The photographer was at the bottom of a sprawling driveway, looking up at a palatial estate, the rigid lines of a security fence imposed on the images. There is a sedan, trunk open, by the pillared entryway. The setting remains static through all sixteen photos, but there are two people in the frame, faces hidden, that move from image to image. In the fifth picture, the figures disappear, but the front door is a black hole: open. The figures return in the eighth picture, except they are carrying something – it looks like a sleeping bag. The figures are each holding an end. In the ninth, they are halfway to the car, and I could see what appeared to be long tendrils of hair hanging from one end of the bag. In the tenth, the sleeping bag is gone, and the car’s trunk is closed. In the sixteenth photo, the car’s position has changed. One of the figures is still on the porch, watching it leave. Finally, a face.

It might be disappointing that I can’t give you the typical catharsis of the bad guys getting their full comeuppance, but my editor tells me we have to go to print and it’s all still before the courts, so I don’t really have the details. It will have to be enough to know that I zoomed in as close as I could on Edgar McAuley’s face, revealed in the porchlight of his mansion, and that if his name is not redacted here, it’s safe to assume he’s gone to prison for a very long time.

Did Michael show you the photos?

Edgar McAuley had asked me that question twice. The second time he’d been insistent, I remembered. I’d thought he was annoyed, but I realised now that his tone was not impatience, but desperation. He wanted to know if I’d seen the photos, if I’d seen him in them. I remembered Siobhan’s dismay at the body being lost and his calm words to her: we can get divers.