What she didn’t say to Ruby was that familial DNA testing had proved that the finger belonged to a sibling of the man who had stolen Gregor’s identity, and from there it was a short step to scouring records, first of murdered children with missing fingers and then of missing children whose bodies were never recovered, of whom no one could know the state of their fingers. Thankfully both categories of crime were few and far between. They found whom they thought was the right person almost immediately. Joanna had studied all the newspaper clippings before heading to the village with Atkinson to confirm it.

Eight-year-old Dora Jones had lived on a remote farm in rural Wales with her family. She had disappeared in 1997 on a sunny day, after going out to play in the fields. Hope of finding her alive started to wane after a week. Police scaled back the search after two months, but the family and the community continued to search for Dora every day for half a year before they were forced to call it off because of the harsh winter that had set in. Dora’s parents never stopped looking for her, though it would turn out they didn’t have much time left to search.

The deaths of both parents two years later were recorded as accidental carbon monoxide poisoning, though many in the area assumed, when they heard the news, that it was a double suicide, brought on by the guilt and grief of losing Dora. The couple were dead before they ate their sausages, having sat down to eat in a very enclosed kitchen space with a new, but faulty, gas heater. Only the older brother, Daffyd, survived, what with being away that night, sent by his father to tend the furrowing sows, and therefore missing dinner. He came home late to find them with their faces in the mashed potatoes. When questioned by Joanna, it seemed that no one in the small rural community had seen or heard of Daffyd since the funeral. “A cold fish,” was the most she could get out of anyone who’d met him. Everyone remembered Dora, but some had forgotten she even had a brother. Not everyone: one retired schoolteacher shuddered in alarmed recognition at the sound of his name. She looked at a photograph of the dead man and confirmed it, providing old school portraits that proved it without a doubt. At the time of Dora’s death, Daffyd would have been fifteen years old. His sister’s body had never been found, but the finger was buried with her parents at the family plot in a ceremony attended by those who had known her.

One day, Ruby might want to know the extent of the man’s crimes. But for now, it could wait.