A thin grimace twisted his lips and he jerked his head backwards, still holding on to the photograph of the third victim. ‘I…me…I…’ he stuttered. ‘I wasn’t in the liberal vanguard. My report stated they should serve twenty-five years and then Kevin Milne should be remitted to a secure mental hospital. Renee was safe to be released.’

‘What changed your mind?’ I asked.

And this time a bitter laugh escaped his lips. ‘Kevin Milne changed my mind, of course!’

‘Because he knew your secret, he blackmailed you? Simple as that?’ I asked. Cornwell became angry. ‘Do you really think I would be so callous as to release a fiend like Milne just to save my own skin?’ He didn’t wait for me to answer. ‘When Kevin and Renee reached eighteen, they were due to be transferred to the adult penal system to serve out the rest of their sentence. Kevin’s lawyers appealed against the sentence. I’d spoken to the Home Secretary months earlier, and he had publicly stated they would never be released.’

‘A lot of people seem to have changed their minds,’ Bancho muttered, and I nudged him in the back to shut up.

‘As I said, Kevin was good at guessing people’s secrets.’ He took a deep breath and spoke very quickly, without any unnecessary explanations. ‘I attended a Catholic seminary in Cork. I was abused by the master of the novitiates. It wasn’t something I broadcast–but he guessed. In fact, until that point, I hadn’t told a living soul. He got little bits out of me, little bits of my life, and, because I thought that I could…I could trade him, I suppose, I foolishly told him. He only needed a few bits of background information and he knew.’

‘Did Kevin try to blackmail you?’

‘I never gave him the chance. I knew he was about to say that I’d touched him inappropriately, so I made sure all our sessions were videotaped and that I had someone with me at all times but…’ He looked down at the photograph of Alan Pearson again.

‘But?’ I urged.

‘But I should have warned the staff in the young offenders’ institution. One guard had indeed taken to abusing the boys.’ He shook his head from side to side. ‘The night before the guard was due to go to a disciplinary hearing, he hung himself.’

Bancho snorted, ‘Good. He did our bloody job for us.’

Gerry Cornwell continued to shake his head. ‘The death of the pervert did not solve the problem…his habit was to take the boys out of the institution for days out to get them ready for release. Instead, he took them to a safe house where he abused them. One vulnerable young boy was missing, and the only person who knew where the safe house was located was Kevin.’