‘Vicky told me. She went round to see him next day when he was due on shift at the bar. She couldn’t rouse him. I couldn’t believe it, but she took me to Dove Cottage and showed him lying dead on the bed. I felt terrible. I hadn’t meant to kill him.’

‘Did you notice any injuries on the body?’ Gillard asked. ‘On the neck, for example.’

‘He had a massive great swelling on his forehead and a black eye. I didn’t notice anything else. I’m so so sorry for what I did.’

Gillard exchanged a glance with the solicitor. This was a confession that didn’t match the evidence. Blood from Valdovas had been sprayed across the room. That could only have come from an injury which matched the dagger wound. It didn’t make sense.

‘When you were fighting Tom, were there any other witnesses apart from Aidan?’

‘I don’t think so.’

Gillard asked a few more questions, but Rory Tickett’s answers now focused on invisible spiders, that were talking to him at this very moment.

‘What are they telling you to do?’

‘To bite you,’ Rory whispered. ‘They’re evil.’

Getting no more sense out of the interviewee, Gillard cut the tape, thanked the solicitor and stepped out of the room. Checking his phone, he saw he’d got a new and shocking message from PC Sarah Noakes back in Rissington Common.

Got a confession

Chapter Twenty-eight

Another confession? Gillard rang Noakes immediately. ‘Are you telling me Vicky Willow killed Tomas Valdovas?’

‘Not exactly. At first she wouldn’t let me talk to Callum. Instead she gave me a story about how she helped Tomas home on the Sunday night after a fight at the pub.’

‘I heard about that, Rory Tickett hit him.’

‘Ah, yes, that was in the version I heard. She didn’t see the fight. She’d just finished locking up when she walked out into the garden and saw the two Tickett brothers standing over Valdovas, who was sitting on the ground. The moment she saw the bruises on him, she threw the Ticketts off the premises and walked Valdovas back to Dove Cottage. He was pretty woozy, but seemed okay. She went round at breakfast time on the Monday, and apart from the bruises Valdovas seemed fully recovered. She asked him to look after Callum, who was then five, while she dealt with the usual Monday morning delivery from the brewer. Apparently Tomas was great with the kid, and used to cart him about in a wheelbarrow, give him piggybacks, and go running about with him on his shoulders.’

‘Go on.’