‘I’ve only got Scotch Fingers,’ he confessed.

‘Buttered, please.’

‘It’ll go straight to your arse.’

‘Fuck, you’re cruel for saying that to a pregnant woman.’

He couldn’t help smiling and went searching through the pantry for the biscuits.

‘Robert Houghton jumped ship a couple of months later for the corporate world,’ Rachel said, ‘and that was that. But what he collected before he left is interesting.’

‘Rach—’

‘I can’t do this now, for obvious reasons. But there’s something here, Bish. Please don’t ignore it. If not for me, then do it for Bee. Because whenever she’s locked in her room with that iPad, I think she’s looking for those kids. I think she’s worried rotten that something’s going to happen to them, and I think the only way to get Violette LeBrac off the streets is to sort out why she’s on the run. I honestly don’t believe it’s because she’s scared of an arrest.’

Bish thought of the message Violette had sent her mother.

‘LeBrac received a postcard from her. A cryptic message about telling the truth and shaming the devil.’

Rachel was nodding. Bish could tell she had already thought this through.

‘What if this kid’s trying to prove her mother’s innocence?’ she said.

He finally sat down, and she seemed to take it as a sign that he was ready to listen. Perhaps he was.

‘I’ve done a bit of research of my own,’ she went on, indicating the top left-hand corner of the envelope where the doctor’s name and personal address appeared on a gold-coloured sticker. ‘I searched everywhere for this Dr Owen Walden. It’s not such a common name, and the only one I could find was out at St Therese’s. When I rang they told me he retired five years ago and now runs a B&B in Rye.’

He went to protest but she stopped him.

‘Bish, just read what’s in this file,’ she said, ‘and you’ll see that the arrest of the Sarraf family would never have stood up at trial. Whoever was in charge at the time found a way to get around one. They were desperate to keep the public happy. Elections were won on the back of those arrests. It would have been humiliating for Blair’s people to admit they got it wrong.’

‘Do we have to blame everything on Blair?’

‘No. Just the War on Terror, and Iraq, and having his head stuck up Bush’s arse.’

‘Rachel, let me repeat yet again, LeBrac confessed.’

‘Stop calling her that,’ she said, irritated.

‘What the hell am I supposed to call her? She won’t let me use her first name. You won’t let me use her last.’

She ignored his question and pointed once more to the file. ‘It’s all in there. The week of the bombing, she handed in her dissertation. I don’t know too many people who have the time to make a bomb, complete a doctoral thesis in molecular biology, and hold down a full-time job when they live with their extended family and have to take their mother to chemo as well as bring up a child.’