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about.’ He took a slug of what remained of his pint. It tasted like urine. ‘The only excuse I’ve got for speakin’ like I did – an’ it’s not a very good one – is that this bloody place has unsettled me.’
    â€˜This
place
– or this
case
?’ Paniatowski asked.
    â€˜Seems to me they’re one an’ the same thing,’ Woodend told her.

Nine
    T he church and the primary school in Hallerton were located at the edge of the village, just as they were in so many other moorland communities. They looked across at each other, but were separated by the almost-straight road which ran all the way to a different world called Lancaster.
    Woodend glanced down the road. Then, closing his eyes, he tried to picture it as it must have looked three hundred and fifty years earlier, in the days after Meg Ramsden had been burned at the stake. It was unlikely to have been paved back then – and even after only a few days without rain, any horses travelling along it would have thrown up a cloud of dust which could be seen for miles.
    How dry had the road been when the High Sheriff’s men came? Had the villagers stood on this very spot and watched the dust cloud grow ever larger? Had they listening to the sound of the hoofs – no more than a distant rumble at first, but gradually getting louder, until it filled their ears?
    Yes, they probably had. And though they must have known what the Sheriff’s men’s mission was, they’d made no attempt to run away.
    Perhaps they’d gone to pray for guidance, Woodend speculated, turning towards the church. But given what he’d already learned about the people of this village, that didn’t seem likely. And even if they had gone into the church, it wouldn’t have been
this
church, because it was a hundred years old at most.
    He took a closer look at the building. It didn’t seem quite
right
. True it had all the features typical of its time. There was a steeple, covered with the blue slates which would have to have been imported all the way from North Wales. There was a lych-gate, with a bench on which the bearers could rest the coffin during its final journey to the grave. So what was missing?
    Woodend took a step back, and suddenly saw what was wrong. This church was smaller – much smaller – than any of the others in the area. It was almost as if the builders had been inspired less by faith and hope and more by a foreknowledge of the size of congregation the structure would eventually have to cater for.
    He switched his attention to the school. It, too, resembled many others he had come across on the moors. It was constructed of the same blocks of dressed stone as the church, and roofed with the same blue-grey slates. The windows were high, in order to let in light while denying the children the opportunity of being distracted by views of the outside world. The playground was as austere and forbidding as any prison exercise yard.
    The school had probably been built a few years later than the church, Woodend guessed, perhaps in the late Victorian era. At that time education had been regarded with grim seriousness, and even though boys and girls of the same family were often compelled by economic circumstances to share the same bed, the sexes entered the school by separate doors.
    The church clock struck a quarter to four, the doors of the school opened, and the children streamed out. Woodend watched them with interest. They were obviously pleased to be free of their educational confinement, yet there was something orderly about the way they left the school – almost as if they were an army in retreat.
    Woodend lit a cigarette and watched them until they had disappeared into the village. Then – on impulse – he strolled over to the school. Faced with the choice of entering through the boys’ door or the girls’ door, he was amused to find that his legs automatically inclined him