He said to Mohktar, ‘Please don’t inform Mrs Campbell about the release of the child’s body before we have gone through that afternoon one last time.’ He closed his eyes against the blinding sun shimmering on the tarmac outside and sighed. ‘DS Mohktar, I am aware that you probably think of me as an insensitive, foreign policeman but my job is to try and find out what happened here, even if the truth is unpalatable to Mrs Campbell and Miss Montrose. A small child of five was murdered. We owe it to her to discover why.’

A small tic moved in James Mohktar’s cheek. It made Blythe uneasy. Mohktar did not reply until they pulled into the car park near the bungalows. He turned the engine off. His movements were slow and deliberate. His eyes followed a grey monkey running sideways across the tarmac to the trees beyond, clutching a baby to her breast, one eye on the car before she disappeared into the trees.

‘I understand, Inspector.’ Mohktar scanned the rocking branches left by the monkey. ‘I do not think of you as insensitive or foreign, but as a colleague. Neither do I forget that I am a policeman or that a child was killed and no one has been punished for her death. I have a son of four and I know how it would be for me if my child were to die a lonely death…’ He turned and looked at Blythe and the inspector saw an intellect behind his anger which gave him an alarming edge. ‘But what we are discovering here is not simple, Inspector. We might suspect a possible motive, but after all this time it is going to be difficult to prove anything. As you say, Nikki Montrose having a dream or believing her sister guided her to the spot to show her what happened is not going to stand up in a court of law, lah?

‘So, look what we have in evidence. Nikki says she sees a man on the beach in her dream. A man she remembers with long legs. She tells me she follows her sister up into the trees where her sister is killed by this same man. Nikki already knows, because I told her earlier, that the pathologist believes Saffie was suffocated.

‘I think about this all night. What if you are right, Inspector, and Nikki Montrose did go out later that afternoon to look for her sister and she saw this man in the flesh, no dream. But fear or guilt maybe has blocked the memory of him out, makes her forget…’

‘Your point, Mohktar?’

‘There is something going on in Nikki’s head. Suppose she saw this man after he had killed her sister? I believe there are things she has blocked that are slowly going to…to…’

‘Unravel?’

‘Yes, unravel. Nikki could not make sense of something she saw as a small child so she dismissed it. We suspect, because it is the only motive we have, that the person she saw with her father and the death of her sister must be linked. But, Inspector…this is what I feel. Mrs Campbell and Nikki Montrose had to go on living their lives after the child died and they have to go on living them now. Would you expose the killer at expense of more pain to those two women?’