‘Funny you didn’t remember that was one of the pieces they played at the Thirlton concert on Saturday night.’

Stephen felt himself flush and the sweat start on his body.

‘Strange when you’re a descendant of Tace’s and an admirer of his books and when you’ve got a TV set … It’d be a fair assumption you went to the concert just because they were playing that music. Only you didn’t go, did you, Whalby? You went to the old Pony Level to cut the hair off a dead woman’s head.’ He took no notice of Stephen’s gasp. ‘We should like,’ he said, ‘to search this house first thing tomorrow. Okay with you?’

‘Why should I help you?’

‘Don’t, if that’s the way you feel. I can get a search warrant but I’m sure you’ll let us in without. And don’t run off, will you? That only pays when you’re very rich and you’ve got friends in distant places.’

Stephen shook his head, saying nothing more. He closed the front door after Manciple. He had been shocked, he had been briefly frightened, but that was all. They had no evidence, they wouldn’t be able to prove anything, it was all typical police bluff. No doubt they would come in the morning, though, and it would be unsafe to keep that book in the house.

The sun was shining, lying in golden bars and rectangles across the walls, the carpet. It was turning out rather a nice evening, the sky clearing over Big Allen. The idea of his running away made him laugh, to himself at first, then out loud. He? Run away? Where could he bear to go to? Where else could he live? What rotten psychologists the police were!

He put on his zipper jacket, slipping Muse of Fire by Irving J. Schuyler inside it, against his chest. At least he could get it out of the house and after that he could think how to dispose of it. A man followed him down into the village, or at any rate walked behind him down into the village. The man was young, he was alone, unknown to Stephen, and he might well have been a policeman. Or he might not. And when Stephen crossed the green and came to the gate into the churchyard the man also walked onto the green, got into a parked car there and drove off.

There was a police car with three men in it parked on the path that ran alongside the churchyard wall. He couldn’t tell whether they were there to watch him or not. Two uniformed policemen stood outside the gatehouse lodge. But Stephen didn’t feel at all afraid. Fear had begun to leave him that afternoon, had now entirely departed, and he felt, without knowing why, that it wouldn’t return. He had said goodbye to fear, he felt invincible, full of power. It was like being in one of those dreams in which you have committed crimes that you know you cannot be punished for, no matter what you do now you cannot be caught and they can never reach you.

The book was cumbersome, a rigid block against his body, and he knew he must get rid of it without knowing how to do this, but it didn’t worry him, he would find a way. The mine, of course, would be the place. But if it was true the police were watching him he didn’t want to lead them to the mine. He owed it to Rip not to do that. The police car started, turned round, moved slowly off down the hill towards Hilderbridge. Stephen walked back across the green, pausing at the pillar box and pretending to post a letter. The evening was sultry and humid, the air quite still, all the trees that grew in the churchyard, that surrounded the vicarage, that concealed the Hall, hung down canopies of thick, dark, tired foliage. It was respite weather, in a hiatus between rain and rain.

The two policemen were back in the lodge. Stephen began heading in the direction of the path that led up on to Chesney Fell and Foinmen’s Plain. Up there somewhere he would find a hole, a rabbit warren, a small cavern lipped by a stone, wherein to bury the book. He was approaching the Hall gates when a car came slowly down the drive. It stopped just inside the gates, the driver’s door came open and Professor Schuyler got out and hurried back to the house.

Plainly he had gone back for something he had forgotten. On the back seat and floor of the car were a tumble of books, folders, two battered briefcases, a mass of manuscript held together with a clip. Stephen looked round quickly to make sure he was unobserved and then he pulled Muse of Fire out from the breast of his jacket and tossed it lightly among them. It made him chuckle. There was even another of the professor’s own works among the books, a glossy jacketed memoir of Ford Madox Ford.

After that Stephen climbed the crinkle-crankle path with a light step, almost joyously. No one followed him. They wouldn’t have the stamina, the lung power, to follow him up here or anywhere over the steep crests of the moor. He laughed as he climbed, throwing out his arms as if to embrace with wide heavens, the foins, the green fells. I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills …

There was no evidence of any kind against him. All they knew was that he had been twice to Thirlton by car during the weekend. They would look stupid when they had wasted time and manpower searching his house only to find nothing. Perhaps he should get himself a lawyer, though. Why? Why spend money on that, money down the drain, when there was no evidence against him? When he got home he would check on the car. There might be a hair or two in the car that by some scientific process they could tell wasn’t Lyn’s.

When they had finished with it, perhaps he would sell the car. What was the use of a car to him now he wasn’t going to work any more? He wouldn’t want to go anywhere but up here on the moor. The car was a useless encumbrance that would be as expensive to keep as a horse that never got ridden.

He came over the crest at the top of the path and stood looking across the plain to where the standing stones, the curious converging procession of them, stood out dark against a sky that was peach-pink and flecked all over with feathers of gold and blue. It was almost too gorgeous, too photogenic, too much of nature copying art, and art in this case the Echo calendar. A flock of birds passed overhead, flying very high, a hundred tiny black commas in formation. Stephen came slowly across the turf towards the gate in the railing. He thought he saw something move behind the Giant, but when he looked again there was nothing.

As he opened the gate he thought he smelt tobacco smoke. The air was heavy and humid. If someone had been up here smoking during the afternoon perhaps the smell would linger on that air for many hours. The two great comb-shaped shadows lay spread, between the stones and out beyond. Stephen walked along the shadow and caught it again, the whiff of smoke. The feeling of being alone up here had left him and now he turned back sharply to see who was following him.

The plain was deserted. Stephen blinked and closed his eyes against the dazzlement of the sinking sun. He turned away again and looked with screwed-up eyes towards the far end of the avenue and as he did so a figure moved out from behind the broad protection of the Giant and stood against the sky, the sun’s rays gleaming on it with a brassy sheen. It was the figure of a very tall man with a bush of dark hair, a bearded man who wore dark trousers and a white or very pale sweater that the sun had dyed a fiery gold.

Stephen remained still. The man took the cigarette from between his lips, but instead of dropping it and treading it out, pinched it in his fingers and put the end into his pocket.

He began to walk down the avenue, between the bars of shadow. Stephen drew in his breath in a hiss. He went forward to meet the advancing figure, the godlike, bearded, golden figure, who was coming towards him down the aisle of a druids’ cathedral.

The voice rang out like a bell. ‘Stephen!’

It was part of the ritual, the magic, that this man in the pale loose aran, this man who was taller than Ian Stringer, taller even than Dadda, should know his name and address him by it. But Stephen himself couldn’t speak. He simply stared and walked.