‘You’ve got two men with criminal records who both had serious beefs with two of the dead,’ he said. ‘Back in the day, Paul Warboys and his brother Danny gave Reggie and Ronnie Kray and Eddie and Charlie Richardson a run for their money. Paul Warboys didn’t get a life sentence just because he took out a lawyer’s tongue with a bolt cutter. He got life because the lawyer bled to death. Now – if Paul Warboys would kill a man for talking to the police, what’s he going to do to a man who runs over and kills his grandson?’

I shook my head.

‘But I don’t buy it. Warboys is retired. He’s been retired for twenty years.’

‘You don’t think he’d come out of retirement for the man who knocked down and killed his grandson?’

‘But we ran a Trace, Interview and Eliminate on Warboys. Of course we did. And he made the point – and I thought it was a good point – that if he had wanted Hector Welles dead, he would not have bothered with putting a post on YouTube.’

‘And does he have a cast-iron alibi for when Welles was hanged? Because he had a very good one the time that lawyer had his tongue taken out – Warboys and his brother were miles away, doing the Lambada on the Costa del Sol. But that didn’t stop a judge finding him guilty and sending him down for life.’

I thought about it.

‘The funny thing is, Warboys doesn’t have a cast-iron alibi for when Welles was killed,’ I said. ‘He was at home with his wife and we have no other witnesses to confirm it. But that makes me believe him. As he said to me himself – if you were going to invent an alibi, you would come up with something much better than that.’

I drank my tea. It was strong enough to stand up your spoon in. Real builder’s tea.

‘It’s the cast-iron alibis that I never quite believe,’ I said. ‘Good tea.’

‘Thank you. And then there’s Sofi Wilder’s dad,’ John said. ‘Barry Wilder. He did time, didn’t he?’

‘Yes, but that was kid’s stuff. Years ago. And he was in a different league from Paul Warboys.’

‘But look what they did to his daughter, Max. Look what they did! This grooming gang, they got away with it for so long because everyone was afraid of seeming racist. The police, the social services – we practically held their coats while they were raping and torturing children.’

‘I’m not denying he’s got motive. But Wilder is another one with an alibi that’s not good enough to be made up, another one that says he was home with the wife watching television. And what about Bert Page? How does he fit into this?’

‘Who’s Bert Page?’