‘What are you saying, Ern?’ Katherine said over my shoulder.

Audrey stared at me, jaw trembling, but stayed silent.

‘You let something else slip too, when we last talked in the library.’ I ignored Katherine and held my mother’s gaze. ‘You said our family had to pay the price for Dad’s actions. But you also said that he’d left us without a weapon to fight with. Your exact words were “nothing in the bank”. I thought you meant money, but you didn’t, did you? You know about the photographs – that was the weapon you were talking about. If the Sabres, or whoever the Sabres were protecting, didn’t get them from Dad the night he died, it makes sense that they might assume that you had them. That they might target, say, the bank you worked at, where it was likely Dad kept a safety box.’

‘You don’t understand. They will do anything to keep this quiet. Robert’s photographs – no one ever found them. I wish they’d found what they were looking for, some yellow envelope stamped with “In the event of my death please send to the media”, some kind of clue. Anything. I wanted them to find it. I really did. I searched everywhere for those goddamn photos.’

‘But the Sabres didn’t come up empty from the bank, did they? They might not have found the photographs, but as they escaped from the rooftop car park, I think they found the next best thing: sitting in a car. They decided there was only one way to be sure you didn’t have the photographs. Leverage. A guarantee that, if you had the photos, you’d give them up in a heartbeat. And we all knew they had no problem taking children – Rebecca is proof of that. Seven years, Audrey.’

My mother hung her head. Gave up.

‘They took Jeremy from the car,’ she whispered. I heard Katherine inhale sharply behind me. I let the quiet expand until my mother was ready to continue. She spoke into her lap. ‘Alan was their messenger. All they wanted was the photographs, he said, not money. And I couldn’t tell the police, because that Humphreys woman had gotten Robert and Rebecca killed already, hadn’t she? And Alan was clearly playing both sides – who knew who else was? I had to protect you and Michael.’

‘There must have been an investigation, though?’ I prompted gently, worried that even the slightest rise in volume might break my mother’s confessional trance. Nobody was moving. Katherine had stopped looking for the handcuff key.