There was something about the sequence – in particular, the numbers – that got my attention, but I couldn’t think what, and didn’t have the time to waste here trying to figure it out. Instead, I went to the top of the steps, looking out into Pierce’s office, making sure I was still alone, and then used the volume wheel on the side to push the sound down.

I pressed Play.

‘Okay. Are you ready to start?’

It was a male voice with a Mancunian accent.

‘Yes, I’m ready.’

A female, also Mancunian.

‘Did they explain to you about the online story?’

‘Yes. They said it would be posted later.’

‘That’s right. I’m just an old hack set in my ways but, as I understand it, they will post an edited version of this interview on to the website at the same time as the printed version goes out. That means I just need to do a very brief introduction …’

‘Okay.’

There was a second’s pause.

‘I’m Patrick Perry, senior reporter for the Manchester Evening News and I’m here with Coralie McEwan, former girlfriend of city council leader Tony Eckhart.’

Straight away, I recognized the name of the woman: she was the mistress of the city councilman who’d been caught siphoning off public funds back in the 1990s. Patrick had hung a framed copy of the front-page story he’d written about this on his study wall.

‘Thank you for talking to me, Coralie.’

I listened for a minute or so and then switched to the next file, and the next, moving through them as fast as I could, constantly pausing to make sure the office was still silent, aware that the longer I stayed here, the more I put myself at risk. But, at the same time, it was hard not to listen. I realized I hadn’t heard Patrick speak before, so as he interviewed local politicians, victims of crime, protagonists in stories he’d written in his time as a reporter, it was a chance finally to match a voice to the person I’d read about and had described to me. I’d studied his life so closely and knew so much about him now that I found myself surprised at how he sounded, different from how I imagined, his voice deeper than Ross’s, and scratchier, as if he had once been a smoker. But compelling as it was to hear him talk, as I kept going – one file after the next – I quickly began to realize I was no closer to understanding what possible interest any of this could hold for Jacob Pierce, or why the Dictaphone was in here.

But then I hit the second-from-last file.

The date of the recording flashed up every time I switched folders, and all of the other interviews had predated the point at which Patrick was made redundant in 2010. All of them, except this one and the next.