Fleet held his tongue. He wished there was something he could say to mitigate the imposition of his visit, but the reality was, Angela was right. In terms of what had happened to her father, the damage was already done.

‘So if you don’t mind,’ Hewitt’s daughter said, beginning to move away, ‘I would be grateful if you and your colleagues could please leave my family in peace.’

Fleet was back in his car by the time the rain began to fall again. It turned out the call he’d missed was from Nicky, but when he tried to phone her back, it went straight through to voicemail. He raised his eyes to the building outside, and his thoughts returned to his conversation with Richard Hewitt’s daughter.

So that was what Callum Richardson had wanted Fleet to find out. Melissa Haynes had been involved in a scheme to engulf Beaconsfield in scandal – one that had cost a man his career, but had ultimately fallen short of what it had set out to achieve.

Was the implication that Ben had been dragged into something similar? It would explain the unlikely friendship between Ben and the others. In Fleet’s mind, there’d always been something odd about their association. By all accounts Ben had never made friends easily, and Melissa, Lance and Callum had been as close-knit as they come. How did a boy with a backstory like Ben’s slot neatly into a group like theirs – unless they invited him in? It wouldn’t have been hard to entice him. To make him feel valued, after Ben had spent his entire life believing that not even his father wanted him around. Fleet thought of what Father Steiner had told them: that Callum and the others were brighter than Ben, cannier. And Ben was easily led …

But then what happened? The others had a plan that involved Ben, but somehow Ben ended up getting in the way? Or something went wrong? But how did a plan to bring down a school end up with a boy lying forgotten in an unmarked grave, with no word about his fate leaking out for the best part of a quarter of a century? And why, after all that time, would someone choose to make an anonymous tip-off to the police – or be in a position to in the first place?

And then there was the game. Hide-and-seek. Where did that come in?

Whatever the truth, and whatever Callum Richardson’s real intentions were in directing Fleet towards Richard Hewitt, one thing was clear in Fleet’s mind: it was more important than ever that they find Melissa. If Angela Leigh’s story was to be believed, Melissa was cold, calculating, and willing to sacrifice whoever it took to achieve her ends – all of which made her far more dangerous than Fleet and Nicky had realised.