‘But, as DCS, I’ll have to put this all under review. We need to dig into everything and show that we weren’t lax in allowing a serial offender to almost kill the woman who might identify him. We need to show that there were no failings. And perhaps we’ll all learn something from the process, too.’

‘Understood.’

He’d had to call on Marc Ruskin after that, with Lightman, and inform him of his brother’s death. Marc, who was a shorter, milder version of his brother, had gradually become pale and silent, and had then gone to be sick for some while in the bathroom of his home.

On his return, he had sat down in front of Jonah, fixed his gaze on the carpet, and said, ‘It wasn’t his fault. That he was like he was.’

‘Did he … was there something in his past?’

‘It was our mum,’ Marc said, his voice unsteady. ‘She … we were both abused by her. She used to make us do things … Charlie was older, and he often used to talk her into leaving me alone. So he got the worst of it. The worst of all of it. I knew it had messed him up, but I thought that we’d – that we’d come through it.’

Jonah thought of the box planted in Alex Plaskitt’s car and asked if his mother had been dark-haired.

‘Yes,’ Marc said. ‘She had long dark hair. She used to make us brush it, before …’

Jonah did his best to get the full story out of Marc as gently as he could. He eventually left the house with a heavy feeling in his chest.

April Dumont had been due in to see them after that, but they’d been unable to raise her. Her phone was, in fact, no longer connecting. And when they’d eventually sent someone round to her flat, it was to find her husband distraught. April had left him a full twenty-four hours before, removing her stuff before she’d picked Louise up to head to Portsmouth. She’d told him she was unhappy, and that she wasn’t sure if she would see him again.

It became apparent that April had wound up every part of her life. She had closed down her bank accounts, or at least the ones her husband knew about, and had left her passport in the hotel room she and Louise had booked in Portsmouth.

And somehow Jonah knew they wouldn’t find her again. That she was far, far too clever for that. And that she must have had an escape route planned for years.