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ear, “Here's a policeman come to ask you about Old Grimble's Field.”
       “What's that?” the old man muttered as Barry had known he would. Eventually, the question having been shouted twice more, he said, “Eleven years? I was only eighty-five then. I could get about then.”
       His wife continued doodling invisible shapes on her lap. She opened her eyes, put her free hand out to the carer, and whispered, “What's happening?”
       “Nothing, sweetheart,” said the carer. “Nothing for you to worry about.” To Barry she said in a more peremptory tone, “You won't get anything out of them, you know.”
       He persisted for a little longer but in vain.
       “What did I tell you?” The woman was triumphant as she showed him to the front door.
       He got into his car. The interview had rather shaken him. Wexford had been overoptimistic about the Hunters. Inevitably, Barry thought of modern medicine and healthier lifestyles keeping everyone alive much longer so that by the time he reached retirement age there wouldn't be thousands but tens, hundreds, of thousands of people like the Hunters. Alive but not living, ancient and disabled by time, deprived by the years of memory, hearing, sight, and most movement but still alive. He, too, maybe one day. The carer, when she told him he needn't look like that, must have referred to his expression of pity mixed with horror.

    Hannah and Lyn went to the canteen for lunch, Lyn forcing herself to choose the spring salad and trying to keep her eyes from Hannah's ham and cheese pancakes with sautéed potatoes. On the other side of the room, alone at a table, Hannah had spotted PS Peach of the uniformed branch. Peach had taken what he called “a shine to” Hannah. He meant he had fallen in love with her, as he truly had, but to say so aloud would sound too serious and emotional for him even to dream of. Once, a few months back, he had declared himself in a way few men do these days, by telling her he liked her and wanted to take her out with him with engagement in view. Hannah thought he must be the only officer in Kingsmarkham police station who didn't know about her and Bal Bhattacharya. She told him and he was visibly upset. Since then, if he hadn't avoided her, he had kept his distance. Just the same, “I don't want to catch his eye,” Hannah said to Lyn.
       So it was much to the surprise of both girls when they saw him on his feet and heading their way, plate in one hand and glass of Coke in the other. A blush suffused his face as he approached, but he asked coolly enough if he might join them. Only the very rude and brutish ever say no to this request. Hannah said, “Of course,” and Lyn said, “You're welcome, Peachy. Sit down.”
       Peach must have had at least one given name but no one knew what it was. He was always called Peachy, even by Wexford, and the name wasn't inappropriate, bestowed as it was on a man with plump pink cheeks and fair hair.
       “I don't want to intrude,” he said, pausing to allow both women to demur, “but I've not come over just because I was—well, wanting company or anything like that.” He looked at Hannah and quickly looked away. “I've got something to tell you about this case. I mean, the body in Grimble's Field. Well, not tell you about it, tell you what I've done.”
       “What you've done, Peachy?” said Hannah.
       “What I've made, rather. It's this missing persons thing. We've got records going back only eight years, right?”
       “Right.”
       “Well, I've got them going back thirteen.”
       “You have?” Lyn was afraid she had sounded rude and she quickly said, “What d'you mean? You've found an earlier record?”
       “No, I've made one. It was like this. I'll explain.” Peach had abandoned his spaghetti bolognese and pushed away the plate. “That was when I first came here, in 1993. We'd just got computerized. I mean the station had and—well, I was—I am—pretty good