And when Karin finally turned to look at her, her gaze was so full of misery and anguish that it sent a chill down Sasha’s spine.

Then the door to the interview room had opened and a CID detective had told Karin to come inside. The girl had obliged, head bowed.

Within the hour, Sasha was travelling with other officers to the farmhouse, where the confrontation with Jerry Swann ended in a fiasco. In interviews, all the kids had confirmed that Becky was right behind them when they all escaped, that she had fled into the woods, but when Senior Investigating Officer DI Peter Carrington and his team went inside, she was discovered in Jerry Swann’s clutches.

Sasha was waiting outside when officers went into the building. She heard faint screams, shouts – a gunshot.

And then awful silence.

Confronted by police, Swann had slit the girl’s throat, then rushed with the knife at Carrington – and was shot dead. The coroner ruled that he had in effect committed suicide by attacking the detective with the blade raised.

The last thing Swann had said as he killed her was, ‘This is for you, my love.’

Sasha burned with shame at the memory, even all these years later. She had given Karin false hope that her friend was alive.

We’ll find Becky, I promise, she’ll be safe.

Sasha could only imagine the heartbreak Karin felt when she discovered Becky had been brutally murdered.

Unable to explain how the girl was in the basement, detectives had theorized that she had stumbled in the dark and been recaptured by Jerry Swann. Psychologists fiercely debated Swann’s last words and pronounced that he’d developed an obsession with Becky and killed her in a twisted act of love. But questions were immediately asked about why the kids weren’t found earlier – just the day before, detectives had visited the farmhouse as part of door-to-door enquiries – and people demanded to know why Swann, who fitted the classic profile of a disturbed loner, wasn’t on their radar. The decisions made by Carrington were debated in the press. Basic procedural mistakes were revealed to have been made in the investigation, culminating in a tragic confrontation, and Essex Police’s reputation took a battering.

Investigative procedures were tightened and Carrington took early retirement. In effect, he jumped before he was pushed. The gossip around Victoria Avenue was that he left the force a broken man, haunted by the death of the young girl in his arms.

Coverage of the case gripped the nation; it was all anyone could talk about. The hunt for the missing kids had dominated the news 24/7. Reporters from across the world flooded into Southend.