‘A bit dramatic,’ Bish said, and everyone agreed.

‘Ortley was suspended from the force last month after assaulting a fellow officer with a firearm.’

He felt their eyes on him. So much for Grazier keeping the media out of it.

‘Should we be scared?’ Charlie said, sounding anything but.

‘Did he deserve it?’ Bee asked.

‘No one deserves to be threatened with a gun, Bee.’

‘Bullshit,’ Violette said. ‘I’d threaten a paedophile with a gun. I’d actually shoot him in the dick.’

After tapping away at the minivan’s GPS, Charlie started the engine. Bish turned his phone back on and regretted it the moment he saw the eleven text messages and twenty missed calls.

‘Nothing you can do until we get to Malham, so I’d switch it to silent if I were you,’ Charlie said.

Bish did as he was told.

In the rearview mirror he could see Violette whispering to Fionn, a vicious little expression around her mouth. Fionn seemed uncomfortable, and Bish had a feeling that she was forcing him into something he didn’t want to do.

Charlie saw him looking and checked his own mirror. ‘She doesn’t judge, you know,’ he said in a low voice. ‘She just says, “Move on, don’t let shit define you.” ’ He took a moment to contemplate. ‘I suppose a cheating scam seems nothing compared to the stuff that’s happened in her life.’

Bish was surprised that Charlie had brought that up. He dared to ask, ‘If it was a scam, what happened to the others?’

Charlie went into shutdown and Bish regretted asking. He looked in the rearview mirror again. There was a lot of whispering going on in the back now.

‘Doesn’t matter,’ Charlie said at last. ‘I cheated. And no, I didn’t hand myself in, I got caught. So don’t search for anything decent about the situation. The only thing I didn’t do was rat on the others.’

‘Fionn says you’re smart, Charlie. So why?’

Charlie shrugged. Bish was getting a clearer picture of what a Charlie shrug meant. Shame.

‘It’s not like The Vicar of Dibley with my parents, you know. Most of the time it’s a council flat next to a church. At Ashcroft you either had to make a name for yourself or be invisible. You couldn’t be in-between.’

‘How does Fionn fit into the school then?’

‘He was one of the invisible ones. Didn’t even know he went to that school until he told me the night before the bomb went off. I thought he looked familiar.’

Charlie took his eyes off the road to look briefly at Bish. ‘I was supposed to move that suitcase for Lola. Not Sykes. But Sykes did it. It should have been me. Sykes is fucking decent and he didn’t deserve that to happen to him.’

‘And you did, Charlie? You really think anyone deserves that?’

‘You don’t know how it feels,’ Charlie said dismissively.

‘Did Bee tell you about her brother’s death?’

Charlie seemed surprised. ‘Yeah. He got caught in a rip and drowned. She said you don’t talk about it.’