Occasionally the old man’s mouth jerked, and Ian kept turning to his father, smiling at him encouragingly, as if he still had hope that Peter would shrug off his affliction and join the conversation. Sasha considered whether her own children would be as attentive when she was as old and infirm, whether they would change her incontinence nappy and straighten her wig, and decided it was best not to dwell on the matter.

‘The girl who’s gone missing,’ she said, glancing at the family photographs, ‘is the god-daughter of one of the kids who was abducted by Jerry Swann. Her name is Michelle Dormand.’

‘I saw that.’ Ian clicked his fingers, trying to place her. ‘Michelle was Becky’s best friend, yes?’

Sasha realized that, despite his eagerness to help, Ian probably didn’t know as much about the Bad Place as he claimed – he was clearly a people pleaser – and that she’d wasted a journey.

‘No, that was Karin.’

‘Ah.’

She saw a photo of Peter Carrington that looked like it had been taken at a police do when he was in his pomp. Barrel-chested, with a thick mane of black hair swept back over his head, Peter wore an expensive-looking three-piece suit and a white shirt. The knot of his silk tie bulged ostentatiously, and a chain with the initial ‘P’ framed the neck of his flamboyant waistcoat. He wore a big, complacent smile, and his blue eyes flashed.

She could only imagine the way those eyes widened in panic as Jerry Swann pulled the knife across Becky’s throat.

This is for you, my love.

Other middle-aged men surrounded him in the photo. Carrington’s team looked as thick as thieves, and gazed at him with obvious devotion. His boys – because in those days it was invariably men who worked in CID – loved and feared him in equal measure. Carrington was a big personality from an age when SIOs ran teams as they saw fit, when investigative strategies were a reflection of their own personal style and experience, before a series of high-profile misjudgements and mistakes, the Bad Place investigation among them, led to police procedure becoming more formalized.

There were other photos, too. There was Peter, his wife and a teenage Ian in a rowing boat on a lake. The resemblance between Peter and his young son was striking.

‘Nice photo,’ she said, holding it up.

‘It was taken on Windermere in happier times, before Dad was… let go. And before the press and the conspiracy theorists got hold of him.’

Sasha put down the photo. ‘Conspiracy theorists?’

Ian rolled his eyes. ‘People demanding to know the truth.’

‘The truth?’