I lingered next to a photograph of John and Freda on what looked like a cruise ship. He was a big guy, bald, a little overweight, maybe six three. He might have been a rugby league player once, because he had a Leeds Rhinos shirt on and was built like a prop. Freda couldn’t have been more different: she was youthful and attractive, mid-height, the top of her head about level with her husband’s chin, and had lovely eyes, like the ocean in a brochure. But she was pale and absolutely stick-thin. It could have been her natural build, but it was more likely that at the time the photograph was taken, she’d been sick and was in recovery. In 2013 she’d had treatment for cancer, and according to her medical records had – for a second time – been referred to the oncology department at Harrogate District Hospital in the months before she vanished. Police had managed to confirm with staff there that the cancer had returned and that they were, at the time of Freda’s disappearance, exploring the options available to her. There had been an interesting side note too, which had caught my attention in the police file: one of the nurses, who’d known the Daveys through mutual friends, remembered Freda saying that she and John might go on a holiday before she began the ordeal of more chemo.

I wandered through the house, going through drawers, repeating exactly the same steps as with the Perrys’ – and in the bedroom found an iPad inside another evidence bag – but there was little else that caught my attention. Both of them had been retired for a while, so their disappearance was unlikely to be linked to anything that had happened in their jobs, and their time as pensioners seemed pretty low-key: they liked to travel, they were both in a bowls team, they went down to Cambridge a lot to see Rina.

I went to the house next door.