A short while later, Liz Petty arrived at the Light House with her crime-scene kit, looking a bit disgruntled at the call-out.

'There's a much better crime scene than this across the moor there,' she said. 'Two nice bodies, and all I get is a smelly cellar. I bet it's full of spiders, too.'

'Yes, it is,' said Villiers.

Cooper heard her voice from the bottom of the steps.

'Liz?' he called.

'h.e.l.lo?'

'It's all right. It's me. Come on down.'

'Where are you?'

'In the cellar, of course.'

Liz's face lit up when she saw Cooper.

'Ah. Did you do this just so you could see me before tonight?'

'Obviously,' he said.

'I think I'd better get out of the way,' said Villiers. 'I'll be upstairs if you need me.'

As soon as she looked at Cooper properly, Liz drew in a sharp breath at the sight of the bruise on his temple. He'd almost forgotten it himself, though his arm and shoulder were painful when he moved suddenly. But this was the first time Liz had seen him since it happened. He'd forgotten that, too.

'Oh, that looks sore,' she said.

'It's not too bad.'

She touched the side of his head gently with the tips of her fingers. Luckily she'd removed her latex gloves, and the touch was quite soothing.

'What on earth were you doing, going there on your own without backup?' she said.

'Oh, don't. It's just something that happens now and then.'

'Not to my husband.'

'Future husband.'

'Well, I want to make sure you're still around by then.'

She looked at the bruise again, and winced as if she felt his pain. But he wouldn't ever want her to do that.

Liz smiled and took Cooper's arm a a firm, affectionate touch that made him forget for a while that he was on duty and working.

'We shouldn't,' he said.

'I know. But it's a cellar, and no one else is around.'

'Even so.'

She squeezed his arm again. 'You're so well behaved. You could relax a bit more sometimes, you know.'

Cooper felt the temptation, but pulled himself together. It was a shame, but there were more urgent things to deal with.

'What was that you were saying to Carol just now about another crime scene?' he said.

'They've found two bodies. Haven't you heard?'

'd.a.m.n it. No, I hadn't.'

Cooper looked at his phone, and saw Network lost. They were below ground level, of course. Even if there was mobile phone reception on this part of the moor, the signal would be blocked by the cellar walls and the depth of peat lying around them.

He hated being out of touch. It was bad enough at the best of times, but now there seemed to be a major development, and he was unreachable. But someone could have called the officer outside on his radio. Airwave worked here, surely.

That led him inevitably to the suspicion that he was being deliberately kept out of the loop. The thought made him unreasonably angry.

'The bodies,' he said. 'Is it the Pearsons?'

Liz looked at him in concern at the change in his tone. 'Oh, I couldn't say. But that seems to be the a.s.sumption being made right now. Two bodies, dead for some time. They were found in an abandoned mine shaft up on the moor.'

Cooper gritted his teeth. 'A mine shaft? Really.'

'You don't sound too surprised.'

'No, I'm not,' he said. 'I suppose the bodies haven't been there for two and a half years, though. Not likely.'

'Again, I couldn't say. You'll have to ask someone else for information, Ben. I'm just a crime-scene examiner.'

He tried to calm himself. Of course it wasn't Liz's fault. Far from it. He shouldn't be speaking to her as though it was.

'I'm sorry.'

'It's okay.' She looked round the cellar. 'But we have our own scene, such as it is. So what's here?'

'It's more what's not here,' said Cooper.

'Such as?'

'Chest freezers.'

'What?'

'There are no chest freezers. They must have had big freezers here. They left all this equipment in the pub when they went a the kitchens are full of stuff. But no freezers.'

'Okay.'

'Look,' he said, 'there's a s.p.a.ce against this wall where something of that size has been standing. You can see still the shape of it on the floor.'

'Stay back,' said Liz. 'There are shoe marks in the dust right in front of you. And if someone carried a freezer out, there might be prints on the wall.'

Cooper took a step backwards. 'And I think we should check the whole cellar for traces of blood.'

'Oh Lord, that means turning the lights out.' She sighed. 'Your theory being that this might be a primary crime scene?'

'Yes, possibly.'

'In that case, I'll need to call in and get a full team,' she said.

'But I'm guessing everyone is fully committed already.'

