‘I don’t mean that. I’m not trying to deny that I knew them. Of course, they were around a lot. But I don’t know what happened to them. I had nothing to do with that. As far as I was concerned, they just disappeared.’

‘We’ll see what the Crown Prosecution Service has to say. If they think there’s enough evidence, you’ll be charged with two murders.’

‘That won’t happen. It can’t.’

Rourke stared at her, his face suggesting that he might have said the wrong thing already.

‘What was the involvement of the Sutton brothers in your operation?’

‘The two old guys? We kept them out of the way as much as possible. Tom Farnham had them under his influence well enough. He could twist them round his little finger, could Farnham. He’d got himself well in there, all neat and tidy.’

‘Were you laundering red diesel at any point during this time?’

‘No. That was what we told the old guys,’ said Rourke. ‘They never questioned it, the idiots. Well, why should they? They were already implicated, because they’d used it themselves as a way of saving money. They were guilty before I ever got to work on them. In fact, Tom Farnham got a guy he knew to process a few gallons for them to use, so they’d have no trouble persuading themselves to believe it. But the bottom had gone out of the diesel business by then. Farmers got too scared of the Excise.’

‘But why there? Why Pity Wood Farm?’

‘Farnham was the man who came up with the idea. And, I have to give him his due, Pity Wood was a perfect set-up for what we wanted. A remote farm, where no one would notice the smell. Lots of smells on a farm, eh? And plenty of empty sheds, plus space to bury the waste. Perfect. All we needed was labour. Well, labour that didn’t ask any questions. That was where Martin Rourke came in. It was my speciality. I had the contacts with people in the import business.’ He grinned. ‘Human imports, I mean. Obviously.’

‘Cheap imported labour.’

‘But so what? It’s only like getting your telly from China, or your clothes made in India. The whole world runs on cheap labour now. It’s a fact of twenty-first-century economics. The only difference is that people don’t care as long as they can’t see it happening. Sweat shops in Asia are fine, but let someone like me employ a few economic migrants and the law comes down on me like a ton of bricks.’

‘I think the correct term would be illegal immigrant.’