I drove round to a yard at the rear, passing a field inhabited by pigs wallowing in mud. I regarded them with envy.

‘Nice,’ Jai said. ‘Shame they’re going to end up on someone’s breakfast plate.’

‘You could always go veggie,’ I said, ‘if you’re feeling bad.’

‘But bacon tastes so good …’

I remembered what Violet apparently said. That using the taste of bacon as an excuse for eating it was like saying it was okay to rape someone if you enjoyed it. Definitely an odd thing for our bikini-wearing sausage-sizzler to come out with.

We knocked on a solid, newly-painted door at the back of the house. To the side was a rose garden, overgrown and knotty, with long grasses growing between thorned stems.

The door was opened by a man with the corduroyed, bespectacled look of a university professor. He didn’t fit my image of a pig farmer, although I told myself there was no rational reason why a pig farmer should look like a pig. Then I noticed he had a thin covering of light, fair hair, almost like the hair on a pig’s back, and I felt strangely reassured.

We showed the man our ID and he nodded calmly, confirmed he was Tony Nightingale, and ushered us inside. The door led into an unmodernised farmhouse kitchen, complete with Aga, non-fitted wooden units, and pungent, aged black Labrador. We sat at a Formica table while Tony Nightingale made tea. The Labrador lay on its side, only raising an eyebrow in greeting.

‘Violet Armstrong came here last night?’ I said.

‘Yes.’ Tony placed a teapot, cups, and a milk jug in front of us, and lowered himself into a chair. ‘I’m sorry. It’s all such a shock. She said some rather strange things.’

‘What did she say?’ I asked.

Jai fished out a notebook and pen.

‘I didn’t know who she was. I don’t know about blogging and videos or whatever it is she does. But she told me not to tell anyone she’d come because she didn’t want any publicity. And then …’ He put his cup down with a trembling hand. ‘Sorry. She said she was my granddaughter. She said her mother was dead and she wanted to find her relatives. And to find out who her father was.’

‘Did you get to the bottom of it?’

He folded his arms. ‘She’d been told that her mother was called Rebecca Smith. My daughter is Rebecca and she took my sister’s name, Smith, when she went to live with her. But my daughter, Bex, isn’t dead.’

‘Did your daughter have a baby?’

Tony looked out into the garden. The evening sun was glistening on a climbing rose. A flash of anguish passed across his face. ‘If she did, she never told me.’

‘How old would Bex have been eighteen years ago?’

‘Only sixteen.’

‘Was she living with you at that time?’