Richard had asked to see me back at the station. I found him in his room, tending to his cacti, clearly in an ebullient mood. Daniel was dead and everyone was happy. It made me want to retch.

He turned to face me, watering can in hand. ‘We have our man then?’ he said.

‘It’s not great news,’ I said. ‘Daniel Twigg was found dead in his van. In woodland about ten miles north of Gritton. It appears that he died of an overdose. We don’t have toxicology back yet, but we know he was on opiate medication for pain relief.’

‘We don’t know if the overdose was accidental or deliberate?’

‘No.’

‘But we have very good evidence that he killed Violet Armstrong and Gary Finchley?’

Everyone had given up on Violet. I said, ‘We don’t know for sure that Violet is dead.’

The toxicology people had said they couldn’t tell if there was any anticoagulant in the blood we’d found. Nobody was interested in my theory that she could still be alive. That someone could have put her blood and hair in the pigs’ trough to make us think she was dead.

‘She’s dead,’ Richard said. ‘We haven’t had a single indication that she’s alive, have we?’

‘No, but I don’t think we’ve got to the bottom of all this. It ties in with what happened in 1999, I’m sure of it. They found bones in the woods, exactly where Anna Finchley said they would be. She was telling the truth. A teenage boy was killed that night and ended up buried in the woods. Gary, Anna, Daniel and Kirsty have been keeping it a secret ever since. Until Gary told Violet. And now Gary and Daniel are dead and Violet’s missing, presumed dead.’

‘Well, that gave Daniel a motive to kill Violet and Gary didn’t it?’

‘I think there’s more to it.’

‘It’s not a Sunday-night drama. It might not all be neatly tied up with a big red bow.’

‘I’m sure Kirsty Nightingale knows more than she’s told us.’

‘I thought she was in a coma.’

‘She is. The doctors are going to let us know the minute she regains consciousness.’

‘We have our killer,’ Richard said. ‘The evidence against Daniel Twigg is overwhelming and we have zero indication that Violet Armstrong is alive, or that Kirsty Nightingale is involved in any way. I think we can wrap this up. The bones in the woods are a separate case. We don’t need to trouble the Nightingale family any further. They have enough to deal with.’

I looked him in the eye and the realisation hit me like a brick. He wanted this finished and he didn’t want us looking at the Nightingales. They were an influential family. They had links with senior people. Richard didn’t want us digging around there when we already had our man.