‘Sort of,’ Ross replied. ‘I mean, he didn’t build them all himself – he brought a firm in to do it – but it’s his land and, once they were finished, he sold them through us. That was how Mum and Dad ended up here: as soon as Chris came to me with the properties, I phoned Dad because I knew they would love the house and the area it was in. They were big walkers, always outdoors. It wasn’t that they weren’t happy in Denshaw, but Dad was working from home by that stage, so there was no need to be so close to the city.’

‘I read that your dad was a journalist.’

‘Yeah, for the Manchester Evening News.’

‘Why did he leave?’

‘They made him redundant in 2010. He was forty-five, at a bit of a crossroads in terms of his career, so he took the redundancy money, put it in the bank and then caned it for a year as a freelancer. At the end of that, he took out a loan and put in everything he’d earned to set up his PR business.’ Ross glanced at one of the photographs of his father; a flicker of a smile. ‘He nailed it, David. I knew he would. He didn’t stretch himself thin, didn’t take on too many clients – he wanted everyone to feel like they were getting the personal touch. By the end of 2014, he was turning down work.’

‘They didn’t struggle to afford this place, then?’

‘No, definitely not.’

‘I’m guessing Chris Gibbs didn’t do too badly out of it either.’

Ross nodded. ‘He didn’t have to pay for the plot, so that instantly saves a lot. The houses cost £250,000 to build – and he sold them for four hundred grand each.’

A profit of almost a million.

I’d already wondered if money might be at the heart of this case, and now I thought about it again. Patrick Perry’s PR business was flying; Chris Gibbs had made almost seven figures on the houses. Jealousy often shadowed financial success.

‘So Chris had a lot of cash burning a hole in his pocket?’ I asked.

‘He said there was no money in farming any more, so I think he saw it as clever business. A nest egg for Mark. But you know what? Chris was never money-oriented. I know that’s easy to say when you’ve got nine hundred grand sitting in your account, but he wasn’t. He bought himself that Land Rover out there, farm machinery or whatever, but Dad said he never lorded it over anyone. You’d never have known that he had all that cash. Mum and Dad really liked him, and Laura too. They were just normal people.’