‘If you’d seen the girl’s aunt, you’d understand. It was chilling. She said under no circumstances should the baby have contact with her natural parents. Why do you think we were so against her going to Gritton? We were terrified of what she might find.’

18

‘This gets stranger by the minute.’ I spun my chair round to face Fiona, who was trying to get my sash window to open wider, without much luck. A few flakes of paint fell off, but nothing moved.

‘I know.’ She gave one last upward shove, and admitted defeat. ‘Bloody thing!’

‘I’ve tried, Fiona. It’s not moving. Why would Bex’s aunt say those things? What was so terrible about Gritton?’

‘Do you think it was because she knew Violet’s father was a rapist?’

‘Possibly,’ I said. ‘Let’s have a recap where we’re at generally. Unpleasant as it is, the most likely scenario now is that someone killed Violet at the abattoir after ten on Sunday night, and disposed of her body by feeding it to pigs and/or putting it in the abattoir waste.’ I pictured Violet’s bedroom. Her pillow with the indent where her head had been. The panda nightshirt. ‘Animal rights activists threatened Violet, but the only people with access to the abattoir overnight were Anna and Gary Finchley and Daniel Twigg, none of whom have decent alibis. And it’s likely that either Gary or Daniel is her biological father.’

Fiona reluctantly left the window and came over to sit on my much-shunned guest chair. ‘Gary Finchley won’t consent to a DNA test,’ she said.

‘Why not?’

‘Says he doesn’t trust the government not to cock up and accuse him of some random crime, or sell his data to health insurance companies in the future. And since he’s not under arrest, why should he give one, and he never slept with Bex, so he’s obviously not Violet’s father.’

I sighed. ‘Fantastic. But Daniel agreed?’

‘Yes. That’s underway.’

‘Good. Okay. I’ve read so many statements from the good people of Gritton that my eyes are bleeding, but I can’t see anything useful. And as for the comments on our missing person Facebook post …’

‘I’ve seen. The psychics are out. She’s in an underground place, or she’s surrounded by trees, or was it water? She’s alive and needs our help, and we can find her if we’d only talk to them.’

‘Would that it were so easy. And I see we’ve got more than the usual complement of victim-blamers. She wore a bikini publicly so she had it coming, whatever it might be. Who are these people?’

‘I don’t know,’ Fiona said. ‘Although some of them sound like my mum. We’re taking those comments down as they appear.’