‘And on borrowed time if he had revenge on his mind. See – even given you a motive.’

McAvoy shakes his head. ‘He didn’t do the clairvoyants. Didn’t do Eva-Jayne.’

‘Well, your wife says he did. That’s why her daddy put him in the ground for years. Who else?’

McAvoy closes his eyes. Tries to tease out the facts that matter from the whole flicker-pad of memories. Thinks all the way back to the first time he heard about the murder at the flats in Scunthorpe.

‘01964,’ says Kincaid, behind him. ‘That’s here, isn’t it?’

‘Holderness,’ says McAvoy. ‘Why?’

‘Several calls to a local number over the course of two days last week. Some at strange hours. Two a.m., three oh five a.m., five a.m. …’

‘Read it out,’ says McAvoy, sharply, and keys the number into his own phone. As he punches in the area code, the screen fills with contacts and recent calls from any number beginning 01964. First among them is a call received at nine fifty-eight a.m.

‘What you got?’ asks Kincaid, noting the change in the bigger man’s body language. ‘Don’t be making life difficult when it just got so simple, now.’

McAvoy says nothing. Pictures himself, driving home at breakneck speed – the call coming through as he neared home and learned about the abduction of his son. He’d spoken to Andy Daniells about it at the crime scene. Had he ever been given a name?

‘McAvoy? What you got?’

‘Just a moment,’ he mutters, and wedges his finger in his ear as he listens back to his voicemails.

‘Hello, Sergeant McAvoy, I think we were cut off. This is Seth Brimley, I understand you were eager to talk to me regarding one of our rental properties at Sunk Island …’

The name ignites like a flare. He recalls the witness statement from years before, given by a businessman hurt by a fine-featured, dark-haired girl as she fled the scene of Eva-Jayne Puck’s brutal murder.

‘Seriously, McAvoy, what’s happening in that big head of yours?’ Kincaid sounds worried now, as if his almost-completed jigsaw puzzle is missing some pieces.

‘Brimley,’ mutters McAvoy, putting the name into a search engine. ‘Seth Brimley.’

‘Who’s that?’

‘Estate agent. Letting agent. Land agent. He was there when Eva-Jayne died.’

‘No, I told you, the Heldens sent this prick to do Roisin and she got done instead …’

No,’ says McAvoy, scanning an article on a property website. ‘No, the Heldens sent him after. He’s always said that. He worked it out, Kincaid – worked out who’d done it. Maybe he was blackmailing him, needed a place … oh Jesus.’

‘What?’

‘Brimley’s company handled the sale of this place in 2017,’ says McAvoy, quietly.

‘What, this fort?’

McAvoy nods. ‘And there’s an article here …’

Kincaid leans over his shoulder. Reads the headline.

Colleagues Line Street to Honour A Glorious Spirit.

‘Holderness Gazette,’ says McAvoy, quietly. ‘2009. Evangeline Brimley, office manager for a local estate agent, laid to rest after a short battle with a brain tumour … no children … husband gave tearful eulogy …’