Banks stared at the black-and-white photo and felt a rush of blood to his brain, ears buzzing and vision clouding. It all flooded back, those few moments of claustrophobia and terror in the stranger’s grip, the moments he had thought were his last.

“Are you all right?”

It was Michelle who spoke, a concerned look on her face.

“I’m fine,” he said.

“You look pale. Would you like a drink of water?”

“No, thank you,” said Banks. “It’s him.”

“Are you certain?”

“After all this time I can’t be a hundred percent positive, but I’m as certain as I’ll ever be.”

Shaw nodded, and Michelle took the picture back.

“Why?” Banks asked, looking from one to the other. “What is it?”

“James Francis McCallum,” Michelle said. “He went missing from a mental institution near Wisbech on Thursday, June seventeenth, 1965.”

“That would be about right,” said Banks.

“McCallum hadn’t been involved in any violent activity, but the doctors told us that the possibility always existed, and that he might be dangerous.”

“When was he caught?” Banks asked.

Michelle glanced at Shaw before answering. He gave her a curt nod. “That’s just it,” she went on. “He wasn’t. McCallum’s body was fished out of the River Nene near Oundle on the first of July.”

Banks felt his mouth open and shut without any sound coming out. “Dead?” he managed.

“Dead,” echoed Shaw. He tapped his pen on the desk. “Nearly two months before your friend disappeared. So you see, DCI Banks, you’ve been laboring under an illusion for all these years. Now, what I’m really interested in is why you lied to me and DI Proctor in the first place.”

Banks felt numb from the shock he had just received. Dead. All these years. The guilt. And all for nothing. The man who assaulted him on the riverbank couldn’t have abducted and killed Graham. He should have felt relieved, but he only felt confused. “I didn’t lie,” he muttered.

“Call it a sin of omission, then. You didn’t tell us about McCallum.”

“Doesn’t seem as if it would have mattered, does it?”

“Why didn’t you tell us?”

“Look, I was just a kid. I hadn’t told my parents because I was scared how they’d react. I was upset and ashamed by what happened. Don’t ask me why, I don’t know, but that’s how I felt. Dirty and ashamed, as if it was somehow my fault for inviting it.”

“You should have told us. It could have been a lead.”

Banks knew that Shaw was right; he had told reluctant witnesses the same thing himself, time after time. “Well, I didn’t, and it wasn’t,” he snapped. “I’m sorry. Okay?”

But Shaw wasn’t going to be so easily put off, Banks could tell. He was enjoying himself, throwing his weight around. It was the bully mentality. To him, Banks was still the fourteen-year-old kid whose budgie had just flown out the door. “What really happened to your friend?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”