Kate picked it up and turned it on. It was unlocked – George’s final act of quick thinking, so desperate was he to reveal the woman who’d used him. He’d probably worked out at some point that she’d never had any intention to help him get custody of his daughter back. Kate quickly found the home page and searched around inside the apps on the screen. She played something and set it down on the table. Kelly listened.

It was Vivienne Kennedy-Craig’s voice.

‘Fabian can never know. Find some dropout up there wherever you are, and make sure you tidy up.’

Kate fiddled with the phone and found another recording.

‘Tidy up, George. Nellie is, and always has been, a liability, I cannot have her coming back to me.’

In just two statements, recorded by a forward-thinking man who was technically a murderer, but useful to them as a pivotal witness, Kelly realised that the whole case had rested upon the fact that Vivienne Kennedy-Craig never knew that Lord Donald Reilly would get into that helicopter, and thus spark an intense investigation. Kelly would like to think that if it had been Bart alone who’d been harmed, then the AAIB would have found the cut hydraulic line anyway, but she’d never know for sure if quite so much fuss would have been made if Lance Tatterall hadn’t happened to have been on the mountainside in the first place.

By the time Kate and Kelly had finished listening to the recordings on George’s phone, the sky outside was fully dark and Paul Edderbridge had still not been located. They had a fairly straightforward picture of how the murder and attempted murder had taken place, and they had George Fellows willing to testify. He just kept talking. Strapped to a bed at the Penrith and Lakes hospital, he wouldn’t shut up, giving them fact after fact, hoping that it would ultimately reduce his sentence. Maybe it would, Kelly thought, but it wouldn’t get his daughter back. The CPS were notorious for making such deals. It was why she was a copper and not a lawyer.

Before they left for the evening, Kelly took a call from her father, who’d been driven by Johnny to the hospital to take a look at the body of Nellie Lowther. It was a grim ride to give, especially with their four-month-old daughter strapped into her car seat, but Johnny wouldn’t hear of Ted driving himself. The plan was that Kelly would collect him, and they’d eat together as a family tonight, after Josie got back from her Duke of Edinburgh expedition.

‘What do you think?’ Kelly asked Ted.

‘The slip knot came in with her,’ he said.