‘What have we got, then?’ he asked.

Abbott had been crouching in his white scene suit, but stood up and greeted Cooper. The knees of the paper suit were stained with brown from the churned-up peat.

‘The main item is a small rucksack,’ he said. ‘Nylon manufacture mostly, so it’s survived being buried. I couldn’t say how long it’s been here, but a few years certainly.’

‘You’re saying “buried”. It wasn’t just dropped and lost?’

‘No way. It was dug into the peat and covered over. It was only a few inches down, but a layer of peat and then the heather or whatever growing on top of it would have concealed it pretty well. In fact, by the shape of it and the position it was lying in, I’d say it had been deliberately flattened, possibly by somebody jumping up and down on it.’

‘They were hoping it wouldn’t be found, then?’

‘Not for a long while. In fact they might have been hoping it would rot down eventually, but, like I say, it’s nylon.’

‘Non-biodegradable.’

‘Yes.’ Abbott lifted off a fragment of charred bracken that had fallen into the hole. ‘If we’re really lucky, we might get a partial footwear impression,’ he said. ‘That looks like a boot print to me, near the shoulder strap there. Out here, the soles of anyone’s boots would be covered in muddy peat, just like ours. You couldn’t stamp on a clean surface like this without leaving a mark.’

‘Could the rucksack have been damaged in some way?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Is there a hole torn in the bottom? Are the shoulder straps intact? I’m thinking that someone might have decided it was too badly damaged to be useful any more, and they couldn’t be bothered taking it home with them, or even carrying it off the moor to dispose of.’

Abbott narrowed his eyes as he looked into the hole. ‘I understand what you’re getting at. It looks perfectly sound to me, but we won’t know for certain until we get it back and examine it properly.’

Cooper straightened up. ‘There’s more than the rucksack, though. It isn’t just some hiker who decided to dump a bit of old kit in the heather.’

‘No, certainly not. There are other items coming to light. We have a couple of anoraks – quite expensive garments from the labels, and stains on them that could be blood at first glance. We’ll need to confirm that. There’s a mobile phone. Dead as a dodo, of course. And look at this.’

He was holding a partially decomposed lump in an evidence bag. On closer inspection, it turned out to be a leather wallet, probably also quite an expensive one when it was bought.

‘The peat has preserved this pretty well,’ said Abbott. ‘I can even make out a name on one of the credit cards.’

‘What? There are still credit cards in there?’

‘Yes. And some cash too, by the looks of it.’

‘We assumed the stuff must have been thrown away by some thief when they’d emptied out the valuables.’

Abbott was silent for a moment. He gave Cooper a meaningful glance. ‘No, that’s not the situation we have here. It’s something quite different.’

Cooper caught his breath. He knew only too well what Abbott meant. This discovery had been coming for the past two years. It had been inevitable ever since an incident one snowy night in December.

‘What’s the name on the card?’ he asked finally.

‘You could guess, I think. The name is David James Pearson.’

A light dawned on Villiers’ face too, then. It wasn’t just E Division who remembered the case. Carol had been serving in the RAF Police at the time. She might even have been stationed overseas – it wouldn’t have made any difference. Cooper could see that the name rang a bell. The story had been in the news continuously for months.

‘And did you say there was blood on the clothing?’ he asked.

‘We think so. I’m about to do a presumptive test, but my instincts are bristling like an angry hedgehog.’

An instinct wasn’t proof of anything, as Cooper had been reminded a few minutes ago. But this was different. In this instance, he trusted Abbott’s instinct. Because his own gut was telling him exactly the same thing.

‘You know what this means, Ben?’ asked Abbott.

‘Yes,’ said Cooper, with a deep sigh. ‘It means the Major Crime Unit.’

4

Detective Sergeant Diane Fry was in the outside lane of the M1 motorway when she got the call. Her black Audi was travelling at just over seventy miles an hour, passing a convoy of French lorries occupying the inside lanes. Her CD player was blasting out one of her favourite albums, Songs of Mass Destruction. She loved Annie Lennox’s voice, always full of soul, even when rocking on ‘Ghosts in My Machine’.

Her fingers tapped on the steering wheel in a rare moment of relaxation. Her car was almost her only personal space, the last refuge where she could escape from the tension that ruled the rest of her life.

Fry turned the CD off to take the call. While she listened to the message, she looked ahead, saw the overhead gantry signs for Junction 26, the Nottingham exit. She was pretty sure there was a link on to the A610, which would take her back into Derbyshire.

‘Yes, give me an hour or so.’

‘Understood.’

She indicated to move into the inside lane and slowed for the exit. At the same time she began to reset the route on her sat nav.

‘Can you send me an outline of the original inquiry?’ she asked.

There was a pause. ‘We’ll ask the locals to give you a copy.’

‘That’ll do.’

She hit the roundabout and found herself stuck behind a car transporter as she filtered left towards the A610 for Ripley and Ilkeston.

‘Well, maybe a bit more than an hour,’ she muttered.

Fry had been with the East Midlands Special Operations Unit – Major Crime for six months now, part of the Derbyshire contingent allocated to the new unit when the county’s own Major Crime Unit was wound up.

The joint initiative was headed up by the former divisional commander from D Division in Derby. He was the man who’d expanded the city’s burglary and robbery squads and introduced Operation Diamond to deal with serious sexual and violent assaults. He was also behind Operation Redshank, set up to target gun and gang crime after a spate of shootings in Derby that had culminated in the death of fifteen-year-old Kadeem Blackwood in 2008.

Just as importantly from Fry’s point of view, this chief superintendent had joined Derbyshire from the West Midlands, just as she had herself.

It was funny to think now how frustrated she’d felt at being co-opted into discussions about inter-force cooperation last year. At the time it had seemed to have no relevance to her own career. She’d felt as though she was just waiting for an opportunity to move back to Birmingham, something that was beginning to look less and likely among all the cuts and restructuring.

But then the regional Major Crime Unit had become a reality, as all five forces in the East Midlands disbanded their own units in an effort to save cash. Its remit was to investigate all murders and other major crimes in the region, including kidnappings.

Though murders were still few in number, they caused massive disruption to local forces, especially in the first week of an inquiry. The regional unit meant that officers from Derbyshire had to support their colleagues in neighbouring areas, even those as far away as Lincolnshire or Northamptonshire. She now had the chance to operate in towns and cities well away from the rural wastelands of the Peak District.

The Northern Command of EMSOU – MC was based in the city of Nottingham, barely more than a forty-mile drive from Edendale, yet it might as well be a world away.

Fry called her office back.

‘This turn-out. Who’s on the ground at the moment?’

‘Local CID officers. I don’t know exactly who. Do you want me to get a name to make contact with?’