‘I taught my girls to look to the future, not dwell on the past. Hell, tried to, anyway. Look, there’s nothing in that box belonging to Nick.’

Planning to check it if the remainder yielded nothing, she moved on. In the next box she found paperwork and trinkets, and here the couple got laid out. She held up an empty milk bottle.

Middleton explained: ‘That’s Nick’s. Lucky charm, he reckons. Silly if you ask me. He came out of a shop, realised he’d forgotten milk, and went back in. While he was in there a car skidded and hit his motorbike. He reckoned he would have been just sitting on it at that time. Like I say, silly. But he keeps it for luck.’

‘I have a lucky rabbit’s foot hanging in my car. I haven’t crashed yet. You’re a non-believer?’

‘You make your own luck. Anna had one, too. It was a five-yen coin her mother gave her when she left school, for luck in life. My wife believed in it and Anna promised to pass it on to Josie when she was older. It was supposed to go down the generations, but she lost it just before she moved out of London. Did that work?’

He might have meant the irony of losing a so-called lucky coin, or the events that had even made this conversation possible. Both were impossible to argue against.

A photo of Nick and some mates on a street backdropped by chip shops and a beach. She recognised the North Promenade of Cleethorpes. Four of them on motorbikes, clad in jeans and black T-shirts that said ANGELS. An Asian-looking boy at the front seemed to be the leader, given how the others were arranged behind him.

‘Nick as a teenager. He used to hang out with some ruffians. I think they saw Easy Rider and wanted some of that. Kids being silly.’

Sounded about right. Wannabe Hell’s Angels. ‘Know any of their names?’

‘No. That guy in the middle, I think he was from the Philippines. You think one of his old cronies could be involved?’

‘We’re soaking up information, that’s all.’

He shook his head.

She took a photo of the photo with her phone and dispatched it to Sergeant Bennet. Next, a picture of Anna with a girlfriend in a café.

‘Jubilee Café. She would sometimes work there, waiting for her boss.’

‘Marc Eastman? The man who’s now Secretary of State for Education? She mentioned him. Back when she lived in London?’

‘Back when she had promise,’ he sneered.

‘Promise?’

He got off the stool, clearly agitated, and peered out the door, his back to her. ‘It was a good job. She had prospects. She met the prime minister. She got to travel. The money was good. She did half the work that Eastman’s wife did.’