‘You know he’s playing you, don’t you? He’s sitting in a bar somewhere, laughing at how easy it is to hoodwink the police.’

Naylor just stared at me, unblinking.

‘Fresh evidence has come to light since our chat yesterday.’

‘Evidence of what?’

‘We’ll get to that. All in good time.’

There was a silence between us for a moment as I waited for him to expand on this. But he didn’t elaborate.

‘That’s it? That’s all you’re going to say?’

‘Not quite.’

DS Redford appeared at his side, as if summoned by a secret signal.

‘Well?’ I said.

Naylor’s next words hit me like a breeze block.

‘Joseph Lynch, I’m arresting you on suspicion of murder.’

Chapter 57

57

Murder.

For a moment I couldn’t breathe out, the air trapped in my chest, hot and heavy, as I thought about the word Naylor had used. The oldest and gravest sin. The worst thing that one human being could do to another.

Two days ago it had been about a missing person. Now it was a murder investigation.

The bustle and noise of police activity and of Naylor reading me my rights receded as I scrambled to think what had changed since yesterday, since they had told me they were simply trying to get a missing man back to his family. And in parallel, at the corner of my mind – right on the edge – another thought was putting down dark and twisted roots.

What would it be like in prison?

What would it be like to spend twenty years behind a wall?

To be absent when my son sat his GCSEs, passed his driving test, graduated from university?

But that wasn’t going to happen. Because I was innocent. This was all some giant mistake, Ben wasn’t even –

‘Mr Lynch?’

It was Naylor. I blinked, stared at him.

‘Mr Lynch,’ he said again. ‘Do you understand what I just said to you?’

I nodded, dumbly.

He held out a white-gloved hand.

‘I’m going to need your car keys.’

The room came back into focus. Mel looked stricken. She wouldn’t let go of my hand, clutching it to her stomach as if she could keep me in the house by the sheer force of her desperation.

Naylor took the car keys from me and passed them to DS Redford.

There was an audience in the street as I was led out to a police car. Bystanders, spectators, neighbours. A woman across the street, standing in her open front doorway, talking on the phone as she looked at the scene unfolding in front of my house. We babysat her kids sometimes. The softly spoken widower who lived opposite, half hidden by lace curtains in his front window as he peered out on all the police activity. I fed his three cats when he went to visit his grandchildren up north.

Despite my protests, Naylor insisted on handcuffing me.