'So there was trouble involving the two visitors, the Pearsons?' asked Cooper.

'A customer who'd had far too much to drink started trying to chat up ... what's her name? Trisha. I'd rather not be too specific, but you've mentioned the name already, so you're halfway there.'

'Okay.'

'Anyway, he became a bit persistent, and it turned nasty very quickly. Her husband got into an argument with him. There would have been punches thrown, but Maurice stepped in.'

'What did he do?'

'He threw the drunk out, along with a couple of his friends who stuck up for him.'

'But not the Pearsons.'

'No, he let them stay. It wasn't their fault, what had happened. Not at all. Though I think her hubby had a bit of a temper on him, you know. He looked like a man who'd try to sort out a problem with his fists, even if he was likely to come off worst. You understand what I mean, don't you? You can see it in their eyes sometimes. You can tell someone who is a little bit too close to the edge, and won't take much pushing to go over.'

'Yes, I know what you mean. I've seen people like that, especially when they've got a bit of alcohol inside them. Do you think Maurice Wharton could see it too?'

Lane shrugged. 'He'd run pubs for a long time. He must have seen plenty of customers like that. You develop a nose for trouble after a while, I reckon. You learn to spot the type.'

'He had a pub over in Chesterfield for a while, didn't he?'

'Yes, and in a pretty rough area, not far from the football ground. Now that place was never known for its food and accommodation. It's a real drinker's pub.'

'So Maurice had enough experience to judge the situation and step in at exactly the right moment.'

'Yes, I reckon that would be a fair summary. His word was enough to sort it out at that point. He didn't need to call the dogs.'

'Dogs?'

'He had two Alsatians that lived out the back of the pub. He'd call them if there was real trouble. Not that it happened often at the Light House. They came with him from the Dragon.'

'From where?'

'The pub in Chesterfield. He needed them there.'

'I see.'

'I wasn't up there at the Light House when it all kicked off, of course,' said Lane. 'I mean, the fuss about that couple going missing in the snowstorm. When the police arrived, it was Christmas Eve, as I recall a a Thursday. I'd done my last shift on the Tuesday night.'

'Tuesday? Oh, and the pub wasn't open after that, am I right?'

'Yes. The Whartons liked to spend Christmas Day and Boxing Day on their own, as a family. So they always gave the staff a couple of days off. No one wants to work over that period anyway, if they can help it. And very few customers are interested in driving out on to the moors for their Christmas dinner, even when the weather isn't as bad as it was then.'

'So Maurice and Nancy would have been looking forward to a quiet time on their own with the kids.'

'Right. They certainly wouldn't have expected the police and mountain rescue teams all over the place two days after the pub had closed for Christmas.'

'No, I suppose not.'

Lane laughed. 'I can just imagine what Mad Maurice must have said to them. In a way, I wish I'd been there to hear it. I bet it was priceless.'

'Yes, he's known as quite a character.'

'You can say that again. Everyone talks about Maurice Wharton. Even some of the staff here know of him.'

Lane arranged some gla.s.ses on the shelf above his head, and cast an eye around the lounge to see if there were any customers requiring attention. But all was quiet. It was a little too quiet for Cooper's liking, but that was probably why people came here.

'Have you seen the Whartons since they left the pub, Mr Lane?' he asked.

'A couple of times. It was sad to visit them in that little council house. Losing the pub hit Nancy hard. I think Kirsten and Eliot were the worst affected, though. It was their life, the place they'd grown up in. They used to love being able to walk out of the door and wander about on the moors. And both of them detested the idea of moving into town and living on that housing estate. They even had to get rid of the dogs. To be honest, I'm surprised Eliot's still there. But of course he was always devoted to his dad. He wouldn't leave Maurice.'

'I see. You must have got on all right with the Whartons. You worked at the Light House quite a while.'

'Yes, it was fine once you got used to Mad Maurice. Everyone liked Nancy, and Eliot and Kirsten are nice kids. People could take or leave Maurice, I suppose. But he was the one who got all the attention.'

'So what do you think went wrong at the Light House?' asked Cooper.

'Wrong? Oh, you mean the reason for it closing down?'

'Yes, of course.'

'Lots of things. I think it began when we had fewer pumps on the bar than there used to be. That's a bad sign.'

'Why?'

'The number of pumps reflects your throughputs. You've got to shift lager and keg ale within five days, and cask in three. Beer is a living product, you see. Overstocking leads to fobbing and deterioration in quality. If you're not going to sell the beer, you have to reduce the number of pumps. Maurice's throughputs had been going down for years.'

'Fobbing?' asked Cooper.

'Too much foaming when the beer is pulled through.'

'Is the quality of beer that important?'

'Of course. What do you think a that people just drink any old rubbish? Have you never heard of CAMRA?'

'I suppose so. It just never occurred to me that beer quality might have contributed to the failure of the business.'

'Well, there were other factors. All kinds of things might have affected the bottom line. Stock going out of date because of overordering, credit lost because goods were returned after their best before date. You can see there's a c.u.mulative effect.'

'A slippery slope,' said Cooper.

'Exactly. I think it must have been difficult for the Whartons to get good staff, too. The students who worked there never had proper training. They were constantly spilling beer into the drip trays. Filling one tray a day with wasted beer is like losing fifteen thousand pounds' worth of sales over the course of a year for a pub that size.'

Cooper was impressed. 'You're very well clued up about the business.'

'I've got qualifications, my friend. NVQ Level Three and a National Certificate.'

