‘I’d been to the village before that, posing as an engineer from BT, spouting some bullshit about needing to upgrade their phone line.’ He paused and I could see it fitted into what I knew already of how the bugs were installed. ‘We did the Perrys’ and Daveys’ first, and then a few days later, Vale decides he wants all of them bugged, so he comes with me and we do the Gibbses’ and then Solomon and Wilson’s place as well. I’m in there, sneaking around the houses, trying to install these bloody listening devices while everyone’s still at home, and he’s off doing I don’t know what the hell else, keeping out of sight. I figured he was just looking around the homes when he could, getting a feel for who these people were. And, in part, that was true.’

I frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Halloween night, we hire a van and drive it up there, and then park it outside the boundaries of the village, so there are no visible tyre tracks. He’s brought these brand-new wellington boots with him, not even in his size, and a pair of new walking shoes, and it takes me a few seconds to catch on. Then he hands me the walking shoes and tells me to put them on, and that’s when I get it.’ Mills glanced at me, seeing if I understood where this was heading, and I did: when Mills was installing the bugs, Vale had already been thinking about the endgame. ‘The walking shoes,’ Mills went on, ‘were an exact match – make, size, everything – for a pair John Davey had. The wellies were exactly the same: Chris Gibbs had a pair, same size, same make, same print on the bottom …’

Now it all made sense.

Footprints and tyre tracks were found that night, but all of them belonged to the villagers. The tracks matched up with tyres on the cars belonging to the Daveys, Perrys, Gibbses and to Randolph Solomon, and the same was true of the shoes. When the police cross-referenced the footwear found inside the houses with the footprints found around the properties, everything matched up.

‘That was why he left the van on the main road,’ I said quietly.

Mills nodded. ‘It was tarmacked, so there would never be any evidence of us out there. Inside the village, though, it was different: the track was mud and loose stone.’

‘So whose car did you use to get them to the van?’