Jacob Pierce himself was eventually located trying to board a flight to Moscow. He’d chosen Russia because the country had no extradition treaty with the UK. In interviews, he admitted that he’d met Adrian Vale for the first time in 1987, when he still worked in London, and had then developed a relationship with him, especially after Pierce moved back to York and started Seiger and Sten. He said, before Isaac Mills, he’d recommended other men to Vale who had done the same job for Vale as Mills had been employed to do – solving problems, making them go away – but none could protect him entirely. Because of that, Vale would become frustrated, and then angry. Pierce described Vale as a black hole, an impossible force around which things simply disappeared.

On the same day that Jacob Pierce was arrested at Heathrow, Connor McCaskell left a message on my voicemail.

‘Wow, David, you’re back in the headlines again.’ He laughed, but it sounded forced, fraudulent. ‘Who would have thought that a psycho like Adrian Vale would be the least of your worries in that forest, right? I mean, once he was dead, once Isaac Mills had blown his brains out, I bet you thought your nightmare was finally over.’

I could hear telephones, voices, office noise.

‘Anyway, give me a call. Let’s talk.’

Another pause.

‘We can discuss the anonymous Irishman who phoned your daughter.’

After Annabel told them about Healy’s call, the Met had spoken to Robert Zaid.

He’d had a rock-solid alibi.

He told them he was out of the country the night I went missing, and claimed that, although I called his PA about arranging a meeting, I’d never confirmed. That last part wasn’t right, and in the end, once all the facts were known, it wouldn’t stand up to scrutiny. But it hung together well enough until I finally arrived back home.