Declan apologises. Answers again. ‘I thought … I thought that Niall had killed Kelly. And he’d been covering it up all these years. When my ma told me they’s gone to the country park together, I panicked. I knew I had to get to them. All the threats she’d had. I thought he must be behind them or something.’

‘And why did you think he killed Kelly?’

Declan reaches into the pocket of the baggy tracksuit bottoms, retrieves the bracelet he’d fished out of his wet clothes while changing. ‘This was Kelly’s,’ he says. ‘Niall had it. All those years ago. He’d run away that night because Da was roaring and shouting and threatening to beat the living daylights out of him.’

‘Why was that?’ DI Bradley asks.

‘Because Niall used one of his shirts for his Halloween costume. He’d cut a ragged edge on it to make it look like Frankenstein’s shirt. We didn’t think Da would mind. He never wore that shirt any more anyway.’

‘But he did mind,’ DI Bradley says.

‘He humiliated Niall. And all Da’s pals were there, drinking and carrying on. And Da was roaring and shouting at Niall. I don’t blame him for running away. I didn’t see him again until an hour or more later, when I saw Da and a couple of his mates walking down the street.

‘Niall looked as if he’d seen a ghost. He came in and went up to bed and I asked him, because we shared a room, you know, I asked him what had happened. He told me to “Mind my own fucking business,” and then he wouldn’t speak about it.

‘But I found the bracelet the next day. I didn’t know whose it was. I didn’t know it was Kelly’s until later and then all of it made sense then, you see. That he’d done it. He’d killed her and Da was covering it up for him.’

‘And why did you never come to the police with this information?’ DI Bradley asks. ‘I understand at the time that you were just a child yourself, but over the years? You could’ve come to us at any time.’

Declan shakes his head. ‘It would’ve killed my mother. And Jamesy Harte was in prison. I was scared I’d get into bigger trouble for not telling. Then, well, then I just learned to live with it.’

DI Bradley shifts in his seat, sips from his own coffee cup. ‘And the version of events Niall told us today. Do you think they’re plausible at all?’