Jim’s wife looked at the visitors uncertainly. ‘Is everything alright?’

‘Everything’s hunky-dory,’ he said quickly, but she hesitated in the doorway. ‘These nice people are police officers. We’re talking about Becky, luv, about what happened to her.’

‘I saw about that missing girl on the news,’ she told them. ‘It’s been a very bad time for Jim. It’s made him very distraught, he can’t sleep.’

Jim stared into the bottom of his glass. ‘It’s brought it all back, for sure.’

‘Let’s hope that Sammi is found sooner rather than later.’

‘Yeah, and that the cops make a better fist of it than they did when Becky was murdered in cold blood.’

‘I should get back to the kids,’ Jim’s wife said.

Her husband nodded at the empty jug. ‘A refill would be nice.’

‘Not right now, Jim.’

When she had gone, Jim turned back to Sasha and Craig and said gravely, ‘And now it’s happening again.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘A young girl goes missing and she’s connected to that lot.’ He went to a cabinet and flung it open, revealing a stack of files and folders. ‘I spent years trying to get you police to reopen the case to discover how my sister was the only one not to escape that shithole farmhouse.’

‘Jerry Swann recaptured her during the escape from the house.’

‘Look at this.’ Jim picked up a cheap-looking plastic trophy sprayed in faded gold and turned it in his hands. ‘Not much to look at, is it, but my Becks was proud of it. It’s an athletics trophy. She was in the school team, she could run like the wind, that girl. There’s not a hope in hell Swann would have caught her. As I understand it, Simon could hardly move, he had to be carried out of that place. It don’t make sense that Swann caught Becky, of all people. He was a disgusting man, a monster, and the first thing I do when I open my eyes of a morning is thank the Lord he’s rotting in the grave, but then I start wondering all over again about what happened that night. And still, all these years later, it don’t make sense. Something stinks about the whole thing.’

He took a thick folder from the cabinet. ‘These are all the letters I’ve written down the years to Essex Police, the local MP, the Crown Prosecution Service and Uncle Tom Cobley, to get an inquiry started. Hell, I’ve written to all the prime ministers. Useless, every one of them!’ He dropped the heavy bundle with a bang on to a coffee table. ‘My sister was a beautiful human being, a wonderful sister and daughter – her death destroyed our parents – and she deserves justice.’

‘Jerry Swann is dead.’