The funerals for the villagers took place within two weeks of one another, the Perrys first, then the Gibbses, then Randolph Solomon and Emiline Wilson, and then finally Freda and John. A memorial – the money donated by Ross Perry’s firm – was built next to the Black Gale sign, with the names of all nine of the residents on it, and then a line underneath describing the thing they loved most about living there. As lovely a gesture as it was, as important as all four funerals were to the families left behind, it was hard to know, in the end, if any of it was better than the simple, unmourned gravestone that marked the conclusion of Beatrix Steards’s story. I didn’t get the sense that Ross, or Rina Blake, or Tori Gibbs, felt any better after the ceremonies were over. There was no sense of relief, release or closure. If anything, the huge and domineering level of media coverage directed at them proved overwhelming, turning everything into a performance full of cameras and questions.

Five thousand miles away there was a memorial for Donald Klein too, although as he had no family left, and it had been so long since his death, it was undertaken at a local church, close to where he’d lived with his mother, and was only attended by a small number of people. And the man everybody had, incorrectly, always thought of as Gabriel Wilzon had long since been buried in an unmarked grave, in a cemetery in East LA, and – despite all the revelations that came to light in the weeks and months after I got home – something didn’t change: Jo had never known what his real name was in 1985, and over three decades on, no one knew now. Isaac Mills had said it was Pablo, but that was as much of a christening as he would ever get.

And then there was Joline Kader.

When I eventually got back to London, I managed to find a few papers she’d written and had talked to me about, and a video from a speaking tour that she’d mentioned. It had been at Cambridge University, on the subject of equality and discrimination, and at the end of it she answered a question from someone in the audience about what it was like to be a female detective at a time when it was a male-dominated environment. She’d smiled before responding: ‘I always remember something my husband said to me one morning, when I was having a meltdown in the kitchen before work. He said, “You’re a pioneer, honey. You’re out there in your wagon, crossing those plains by yourself, having to deal with all the dangers of unexplored territory. You’re Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone – just with better hair.”’

A ripple of laughter had passed across the hall.