‘Come on, that’s a bit casual even for you. You knew Hampshire Constabulary had a missing persons inquiry on him, but appear to have shown no interest in its outcome.’

‘I thought he must have turned up. People do, I mean that’s what the officer said at the time. Most missing people do turn up unharmed.’

‘And at no time were you worried enough to check up on this poor young man.’

‘Look, this is a busy pub. Barmen and barmaids come and go. We welcome them and look after them, but we don’t keep track of them after they leave.’

Gillard held up a witness statement. ‘Two years ago, your husband identified Valdovas from CCTV on a National Express coach video. I can now tell you that the man in those pictures was not Valdovas, even though he was wearing his clothing.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, really. We believe that Valdovas never left the village. He was murdered in a bedroom of Dove Cottage, and buried in the garden. Do you know anything about that?’

Vicky Willow said nothing, but stared at the table in front of her, her normal ruddy complexion now pallid. She looked exhausted and defeated.

‘Do you know anything about that, Vicky?’

‘No,’ she whispered. Gillard got her to repeat it for the tape.

A crash against the glass door made them all jump. Vicky’s son Callum was pressing against the pane, palms flat, face squashed so that his upturned nose revealed giant nostrils, fogging the glass. He began to pound on the door, calling for his mother. Furious, she rounded on him and bellowed for him to leave her alone. ‘Can’t I ever get a minute’s peace from all your trouble?’

The boy vanished, and Vicky turned round to her interlocutors. ‘If he is dead, that’s horrible,’ she said. ‘But I know nothing about it.’

‘How did Mr Valdovas get on with the Tickett family?’

She shot him a narrow-eyed look that spoke volumes.

‘You don’t have to protect them, you know,’ Gillard said. ‘They’re all going down for a long time anyway. They’ve been charged with abduction and they are about to be charged with fraud. There’s no need to be afraid. You can do the right thing.’

The woman buried her face in her hands. ‘All my life I have tried to do the right thing,’ she said thickly. ‘But it’s not always obvious what the right thing is.’

It was Friday afternoon when Gillard slid his Vauxhall into the car park at HMP High Down. It was humid, with towering cumulus clouds building, their undersides the colour of slate. He and Rainy Macintosh left the car just as the first fat raindrops were beginning to fall, and the first peal of thunder sounded like a warehouse shelf collapse. They hurried inside, escorted along brightly lit corridors which echoed to the sound of thunderclaps.