Reluctantly Cooper put his empty cup down on the counter. 'Thanks for the coffee. It was very good. All we get at the station is something hot and wet from a machine.'

'No problem. Let me know if there's anything else I can do.'

'Can I contact you here?'

'I'll write my mobile number down for you.'

Lane scribbled the number on a sheet from an order pad and handed it to Cooper.

'Of course, you realise it was all show,' he said. 'I mean that "mad Maurice" business. Maurice Wharton was a top landlord in his time. Good at his job, loyal to his customers. They were like a big family to him. If you showed that you were willing to fit in at the Light House, he'd do anything for you.'

'Anything?' said Cooper.

Lane hesitated. 'Well, yes a I think so.'

At West Street, Luke Irvine had been busy tracking down the information that Cooper had asked him for.

'Ian Gullick is a market trader. Forty-five years old, married with one grown-up child, a son. They live close by, in Lowtown. Nothing on him in the way of a criminal record. Vince Naylor is a couple of years younger, and has a house right here in Edendale. He seems to be a jack-of-all-trades. He's had all kinds of work, mostly driving jobs. But he got a twelve-month ban for a drink-driving offence, so he had to take labouring jobs on local construction sites for a while. Now he's set up his own business doing small-scale property maintenance a kitchens, bathrooms, driveways, patios. You know the sort of thing.'

'What kind of vehicle does he drive?'

Irvine looked up from his notes. 'I don't know. But I'll find out.'

'Gullick, too.'

'I'm on it.'

There was no escaping the fact that the night after the argument with Naylor, the Pearsons had left the George and were never seen again. Their behaviour up to that point had seemed perfectly normal. The original inquiry team had traced their movements over the previous couple of days before their evening in Castleton, hadn't they?

'Where else had the Pearsons been in this area, apart from the Light House?' asked Cooper.

'Earlier on the day they went missing, they'd stopped for petrol at the Sickleholme service station near Bamford,' said Irvine. 'They'd bought a hundred litres of unleaded, which was close to a full tank on a Ranger Rover III series.'

'Sickleholme service station?' said Cooper.

'You know it?'

'Oh yes.'

Everyone who drove up the Hope Valley towards Castleton knew the service station. It was located at the bottom of the road up to Bamford, right by the traffic lights on the A6187. But the name was particularly familiar to Cooper at the moment. The garage at Sickleholme had a fleet of wedding cars, including cla.s.sic Bentleys. They were on a list.

Irvine looked up, and Cooper nodded for him to continue.

'When the car was found at the cottage after the Pearsons were reported missing, it still had almost a full tank,' said Irvine. 'From the service station they visited the Riverside Herb Centre just across the road, where the credit card receipt showed they bought cheese, olives and some herbal tea. Only the tea was found in the cottage when it was entered two days later.'

He stopped speaking again, and Cooper realised that Irvine was looking at someone over his shoulder. There was only one person who could arrive so silently and immediately create such an air of tension around her.

Diane Fry stood in the doorway with her shoulders hunched as if she was cold.

'So where do you stand on this case, DS Cooper?' she said. 'What theory are you pursuing?'

Cooper could tell by her tone that she welcomed the opportunity to put him on the spot. And not just her tone either, but the use of his rank and surname. It was too formal, as if she was deferring to his position, respecting his opinion. But everyone in the room knew different.

'Would it surprise you if I said I was keeping an open mind?' he said mildly. 'We need more evidence one way or the other. At the moment, the bloodstained clothing is definitely leading towards the conclusion that foul play is involved in the disappearance of the Pearsons.' He saw Fry beginning to smile. 'But it's not enough without some confirmation.'

'You want a body?' she said.

'That would help.'

'What about these other visitors who spoke to the Pearsons the previous night?' asked Irvine tentatively. 'We haven't even made a start on trying to trace them.'

Fry shook her head. 'I think they're a red herring. Four red herrings, in fact. I mean, four unidentified strangers? It seems a bit like overkill to me.'

'You don't think they're important at all?'

'No, of course not. In my opinion, it's a deliberate effort to distract our attention. We could be chasing our tails for months trying to find those people.'

'But they could have information that would help,' said Irvine. 'One of the Pearsons might have let something slip about what they intended to do.'

'Seriously? If the Pearsons were plotting to do a bunk, I can't imagine they would have said anything to give the plan away. Especially not to complete strangers they met in the pub.'

'If they were strangers. We don't know that for sure. Whoever these people were, they might have been part of the plan.'

'How?'

'Well, I don't know. Their role could have been to pick David and Trisha up at a quiet spot where they wouldn't be seen, and whisk them away.'

But Fry was still shaking her head. 'It doesn't make any sense. Why let themselves be seen talking to the Pearsons at the Light House, then? If the plan was so good that two people were able to just vanish off the face of the earth without leaving a trace, that incident doesn't fit. It would be a major flaw in the planning.'

'Something could have gone wrong,' said Irvine uncertainly.

'I don't buy it.'

'Well that's a shame.'

Fry looked at him.

'So you're not even convinced by the bloodstains on the anorak found buried in the peat on Oxlow Moor?'

'It could be part of the plan.'

'Even if the blood is identified as David Pearson's?'

'It wouldn't be too difficult for Pearson to smear some of his own blood on his clothes and leave them for us to find.'

'But he didn't do that. They were buried.'

'Our hopes are resting on forensics, then,' put in Cooper. 'As always.'

'Not quite always. But still ...'