Across the road, the bearded man who’d unlocked the gates had come outside and was standing by the door, his suit now covered or replaced by black vestments – was that the word, the long black frock? He was getting ready to greet his congregation as they left, she realized, and as she watched, an elderly couple emerged, the woman holding her husband’s elbow on the steps.

‘Gid, I’ll call you back. I can’t talk now.’

‘Just a second. We’ve had a break in the case – I thought you should know. We’ve got CCTV of Hinton the night Farrell died.’

The central beam of her appeal case came crashing down. Freshwater was right, she was wrong. Fuck. Fuck. The deflation quickly became annoyance: so why was Gid calling? To rub it in, tell her that actually his holier-than-thou monologue had been on point but he could still find it in his loving Christian heart to forgive her?

‘It’s definitely Hinton on the tape, no doubt,’ he said.

‘Okay, Gid, I get it.’ Ten or twelve people stood in front of the church now, the old couple talking to the priest, others waiting their turn, chatting in groups of two and three. The young couple came out and then the women she’d guessed were friends. They didn’t linger but headed straight to wherever they’d all left their cars, round the back. Robin’s hand went to the door.

‘No,’ said Gid in her ear, ‘you don’t. The tape’s from a club in Newcastle. Hinton wasn’t in London when Farrell died.’

‘So he got one of his goons to do it, went out of town to give himself an alibi, made sure he was seen out and about. We talked about that, remember – he tried it in his GBH case?’ The priest was talking to a different couple now, touching the man’s upper arm for emphasis. The three of them laughed silently.

‘Yes,’ said Gid, ‘we discussed it this morning, too. We don’t know – would he do that again? Especially when it didn’t work last time. And we didn’t get the tape – it came in by post, anonymous, wiped for prints. It feels like something else is going on.’

‘Like what?’

‘We’re not sure.’

Across the road, the group was breaking up, people separating themselves off and moving away. The priest shook hands with a small man in a grey suit then stepped back towards the door, ready to go in. The young couple headed down the driveway.

‘Gid, I’ve really got to go. Anything happens, let me know, okay?’ She hung up, shoved the phone in her pocket and cranked the door open.