So far, Michael Reave had led them to the remains of four women, one of which, he said, had never been listed as one of his official victims. Identifying them was going to be difficult – he had only ever buried what he called ‘the soft parts’ of them within the woods, although he had sometimes included other things – trinkets, items from their purses, or hairclips, even a shoe. He had agreed to do this as long as Heather continued to visit him and came with him on these little jaunts to Fiddler’s Wood. With the death of Albert ‘Bert’ Froame and the capture of Lyle Reave, all his pretences of innocence had vanished.

‘You’re happy here.’ It wasn’t a question.

‘Aye. I was happy here, once.’ He stopped, so she stopped. His hands were bound behind his back with steel cuffs, and he had made no threats towards her, but she still didn’t like to get too close. ‘Before it all really started …’ He shrugged. ‘There was a bit of time where I thought I was free, and I spent it here, with these trees. Those were good memories.’

She nodded. She supposed that, if you didn’t know what was buried here, it could seem like a peaceful place.

‘I wanted to ask you …’ Heather glanced back to the police, making sure they were close enough to help, but far enough away not to hear. ‘About the woman in the red coat.’

Michael Reave straightened up. He took a long, wavering breath in, then held it for a moment. His eyes were too bright.

‘My sister,’ he said eventually. ‘My older sister. Only she wasn’t just that. My father, your granddad, was a sick man, and he infected the whole house with his sickness. My sister was born in 1947, her name was … Evie.’ He stopped. Saying her name seemed to cause him some physical pain. ‘And then when she got a little older, when she’d just turned thirteen, Evie had me.’

Heather looked down at her hands, feeling sick. She thought of Ben Parker telling her that killers had almost always experienced abuse.

‘The woman who called herself my mother, she hated me for it,’ continued Reave. ‘I was a sign of everything that was wrong with our family, lass, do you see? And Evie, I think she tried to make up for it, for how much her mother hated me. But she only knew one way of expressing that. Because of what had been done to her. She would come to me, at night.’ He paused, shuddering. ‘I still remember her standing in my bedroom door, in her red coat. Smiling. She said she just wanted to love me.’

‘What happened to her? To Evie?’