'Yes, we'd have to wait some time.'

'Come on, Liz ...'

'Oh, now you're turning on the charm. You know I can't resist. Okay, you can leave me to it.'

'Thanks. I owe you a favour.'

'I'll think of something, don't worry.'

Cooper ran up the steps, and Villiers met him at the top.

'Have you heard, Ben?' she said.

'Yes, just now. Two bodies.'

'That stinks, doesn't it?'

'To high heaven.'

Villiers gave him a hand up out of the hatch. The s.p.a.ce behind the bar counter was awkward and narrow. It couldn't have been easy for a man of Maurice Wharton's size to get through.

'If it is the Pearsons,' said Villiers, 'they should be able to ID them pretty quickly. There are DNA profiles on record. And of course there's a family member on hand. It depends what condition the bodies are in, I suppose.'

'It would be very useful to know that. I mean, what stage the decomposition is at. I wonder when anyone will bother to tell us.'

'Briefing tomorrow, at a guess?'

'That's no good.'

Villiers looked thoughtful as they walked out of the pub, past the rattling tape.

'Ben, what was that stuff you were saying earlier about the circles of h.e.l.l?'

'The ninth circle, to be exact.'

'Isn't that what Aidan Merritt was rambling about when he called his wife, just before he was killed?'

'That's right. Everyone thought it was to do with the fires on the moor. He must have gone right through the smoke to get to the Light House. But there was something Betty Wheatcroft said to me. She pointed out that it was from Dante's Inferno.'

'The old biddy's not as daft as she looks, then?'

'No, not at all. I don't know where she gets her information from, but she knows more than she lets on. She's stubborn, though. Likes to play her own game. There was some detail she would have given me, if I'd asked the right question. I just didn't know what the question was.'

'Perhaps she just needs you to show a bit more interest,' said Villiers.

Cooper stopped by his car. 'You think so, Carol?'

'A lonely old lady, isn't she? I bet she really took to you, and enjoyed having a chat. So instead of telling you everything, she thought of a way of making you come back to see her again.'

He stared at her, astonished by the clarity of the insight. To him, it seemed a devious way of thinking. But in Mrs Wheatcroft's case, it rang so true.

They got in the car, and Cooper started the engine. He had Betty Wheatcroft's phone number in his notebook, but he had to wait until they were well down the road and on to Batham Gate before he could get a signal. The old lady's phone rang and rang, without even an answering machine or call minder cutting in.

'No answer,' he said. 'She must be out.'

'Where does Mrs Wheatcroft go now?' asked Villiers, as they approached the sharp bend on Batham Gate.

'What do you mean?'

'What pub does she go to? She can't have stopped going for a drink just because the Light House closed.'

'Well, as I said before, she went to the Light House for the company, because she knew people there.'

'Okay, so where did the people that she knew start going when it closed?'

'I don't know.' But then Cooper stopped, and corrected himself. 'Yes I do. Ian Gullick told me. He said they drink at the Badger, near Bradwell.'

'Could Mrs Wheatcroft get there easily?'

'It's on the same bus route as the Light House, and a good bit closer to where she lives.'

'It's worth a try, if we have time.'

'We're almost there,' said Cooper. 'Another two minutes, and we'll pa.s.s it.'

Betty Wheatcroft had found a corner for herself in the bar of the Badger, and was sitting with her gla.s.s and her plastic carrier bag, trying to ignore the loud background music and the beeps and buzzes of the fruit machines. This was a different kind of place, not what she'd been used to at the Light House.

Cooper saw her as soon as he came through the door. He noticed that her gla.s.s was almost empty, so he went first to the bar and bought her a half-pint of Guinness. She smiled when she spotted him, losing for a moment that slightly mad, desperate look. There was no surprise on her face. She gave the impression that she'd been expecting him, that he could even be slightly late. She might be putting a black mark next to his name in an imaginary attendance register.

'How nice,' she said. 'And what a good idea not to come to my house. People would start to talk.'

'I'm very glad I caught you, Mrs Wheatcroft,' said Cooper. 'There's something I need to ask you.'

She looked anxiously round the bar, then buried her face in her gla.s.s. She seemed somehow rea.s.sured by the slosh of the black liquid.