As Baz leaned on the rail next to his workmate Jakes spoke, but kept his gaze on the undulating surface. ‘Yes. It’s not really warm enough for them to come out of the heated water. They need at least twenty-five degrees.’

‘So that’s why they are going to enclose the space, is it?’

Jakes nodded.

‘Good idea,’ Baz said mildly. He was wondering how to apologise. His formula for apologising to his wife on the many occasions he upset her was to kiss her on the neck and offer to take her out to dinner. It didn’t always work either. In any case there was no way he was going to kiss Michael Jakes on the neck.

Jakes saved him the trouble.

‘Neville Rollason used to tempt boys into his car,’ he said. ‘He had a toy box in the boot. Tapes of rock bands for the older teenagers, and Lego for the younger ones. He had computer games and consoles, including the Super Mario ones which were huge at the time. He had sweets, chocolate, fizzy drinks and alcohol, all of which he had spiked with drugs. In the basement at his house he kept a huge model railway layout and a pinball machine. He kept photographs of his playroom in the car to show the boys he wanted to lure there.’

Baz didn’t dare breathe.

‘Daniel Cooper was the first victim. Thirteen years old, disappeared outside a sweet shop in Gateshead in 1984. Then Jason Harvey, seventeen, from Newcastle. He was last seen in a park in March 1985. Paul Sullivan, eleven, was the youngest, November 1985. Sullivan’s body hasn’t been found. Then there are the other victims, the suspected and the unknown.’ He looked across at Baz, his eyes steady. ‘Not all of them are dead.’

It seemed to him the pain of Jakes’s childhood was being laid bare right before him.

‘I’m really sorry, it was so insensitive of me.’

Baz saw a complex expression swarm across Jakes’s face. The errant eye resumed climbing gradually, peering over Baz’s head, and then, like a one-armed bandit, dropped back into its normal position.

‘You have been to the police about this, haven’t you?’ Baz asked.

Jakes blew a sigh and turned away in exasperation. ‘I’m touched, Baz, but I don’t think empathy is your strong suit.’

Chapter Eighteen

Friday