‘He didn’t reply to my letter. I could understand why he didn’t believe me. So I needed another way in. His wife was much more willing. She told me when he was being released. About your weekend here. I couldn’t wait: not only would I meet Michael, but the rest of you as well.’ He was, strangely, smiling, reliving the excitement of planning out his first time meeting us: his real family. ‘But I wanted to do it right – I wanted the first time I met him to be just us, and I wanted to prove myself worthy of this family. When I went to the prison a day early, he wasn’t there. I rushed up here. The local policeman, he was parked on the wrong shoulder at the wrong time, and his sacrifice gave me the opportunity to show you who I was.’

Juliette and I swapped a worried look over the word sacrifice. Jeremy was talking exuberantly now, caught up in his own self-mythologising.

‘It also gave me the opportunity to get Michael on his own. And I could make my reasoning convincing because I knew he’d lied to you all about when he was released. I wanted to tell him straight away, but everyone was fawning over him and I knew that it was the only way we’d be alone all weekend. Then everyone started yelling and maybe my choice of clothing wasn’t as clever as I thought it was, because suddenly I had to help with everything, and Juliette was stuck to me like glue, or people would start asking questions. I couldn’t break off to get to Michael. It was only after you’d spoken to him, Ernest, that I could show him . . . to show him I belonged. To show him I was like him.’

Sofia’s theory held: The Black Tongue is announcing themselves. They want us to know they’re here.

Jeremy thought he’d found his place in a family of killers. The sergeant’s death was no more than a dead bird brought to a door by a feral cat. An offering.

‘But Michael wasn’t welcoming, was he?’ I countered. ‘He was horrified. It was clear when I spoke to him that he’d spent the last three years learning to live with the life he’d taken, and he’d come out the other side wanting to do better. To be better. But that’s not what you expected, was it? Did he make you feel like an outsider, all over again?’