‘What did you do next?’

‘I took a sack of pig pellets, and Violet’s keys and I drove her car to the abattoir.’

So someone else had driven that car. He must have put the seat back and then moved it forward again, but too far.

‘Did you deliberately drive past Mrs Ackroyd’s house?’

He nodded quickly. ‘Poor woman never sleeps. But you can’t see who’s driving the car from her house. The street lamp reflects off the windscreen and she’s short-sighted anyway. And there’s a camera on that road too.’

I nodded. ‘And you gave yourself an alibi?’

He looked surprised for a moment, then said, ‘Yes. I pulled over just after I passed the CCTV. My robot has a camera so I could see what he was doing via 4G. Luckily there’s a signal in that area. He has twelve servo-motors so his arms move almost like a human. He can make coffee. Dialling Bex wasn’t hard. And he has a microphone and a speaker so I could talk to Bex’s answerphone.’ Some of Tony’s natural confidence came back as he said that, and I was more certain than ever that the sad-old-man act was faked. I guessed this bit had been his idea, not Kirsty’s. ‘And I got my robot to watch TV,’ he added.

Without even being consciously aware of it, we’d been fooled by the unmodernised house, the old phone, the man who’d aged before his time. And we’d assumed, with it being an old-fashioned dial phone, that he must have been there to make the call.

‘So you let yourself into the abattoir and fed your bag of pellets to the pigs?’ I said.

He nodded. ‘As many as they’d eat. So it would look like they’d had a big meal.’

‘And then?’

He looked down. ‘I put the blood and a few hairs in the trough.’

I nodded. ‘And then …’

He took a gulping breath and said, ‘Okay. I found the cubicles where the workers kept their belongings, and put Violet’s car keys, laptop and bag in hers. Daniel lives in a caravan so he showers and shaves at the abattoir, and keeps a stack of spare overalls there. And his razor was there too. He hadn’t even locked his cubicle. I took one of his overalls and put some of her blood on it, put that and the razor in the bag with Violet’s stuff, and put it in the Cat 2 waste. And I put some of Violet’s blood on Daniel’s boots and left them in the locker.’

Daniel had been sacrificed as if his life was worth nothing. A good life had been ended. And he’d died before he’d had the chance to make peace with himself.

‘Did you know the usual company who took the waste had been changed?’