A mile upriver from the village, Rissington Sluice was reached on a narrow private road owned by Aqua Western. Parking next to a Victorian lock-keeper’s cottage, Gillard was met as arranged by a water company employee who took him through a gate in a palisade of galvanised railings, and down to the Wey. At this point the river showed more evidence of an industrial heritage than a rural one, with numerous abandoned Victorian sheds overshadowed by the gloomy foliage of large sycamores on either side. The sluice itself resembled a canal lock leading into a tunnel under the riverbank. The young man gave him a brief overview of the sluice’s function. While most of the river-flow slid over a broad shallow weir, the Victorian brick construction was designed as a storm-surge run-off, controlled by a pressure gate. In normal times water simply spilled over the swing gate, but during floods, the pressure of water pushed the suspended metal shutter against a sprung hinge and torrents of water would spill underneath until the pressure dropped. This was evidently where most of the effluent vented into the river. The sluice had been the location of a number of deaths over the years until it was fenced off in the 1950s. These were mainly of children drawn into its deep catchment. That didn’t of course stop those who were playing in the water nearby. Although there were cast-iron rungs cemented into the wall at both ends and lifebuoy rings mounted on either side, the man said it was treacherous during heavy rain.

It was here during a thunderstorm on St Swithin’s Day, 1991, that Jeanette Willow threw herself into the sluice, and was found dead the next day. Gillard had found online an article from the local newspaper on the twentieth anniversary of her death which quoted her daughter Crystal: ‘My mum never got over being the inspiration for murder. She had an open heart, and loved her family dearly even as she loved another. She never got over the fact that her chance misjudgement years before inspired a feud, tearing apart two families in the village. She couldn’t live with that, but we the survivors will have to.’

Gillard was puzzled. If Vicky Willow was working with Aidan Tickett for his father’s construction firm, there was some evidence that the two families had mended their fences. Maybe Christopher Tickett was right about that. It seemed the real feud wasn’t between the families; it was between the villagers and the water company.