She sighed. ‘I assumed it was a win, so he wouldn’t have told me – he’d sworn he wouldn’t gamble any more. Besides, I didn’t expect to see much of it.’

How depressing. I could imagine why Mandy might not feel like getting dressed most days. But had it been a win, or something else?

‘Did Gary meet anyone else yesterday?’ I asked.

‘He went to work. Apart from that, I don’t know.’

‘Last night, what time was it when he went out?’

‘About midnight. He never said where he was going.’

‘Do you know what prompted him to go?’

Mandy reached an arm around the child and pulled her closer. ‘No. He went off without telling me. I had a bad feeling but I didn’t stop him. I should’ve stopped him. But Gary never seemed that scared. Not like he thought he was going to be killed.’

‘Why would Gary not have been scared?’ I said. ‘If he thought the Animal Vigilantes were after him?’

‘I’m not sure.’

I had a theory. What if Gary knew who’d killed Violet and it wasn’t the Animal Vigilantes? He could have seen someone at the abattoir on Sunday night and been planning to blackmail them. But who had he seen?

‘What the actual fuck is going on?’ Hannah was sitting at a cramped table in Gritton’s only tea room, looking extremely hot. The place was packed full of people who I suspected were not there for the catering. Outside were more people, milling about and rubbernecking their way around a shocked Gritton, mobile phones held aloft.

‘Hi, Hannah, good to see you too,’ I said. Jai had grabbed a lift back with one of the cops who’d been doing the interminable house-to-house enquiries, leaving me free to meet Hannah.

She grabbed my arm, pulled me close and whispered. ‘Is it true? Violet’s been fed to pigs. That other bloke had a pig’s head mask on. Have the Animal Vigilantes gone completely mental?’

‘Let me get you a drink.’

‘Thanks, yes. It’s not the most disability-friendly spot. And it’s hotter than the actual bowels of hell.’

I couldn’t argue with her assessment. The place didn’t appear to have been modernised in about thirty years and was cluttered, doily infested and chintzy, festooned with notices telling you not to do things. No Muddy Boots PLEASE! Dogs NOT Allowed. Please keep your children under CONTROL!!

‘Makes you want to turn up with six large dogs and a feral pack of children in muddy boots,’ I said.

Hannah shifted on her wooden chair. ‘It doesn’t even have a proper coffee machine. And that woman over there gave me the evils when I managed to lever myself out of my wheelchair to shift onto a chair. She thinks I’m faking to get a good table.’

‘Oh dear. Bad choice of eatery.’