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demolished walls, shattered glass, and dozens of rear-end shunts. There had been collisions on all the main cross-county routes – the Woodhead Pass, the Snake, the A623 and A6 – where streams of HGVs ploughed on through flash floods, their headlights blazing. Those were professional drivers, and their windscreens were clean, but their spray blinded motorists in their wake, preventing them from seeing the oceans of surface water before they found themselves aquaplaning straight into a stone wall.
    Fry looked up at the sky, seeking a break in the cloud. It wasn’t getting any better. The news this morning had said that records for the amount of rain falling in a twenty-four hour period had been broken several times already. In one day, as much water had fallen on the Peak District as would normally be expected in a month.
    Yet it showed no signs of stopping. The rain bucketed down every day. Fields had become mud, and roads turned into rivers. July and August had been washouts so far, the incessant rain keeping tourists away, closing caravan- and campsites, forcing the cancellation of outdoor events. Summer? This was more like a monsoon season.
    Irvine had disappeared down West Street, heading into the centre of the rain-soaked town like Captain Oates walking into a snowstorm. He might be some time.
    Two uniformed officers came up the stairs and gave Fry curious looks as they passed. A few yards along the corridor, one turned to say something to the other. She thought she heard a laugh as they went round the corner. She felt herself tense with anger again. She had no doubt she must be the object of their joke. She wondered what the station gossip was saying about her these days. Nothing good, she supposed. But at least they didn’t chat about her medical condition.
    When she was sent back to Edendale, Fry had known that she’d never be able to escape from the shadow of Detective Sergeant Ben Cooper. Not while she was in E Division, where everyone knew him – even when she walked out on to the streets of the town, members of the public were likely to ask about him. And certainly not while she was running his old team. Those two young DCs had been taken under Cooper’s wing like newborn chicks. She’d never get the loyalty from Irvine and Hurst that she might otherwise have expected. And Carol Villiers? She was an old friend of Cooper’s since childhood. There was no way she could compete with that. As for Gavin Murfin, he was too old a dog to learn any new tricks. He’d always been inclined to make satirical comments from the sidelines, and he wasn’t going to change.
    And Fry didn’t know what to do now, or what to think. Seriously? Close? The word had taken her completely by surprise. Had she and Cooper ever been close, really? What did that actually mean? Yes, she’d unwisely shared some personal information about herself with him, and he’d managed to infiltrate himself into her life in various ways. That was true. And there had been moments…
    But no. That wasn’t being close. You could do those things, and have those conversations, with a stranger you’d just met in the pub when you were both drunk. It meant nothing, didn’t it?
    It was true that the medical reports weren’t good. She’d heard those rumours herself. Of course she had. Police officers were worse for office gossip than any housewife had ever been. The word was that DS Cooper’s extended leave would continue for a good while yet. Whether his ongoing problems were physical or psychological was less clear. No one seemed to know the details. Either that, or they just weren’t saying.
    Against her better instincts, Fry wondered where Ben Cooper was at this moment, and what he was doing. What would he be thinking right now? That, too, could be nothing good.

4
    The garage door began to rise with a faint hum as Charlie Dean thumbed the remote. As he waited for Barbara, he stood on the drive for a few minutes under his folding umbrella,