‘That’s all I’ve got too. Hunches and theories.’ He said it in a way that I didn’t entirely believe, as if he was still deciding what to tell and what to withhold. ‘After Robert’s death, I spent some time trying to figure out what could have been big enough to kill him over. Not to mention, something that would scare him enough that he’d start carrying a gun. Trust me – that wasn’t normal. I told you the Sabres were becoming more volatile. It wasn’t just people getting hurt – you said it yourself, ransoms paid better. That’s what your father wouldn’t stand for, not when he had kids of his own. But about a week before he died . . . It’s an old story, you’ll know the beats. A rich kid is taken for ransom. The family fluffs the drop. Even though they can afford it, they try packing a suitcase full of leaflets instead of money. And the girl’s never seen again. Nothing was ever proven, but it had Sabres written all over it. Did Michael mention—’

‘What was the girl’s name?’ I stammered.

‘McAuley.’

‘First?’ I wanted her to have a real name. A legacy.

‘Rebecca.’

‘How much was the ransom?’

‘Three hundred.’

My mind was slippery, but something else Michael had said returned. I brought what I could, but it wasn’t what he wanted.

Alan had sold Michael information about Rebecca McAuley, an unrecovered kidnapping victim from decades ago. Possibly who’d killed her. Definitely where her body could be found: buried forever in the coffin of a policeman. The perfect hiding spot, nestled under six feet of earth in someone else’s coffin. With the advantage of a high-speed non-mountain-range internet connection while I type this all out, I’ve learned that this was a common trick of the Chicago Mafia to disappear people, so of course cops knew about it. It went hand in hand with cement shoes.

It made sense that Alan knew where the body was – he was the one who’d hidden it.

I remembered at the funeral there had been a bit of a row with the family: the policeman, who I now knew was Alan, had wanted the body cremated, maintaining it had been his partner’s wish, something they talked about on duty. But the family had deferred to the will and insisted on a burial. Alan had been upset, and rightly so, because burying Rebecca’s body wasn’t as perfect as reducing it to ash.

And the price? That was the easy part. Alan wanted Michael to pay the debt that he felt he was owed by the family not paying up. A thirty-five-year-old ransom. And Michael was willing to pay up in order to find out who was responsible for our father’s death.