There was a file on Aidan Seed and one on Ruth Bussey. Ruth’s told Charlie nothing much that she didn’t already know: evangelical Christian parents, garden design business, three BALI awards. Most of the information Kerry had gathered had to do with Gemma Crowther and Stephen Elton. There was a lot about the court case. Charlie imagined how he must have congratulated himself on sniffing out that juicy morsel.

She opened the other file. Here were things she didn’t know about Aidan Seed: details of his education, his father’s death from lung cancer. She skimmed the pages, looking for anything that stood out. Aidan’s mother’s cancer—also in the lungs. His stepfather . . .

Charlie cried out in shock. Aidan Seed’s stepfather. This was it. She pulled her phone out of her bag and rang Simon. Voicemail. Shit. Where was he? He never ignored his phone; he was too neurotic. To him, each missed call was an opportunity for ever lost. It was one of the things Charlie took the piss out of him for, along with getting more calls from his mother than from anyone else.

Someone flushed the toilet in the next cubicle. Charlie waited until the gurgling of the cistern had stopped, then rang Simon again. This time she left a message. ‘Seed’s stepfather—his name’s Len Smith. He’s in an open prison, Long Leighton in Wiltshire, serving a life sentence for a murder he committed in 1982. He strangled a woman.’ Kerry had written nothing in his report about whether the woman was naked or in bed when she died, but Charlie knew. She did a quick calculation in her head. Aidan Seed had been thirty-two when The Times feature was published in 1999, which made him . . . fifteen in 1982.

‘Smith murdered his partner in their home,’ she told Simon. ‘I don’t need to tell you the address: 15 Megson Crescent. They lived there with Smith’s three stepkids, Aidan and his brother and sister.’ In case Simon was as full of disbelief as she was, Charlie added, ‘I’m not making this up. Aidan lived in that house until he left home. The woman Len Smith’s inside for killing—her name was Mary Trelease.’

There were photocopies of photographs from newspapers: grainy, but distinct enough for Charlie to be able to see that the Mary Trelease Len Smith had killed looked nothing like the Mary Trelease Charlie had met. Met in the same house the first Mary Trelease had lived and died in. She held the clearest of the pictures close to her face. She’d seen this woman before, but where? It wasn’t possible. The first Mary Trelease had been dead for twenty-six years. Smith was seventy-eight now, Kerry had noted. He’d been denied parole on several occasions.