Lyn’s husband, for this murder was so obviously another of Rip’s murders, the victim lying as before within the confines of one of the landmarks of the moor, her death the result of strangling, her long fair hair cut off close. And he couldn’t be Rip, his blood was wrong. Alike though they were, with the same love of the moor, of solitude, of adventure, strong tall men of power and endurance, yet there was this tiny difference of blood between them. Brothers they might be, but not quite twins. Their blood was slightly differently constituted, and that would save him.