‘They reckon it happened on or just after Halloween night,’ Ross said, his voice muted. He looked from one house to the next as if willing someone – anyone – to come to the front door. His eyes eventually landed on the farm. ‘I couldn’t see it from the outside, but when the police broke down the doors on the farm it was obvious that the Gibbses had thrown a dinner party. Although everything had been packed away – all the plates, all the food, the booze – it was still done out in a Halloween theme: you know, cobwebs, pumpkins, that sort of thing.’

‘But the rest of the house was tidy?’

‘Yes. Immaculate.’

‘All the houses were tidy, right?’

‘Yes,’ he said again. ‘They’d all been left spotless.’

But not suspiciously clean – not deliberately wiped down in order to hide evidence – just hoovered and dusted, items packed away, electrical items switched off, as if the occupants were all going away on holiday. Which they weren’t, at least not abroad: in the file, investigators said all nine of the missing villagers had taken their wallets or purses with them, their mobile phones too, which never pinged a single tower after Halloween night, and were never switched on. But they hadn’t taken their passports.

‘And they didn’t take any clothes with them, correct?’

‘That’s right.’

‘No suitcases?’

‘Nothing,’ Ross said. ‘Nothing’s missing from any of the cupboards – or not that you can tell, anyway. I mean, when you go on holiday, normally you make some sort of dent in your wardrobe, but in Mum and Dad’s room, in the bedrooms of all the others, it doesn’t look like anything’s been removed at all. And, like I just said, no suitcases got taken either. No other baggage. It’s all so …’ He shook his head. ‘Weird.’

It was certainly weird if it really had been a holiday. But the fact that none of them had used any ATM machines, or credit cards, and that their phones were off – and never came back on – from around 10 p.m. on Halloween night, and were all last geo-located to Black Gale, didn’t really fit with the idea of a trip, whether it was planned or a last-minute getaway. So why take the wallets? Why take their mobiles?

‘The police got hold of a load of photos from the Cloud,’ Ross said. ‘It’s how they knew the dinner took place on Halloween. Metadata, or whatever.’ He gave a forced smile. ‘On Chris Gibbs’s phone there were all these pictures. You know, selfies, that sort of thing. The police showed me a few of them. They looked like they were having a laugh. Relaxed. Like I said, everyone always got on well.’

I’d seen some of the photos that Chris Gibbs had taken too.