He’d walked down this path so many times in his life, he would struggle to remember how many if asked. He could remember the first time. It was just after he’d moved here with his Mum, in the spring. He remembered arguing his younger brother, Tom, on this very path not long after. He’d punched him. Hard. Mum had been so angry when they got home, she had sent him upstairs whilst she tended to Tom’s nose.

He’d had his first kiss here too. Sally. Sophie? Was that her name? It was so long ago, he wasn’t sure anymore. So much had happened since those days. They were only kids at the time. It wasn’t the way he’d planned it. He thought she liked him. She had pushed him away, but he still managed to kiss her and that had given him a name at school. So long ago now. He hadn’t thought about her for some time now.

The wind whistled down the valley harder now, blowing his hair over his face. He struggled to push it back. The handcuffs were cumbersome. He bunched up his shoulders and turned his head sideways, hoping to lessen the icy wind whipping his face.

She was watching him intently. She hated him, he knew that, but there was fuck all she could do, he thought. He smiled at her. His thin lips spreading slowly across his face. She turned and walked a few steps away, taking a phone from her pocket, still not fully turning her back on him, he noticed. He smiled harder at that.

The line of officers now moved with difficulty in the strong wind. Their vision increasingly impaired with each passing minute they searched, as the mist started to roll down the hill. He noticed how stark their white boiler suits seemed against the damp winter moorland.