It was only the beginning of October and they had the anniversary to get through first, but Leanne couldn’t wait that long. It wasn’t fair on the families and friends of the victims. It wasn’t fair, full stop. She flicked back to the cover page. There were contact details in both Northern Ireland and Sedgefield. ‘Have you spoken to his family?’

‘I had an interesting chat with his ex-wife. Apparently he was quite a character, but that was as close as she got to saying something nice about him.’

‘I’m not going to like him, am I?’

‘You mean you did before?’ Frankie asked, not needing an answer. She had read Leanne’s draft article after all. ‘Declan had a troubled childhood from what I can gather. His dad left home when he was young, never to be seen again, and it seems the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. When Declan’s wife accused him of having an affair, rather than deal with it to save his marriage, he walked out on her and their three kids, all under the age of ten. That’s why he ended up in Sedgefield.’

‘He was running away,’ Leanne concluded.

‘In the sporadic conversations he’d had with his ex, which I imagine weren’t particularly pleasant, Declan kept promising he’d move back to be closer to the children. He was waiting for the work on the theatre to be signed off, but she says he didn’t sound too upset about the delays in completion.’

‘He didn’t want to go back, not even for his kids,’ Leanne said with disgust. ‘I bet he didn’t see the similarity between his life choices and his dad’s.’

‘That type never do.’

‘And what about Karin?’ Leanne tapped a finger against her name in the contacts section. ‘What’s she said about him?’

‘I haven’t spoken to her directly, but I did receive a rather ambiguous statement via her flatmate who was with her that night. The line is that Karin will never get over what happened and that she grieves for all the victims.’

‘Is that it?’

‘Yep.’

‘She didn’t mention Declan explicitly?’

Frankie reached towards Declan’s file and turned a few pages. She stopped at a sheet that was blank except for an email heading from someone called Beth McCulloch with two sentences printed below it. Frankie had repeated the statement given on behalf of Karin Gallagher almost verbatim.

‘Don’t you find that odd?’ asked Leanne. ‘She must be aware of the rumours implicating Declan, but chooses not to stand up and defend him. That says it all.’ She closed the file before adding, ‘Is Mal insisting you write a piece about him too? Do we have to see his face amongst the real victims?’