An hour later, Patrick propped himself against the bonnet of his car, swigging from a bottle of water and trying to ignore the growing buzz in his ears, a buzz that echoed the noise of the flies in the abandoned public toilets. The SOCOs were in there now. The whole encampment had been sealed off and Wesley was on his way to the station in the back of a police car.

Carmella came up and put her hand on his arm. ‘Hey, you OK?’

How could he answer that? He had just lifted the crinkly green tarpaulin to stare at the naked body of the three-year-old girl he had spent the last week praying was still alive. He knew without a doubt it was Isabel Hartley. He took another gulp of tepid water.

‘Somebody needs to tell the Hartleys,’ he said, thinking not just of them but the other two families. Of how their terror would ramp up to a higher pitch when they heard this news.

‘The FLOs can do that.’

‘And we need to sort out what to say at the press conference. DCI Laughland is setting it up now.’ He looked at the fence of the encampment, scrawled with graffiti: GIPPOS FUCK OFF. In the distance he could hear squeals of excitement from the children’s playground. The shit storm really was about to descend on this place. ‘And I want every man, woman and child in the camp questioned. What did they see? What do they know? Wesley’s story is stupid enough to be true. But he’s still our only suspect right now. And right behind him are all the other people on this camp. They—’

He broke off, rubbing his face.

‘You’re going to conduct the press conference?’ Carmella asked.

‘Of course.’

She raised an eyebrow. ‘With respect, you look like a tramp I gave a quid to on the way in this morning. And smell only marginally better – that shower obviously didn’t work. Why don’t you go home, take a proper shower, get changed?’

‘Are you my mother?’

‘No, but I reckon she’s the only one who’d be able to sort you out right now. Go home, Pat. See your daughter, give her a cuddle.’ She put her hands on her hips and he squinted up at her. ‘Rinse the taste out of your mouth.’

Patrick let himself in to his parents’ house – he couldn’t bring himself to call it home, even though it was where he had been brought up – to be greeted by the sound of Bonnie howling from upstairs and the cajoling tones of his mother trying to be heard over the noise. ‘Come on now, petal, we’re going to playgroup soon, and you can’t wear your pyjamas to playgroup now, can you? All the other boys and girls will be dressed. You don’t want to be the only one in pyjamas, do you now?’