Jane spread her palms wide. ‘Influence. Control. She worked her way through a number of her male colleagues, to see what she could get out of them. Any piece of information she found out would be squirrelled away in her mind, in case it could be useful at a later date. And when I say useful, I mean be used to influence or manipulate someone into doing what she wanted.’

This matched up with Anna’s account of Jess, and it made sense that she had been using Steve – if she wanted influence then who better to try and get her claws into than the head teacher. Was it possible she’d gone up to Normanby Hall to meet him and something had happened, something that had ultimately led to his death? I made a mental note to ask Singh later if he’d looked into Jess’s alibi. Could she have slipped away from the hen party unnoticed for a while?

Jane was watching us carefully, and it was clear she knew she’d planted a seed of an idea in our minds.

‘You don’t think it could have been one of the students?’ I asked, wanting to move the conversation on.

‘What, Leon? Never. The boy wouldn’t hurt a fly.’

‘What about his father?’ Singh countered.

Jane rolled her eyes. ‘That was self-defence. The man was abusive, and Leon snapped. I don’t blame him at all for what he did, especially as he only wounded his father and then went for help. This is completely different. He didn’t do it.’

‘You seem to be very confident of that, even without having the full facts of the case,’ Singh told her, with a sideways glance at me. I shook my head to tell him I hadn’t been passing on any information.

‘The residential students are very close,’ I said to her. ‘They’re secretive and don’t mix with any other students, and there’s a good chance they haven’t told the police everything they know about this case. Have they always been like that?’

Jane frowned. ‘They were always close, of course. That’s natural, given their shared experience. But you’re making it sound sinister. It was never like that. Are you suggesting something changed when that man took over?’

Singh frowned. ‘Why would you say that?’

‘I am not an idiot, Detective,’ Jane replied, acid in her voice. ‘Can I assume that the staff member who was discovered to be grooming students was the dead man? I saw the news online.’

Singh hesitated, then nodded. ‘It was.’

‘So, it is natural to assume someone killed him because of that.’

‘That’s certainly our main avenue of investigation at the moment.’

‘But that doesn’t mean it was Leon, regardless of his history. Did Paige tell you about the video?’