She looked down. ‘Maybe. How do you get in?’

‘Does the gate have a handle?’

‘Yes, but looks as if there’s a lock below.’

‘I should have bought a f—’ he stopped himself again, ‘a rope.’ He tried to think, then felt her feet rising from his hands as she hoicked herself onto the top of the gate. She leant forward, gave a little yelp, and disappeared from view. He heard a scrunch, followed by silence. ‘My God,’ he murmured. Further silence, then a rustle. ‘Are you all right?’

He heard her voice. ‘There’s a keyhole. Look through it.’ He did; her eye was lodged against the other side.

‘You could have hurt yourself,’ he said angrily. ‘Badly.’

Her reply was a release of a latch. ‘You push, I’ll pull.’

After a few minutes of heaving they’d prised the gate several inches open. He took off his jacket, flung it in the car, and squeezed himself through. ‘Just tell me what you’d have done if it had been locked.’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘We’ll shift the gate further open. Then I’ll move the car off the lane.’

Sara looked around, admiring the accuracy of Sami’s memory. Just as he’d described, the van would have twisted down the lane, and turned through the gates – before, presumably, he was bundled into the whitewashed stone building across the yard. Its door was ajar, hanging loose. She eased it open; it squealed with the shock of unfamiliar movement.

‘Come,’ she called to Patrick. Shafts of light from the door and high barred windows were enough to reveal the layout of stables.

‘I guess once this would have been a significant farm,’ said Patrick. He’d calmed, his tone more conciliatory. ‘Big enough for visitors on horseback to need stabling. Their own horses too. Maybe a carriage.’

‘Each stable door has newish fittings,’ she said, ‘presumably to take a padlock.’

‘Horses don’t need locks.’

‘Sami’s prison.’ She pushed a stable door open – barred window above, concrete water basin, remnants of straw on the small square cobbles. ‘And however many others too.’

‘He said they shone light through the window at night, didn’t he?’ asked Patrick.

‘Yes.’

‘We can look behind later.’

She turned to him fiercely. ‘So this is the place. What do we need to find?’

‘At least one piece of incontrovertible physical evidence that criminal acts took place here. Probably kidnapping at minimum, murder at maximum.’

‘So bones, fragments of clothing…’