‘We were kids. We just wanted to ride our bikes and muck about.’ He started to look uncomfortable in his own skin. ‘We just wanted to have fun like boys do. We told each other everything. The girls we fancied and stuff. We were really close. I didn’t have any siblings. He was it.’

‘Tell us about this,’ Barrett said, sliding a photograph in a clear plastic evidence bag across the table to the suspect.

Robbie picked it up and held it close to his face, losing himself in the image.

‘We were happy then. Look, Jack’s smiling. You see?’ He turned the photo around for the inspectors to see. ‘I didn’t know what was going to happen. It was meant to be an adventure.’ Robbie’s pitch grew more frantic. ‘We were going camping. It was exciting. Jack and I had been looking forward to it for weeks. We’d snuck some sweets into our backpacks and I’d even stolen a couple of cigarettes from my mum. We were going to smoke them that night to see what it was like.’

Palmer remembered the first time he’d tried a cigarette. It had been enough to put him off smoking for life.

‘We all met outside the social club that Saturday afternoon. It was surprisingly warm for October. Mum had taken me shopping to buy waterproofs especially for the trip.’

Barrett noticed the sad expression that crossed Robbie’s face when he mentioned his mother.

‘I had my bag packed and I was all ready to go. I’d only joined the scouts in September because Jack had done it for a while and kept telling me how great it was.’ He stopped to consider something. ‘Eddie shouldn’t have been there. It wasn’t meant to be him. The other scout leader was ill or something so Eddie was standing it. Mr Wade told us he didn’t want to cancel the trip, but they needed another grown-up to come along. He introduced us to Eddie. We didn’t pay much attention to him at first.’ He bit his fingernails.

‘What about Wendy?’ Palmer asked.

‘She was there,’ Robbie hissed. ‘She’d joined as a young scout leader. She often helped out.’ The venom in his voice took Palmer by surprise.

‘What happened?’ Barrett wanted answers.

‘We all got in the minibus and they took us to Burwell Lakes. There must have been fourteen boys in the group.

‘When we got to the lakes we went fishing for a few hours. I remember thinking it was actually quite boring, but it beat being stuck at home doing nothing while Mum was at work.

‘Later we walked across some fields to the edge of these woods. Dennis told us that we’d reached the spot and we needed to erect our tents. Dennis, Eddie and Wendy all had a tent each but us boys were split into pairs. I shared with Jack.