This one had been recorded on 15 October 2015.

Sixteen days before he and the others disappeared.

‘Okay. We’re recording now. You asked me not to write anything down, so getting everything on tape is the next best way for me to remember all that I need to. Not being able to take notes … it just makes it harder to remember important details, that’s all, and details are the way you make progress with stuff like this. So just talk to me like you did all the other times we’ve met and don’t worry about the Dictaphone. Everything else on here was recorded years ago, when I was still at the newspaper, so what we talk about will be safe. This thing’s just been gathering dust until now …’

For a moment, there wasn’t any response. I could hear movement – the squeak of a sofa, the rustle of clothes, the distant whine of the wind at a window somewhere – and, briefly, became worried it wasn’t just coming from the tape but from the office too. I stopped the recording and inched into the corridor, looking into reception, towards the entrance. Nothing had changed. No one was here.

But I was still on edge.

I stayed where I was, in sight of the entrance, and pressed Play again.

‘Okay, so you want me to just tell you what I remember?’

A woman.

‘Exactly,’ Patrick replied.

‘I guess I remember being surprised her name was Beatrix.’

I froze, eyes fixed on the Dictaphone now.

‘You don’t think it suited her?’

‘It wasn’t that.’

‘So what was it?’

‘I don’t know. She just never seemed like a Beatrix to me.’

There was a long pause, peripheral sounds fading in again, the clink of a mug being put down.

‘What else do you remember thinking?’

‘It was all such a long time ago.’ The woman paused for a moment and I heard her take a long breath, the sound of it heavy, almost uneasy. ‘I don’t … I just …’

‘It’s okay,’ Patrick said. ‘Take a minute if you need to.’

In the quiet that followed, I tried to imagine who Patrick was interviewing. Her voice gave few clues. She was from the south somewhere, but there was a generic quality to her inflection that made it hard to be more specific. It was even hard to put an age on her – her voice was smooth, her speech patterns unblemished. The lack of a northern accent immediately discounted the idea of it being one of the women from the village: Freda Davey had been born in Leeds, Emiline Wilson was brought up in Kendal and Laura Gibbs in York, while Francesca Perry hadn’t moved to the UK until she was fifteen – and, according to Ross, had never lost her Italian accent.

‘Sorry,’ the woman said, ‘it’s still so hard to talk about.’