It would, and although Freda had been adamant she didn’t want anyone knowing at the time Patrick had recorded her, that she didn’t want her family thinking that her focus was on anything other than spending time with them and getting better, it didn’t mean she hadn’t changed her mind in the two days after. She’d already told the other villagers she was sick again. She could easily have gone on to tell them the cancer was terminal.

And maybe, at the dinner, she’d spoken about Beatrix as well.

‘But why wouldn’t she have told her kids first?’

Healy shook his head. ‘Maybe it was harder for her to do that. Sometimes it’s like that: when you love someone, you don’t want them to hurt.’

I looked at him, surprised at the tenderness of the comment: it was a response that went way beyond this moment, back to decisions and situations Healy had long since left behind, but what he was saying was true.

Sometimes the hardest conversations were with the ones we loved the most.

Even if that turned out to be the case, though, there was still so much about that night that didn’t make sense. Why were there no tyre tracks belonging to any other cars? Why were there no footprints except the villagers’?

I took a breath, trying to clear my head.

‘What about the other box full of clothes?’ Healy asked.

It was a good question. There had been two large cardboard boxes in the hidden room at Seiger and Sten, one full of items belonging to the Black Gale villagers, the other packed with random clothes, a smashed iPad, phones and a power bank.

‘You reckon it might be more victims?’

We looked at each other.

It was the first time we’d used that word.

Victims.

‘I hope not,’ I said, but it was a response without much conviction, because I didn’t know what the box meant, how many people its contents belonged to, over what period of time they had been collected – or where we’d find the owners.

Maybe in the same place we find the villagers.

‘What’s on your mind, Raker?’

‘I just don’t know where other missing people would fit in,’ I said. ‘I don’t see where they sit alongside what went on at Black Gale and what happened to Beatrix Steards.’

And I stopped short of saying the rest.

That a part of me didn’t want to know.

‘What about this Robert Zaid guy?’ Healy pressed.

‘What about him?’

‘You still think he’s worth speaking to?’

‘I just know he’s a link to Beatrix Steards,’ I said, ‘and that Beatrix is a link to Black Gale.’

‘So you’re going to try and arrange a meeting with him?’

‘Yes,’ I said, nodding.

My eyes went to what was left of my notebook.