I thought of Mills, of his reasons for giving me the key, and my mind spooled all the way back to the cottage, to when he’d had a shotgun pointed at me. He’d told me the story about the family of four who’d been murdered. I’d thought it was because he wanted to let me know that he knew who Healy was, and maybe that was part of the reason. But now I was starting to wonder if that wasn’t just secondary to something else: perhaps he was telling me he had a conscience; perhaps he was telling me that no amount of money was quite enough to suppress his instincts as an investigator, as someone who intuitively cared for victims. He’d cared for that family, he’d cared for the shop owner he’d saved from being shot, he cared for the girlfriend I’d seen him with and her two kids, and now he cared about the lost lives hidden in these boxes. That made me think he’d only come across this room recently. It made me think that Pierce had been keeping him out of the loop, telling him only what he needed to know, and that the money Mills had been earning had been enough for him to ignore some of the things that didn’t add up or sit right with him. But, eventually, Mills had got curious, and somehow he’d ended up here. And once he saw this place, it flipped a switch.

I stopped.

I’d been thinking so much about Mills, I’d almost missed something else entirely. It was rolled up in the green sweater belonging to Patrick Perry and had remained hidden there, even when I’d got the sweater out and set it down. But as I returned it the box, I felt it shift and slide towards me.

I unwrapped the jumper.

Inside was a Dictaphone.

42

The Dictaphone was digital, but it was an old model, large and cumbersome, and I immediately thought of Patrick Perry, of his years as a journalist, and then his weeks and months spent looking into the vanishing of Beatrix Steards. Had this been his when he’d still been at the Manchester Evening News? It was scuffed at the edges, suggesting it had seen a lot of mileage, and when I cycled through the folders on the display, I saw that almost all of them had been used, and each contained a recording. I eyed the device and considered the fact that it was wrapped in a piece of his clothing. The police had clearly never realized the Dictaphone existed, otherwise it would have been mentioned somewhere in the investigation. So either Patrick took it with him on the night of the disappearance – or someone went back to the village for it afterwards. But why?

I turned it over.

Something was written, in black pen, on the back.

G76984Z.