He showers gingerly, trying to avoid the burns, then spends twenty minutes trying to rub cream into his neck and shoulders. Then he goes back to the blog.

It tells him so much, and yet so little. He prints off the entries and arranges them on the floor. When Doggett arrives the dog launches itself at his ankles. A Yorkshire terrier against the Yorkshire Terrier. Tyler feels a sudden affection for the creature. Nevertheless, he shuts it in the hallway so they can talk. It immediately begins scratching at the door.

“I wondered what happened to the bloody thing.” Doggett is looking down at the printouts on the floor. “How’s the neck?”

“Still there.”

Doggett takes out a photograph wrapped in plastic and places it very deliberately onto the breakfast bar in front of him. Its corners are singed, and the photo is obscured by crusted black ash. “We found that at Wentworth’s, along with a load more.”

Tyler picks it up.

“Is it him?” Doggett asks.

It takes Tyler a moment to understand what he’s seeing. The angles are all wrong, the camera too close to the subject. Just patches of blond hair. Pale white flesh crisscrossed with marks. Scars, burns, weeping sores. And in the background, hanging in its original place, the portrait from the Old Vicarage. The details are blurred, out of focus, but Tyler is confident it’s the same picture.

“We’ve rescued what’s left of Wentworth’s PC. The speccy-techies are looking at it as we speak, but I think we know what we’re gonna find. More of the same. Is it him?” he asks again.

They both know who he means. Oscar.

“No.”

“The hair matches. He’s the right age.”

“It isn’t him.”

Doggett takes back the photo and examines it. “Even if it isn’t, he grew up in that place.” He slips the photo into his jacket pocket. “Wentworth was the gardener, for Christ’s sake! Probably babysat the lad. Given what Rabbani’s told us about their conversation, and the fire at the scout hut, it’s not much of a leap to suppose the very Reverend Akela Thorogood was involved, too. Being abused gives the lad a bloody good motive for murder. I’m not sure I’d even blame the kid.”

“How is Wentworth?”

“Dead. On the way to the hospital.”

Neither of them voice any sympathy for the man . . . got what he deserved . . . But if Tyler had got there sooner . . . Or if Paul hadn’t had to come back to get him out of the house . . . The world should not mourn him.

Doggett is crouched over the blog pages, reading them. “Well, well. You’ve been busy.”

“It isn’t him,” Tyler says again, but he doesn’t have the energy to argue further, and he knows it wouldn’t make any difference to Doggett. His mind is made up.