After several moments, the senior officer appeared. “Can I help you, madam?”

He sat down beside me. I wished I knew what the prison governor and his staff had been told about my visit. Without that knowledge, I thought it best to keep a neutral tone and limit my questions. As someone with “high up” connections, I should not need to ask what solicitor was representing Stephen, but I did.

The reply did not surprise me. I recognised the name of a man who would take his fee and go through the motions, listening to whatever the police told him.

As if explaining one syllable words to a child, he said, “Walmsley was found with blood on his hands, madam.”

“What was his motive?”

“Robbery.”

In a way this was a relief because it sounded so absurd. Stephen was in work, would have a pay packet. Mrs. Farrar looked after him. He loved her like a granny. He played in a band, had friends and neighbours who would rally round. If he had battered the old woman to death, I would swallow the cherries from my mother’s red hat.

“How bad was the injury to Mrs. Farrar?”

“She was struck on the back of the head with a heavy object.”

“What sort of object?”

“A two-pound brass weight from her own weighing scale.”

Something strange happened as I listened to his words. The shadow of a blow rippled down the back of my head, turning my neck stiff and my shoulders to iron.

It was a great relief to step out of the prison doors into the yard and an even greater relief to come through the wicket gate. Yet that weight remained. It grew heavier, as if by dark magic.

What also came out into the cool air with me was the unimaginable ache of men who had lost all hope.

* * *

Philip must have been waiting nearby, because after a couple of minutes, he appeared on the other side of the road, by our designated lamppost. He did not wave, or call, but simply stood. Waiting.

I crossed over.

Without a word, the two of us walked to where he had parked the grocery van.

When we climbed in, he asked, “Where to, Kate?”

I wanted to say, just take me home.

But I was on a case, and this might be the most important case of my life. Dear Philip, dear PH, so much passed him by. He shut out matters that might confuse him. He was waiting for instructions, a look of bovine complacency on his sweet face.

“Would you take me round where we used to play, round by the rhubarb fields? I want to do a bit of reccy.”

He frowned. I had not been specific enough.

I tried again. “I want to go by the farms we used to cycle to, along the lanes that lead to the big pit. I want to go beyond Ardsley Station. There’s a children’s home, we saw it once.”