On one was a series of long, rectangular metal boxes with flip-up lids. On the other were two very large cardboard ones. All of them were covered in dust and had clearly been here a while.

I flipped the lid on the nearest metal box and used the penlight to illuminate the interior.

It was full of money.

Notes, wrapped in plastic bundles.

I removed one, turning it in my hand. It was difficult to tell for sure but each bundle looked like it had about £5,000 in it, and there were twenty-five of them stacked side by side.

I put the money back, closed the lid and moved on to the next box. It was the same; so was the next one, and the next one. The only difference was that, in the last of the boxes, one of the bundles had been ripped open and about half the notes were missing. I looked back along the shelf, at all the metal containers, at the money inside them.

That meant there was close to a million in here.

Originally there could have been more, though: on the next shelf down, almost cast aside, were two other, matching metal containers, both lids open, both empty. It suggested that Pierce – or someone else – had already been through both of them. They’d already spent a quarter of a million pounds.

Where did all the money come from?

I thought of Chris Gibbs, of the profit he and Laura had made from the sale of the houses at Black Gale. That had been nearly a million, but according to their financials, everything they’d spent had been accounted for. I clamped the penlight between my teeth and pushed on, dragging the first of the large cardboard boxes on to the floor. Dust mushroomed up into the spaces around me. As I removed the lid and set it aside, it took me a second to work out what I was looking at.

Muddied clothes.

Running leggings. A training top.

An old pair of Asics.

Ensuring my gloves were still on properly and intact, I reached in and took out the trainers. Women’s running shoes, size five. Even without knowing exactly what was going on, I felt every nerve ending fire, a charge scattering along my spine. The trainers looked like they’d clocked a lot of miles, the pattern on the soles worn along the edges. When I took the leggings out, I could see mud caked to one leg, spattered in a line from ankle to hip; on the training top, there was mud on the same side, from hem to armpit. It was all on the left, not on the right.

The woman had hit the ground on that side.