I remembered the Skype call I’d had with Rina Blake where she’d talked about her mum: how Freda had never placed much importance on a career because she’d just always wanted to be a mother. I remembered what Ross had said right back at the start, about how she could be a mother-hen type. Now it seemed obvious why.

Her southern accent had thrown me when I’d heard it on the tape, had me looking in another direction, away from Black Gale. But, instead, the answer about who the woman was had been at our starting point all along. Patrick’s investigation hadn’t been triggered by a request from a stranger, and it wasn’t an affair with someone mysterious and unknown. It was a friendship built much closer to home.

Literally next door.

‘So now we know who she is,’ Healy said.

I paused the recording and the cottage became quiet.

‘And we know who Beatrix Steards was to her.’

His eyes fell on the Dictaphone again.

‘That just leaves the question of why Freda went looking for Beatrix after all this time.’

I shook my head. ‘We know why.’

‘Do we?’

‘She got cancer again.’

Healy frowned. He looked tired, like me, but he was beaten too, bruised and in pain, and it was stopping him from thinking as clearly as he would normally.

‘From what I’ve been able to find out,’ I said, ‘she went to see her GP in the middle of August and was then back at the hospital in September. She told Rina that doctors reckoned it was early days and the cancer was treatable, which was why she decided to delay treatment for a few months. You remember she told that nurse she wanted to go on holiday?’

‘To Australia.’ Healy nodded. ‘Her dream trip.’

‘Right. It was in the Black Gale file. Thing is, though, I don’t think she ever had any intention of making that trip. That wasn’t why she delayed treatment.’ I tapped out a rhythm on the table, trying to put it all together in my head. ‘Rina said her mum was scared about the idea of more chemo because the first round had been absolutely brutal, so a more likely reason is that she wanted to give herself some extra time to prepare physically and mentally for what was coming.’

‘But it was the holiday thing that became the narrative,’ Healy said quietly.

He was starting to get it now, just the same as me.