She was dumbstruck. ‘But surely our government can help . . .’

At this, Georgio laughed outright. ‘Sure they can, and pigs can fly and little fairies live at the bottom of our garden! We could only build providing we were in partnership with a Thai, and we were. Only he was a risky bugger but we didn’t know that at the time. The guy had milked the money from us, we were giving him hundreds of thousands of pounds at a time. The worst of it all is, I helped to recruit the partners, and that’s why the car lot was vandalised last night.’

Donna wasn’t sure she had heard right. ‘What has all this got to do with what happened last night?’

Georgio opened a Mars bar and bit into it. He chewed for a while before he carried on with his story.

‘I encouraged a partnership with a man called Lewis. Ask anyone about Lewis, and they’ll tell you all about him. He is one of the most dangerous men in England - in the British Isles, in fact. He is at the moment residing here with me on fraud charges, though he could be held accountable for more murders than the Third Reich. I never dreamt we were into a dodgy situation, I swear that to you. I heard through the grapevine that Lewis wanted to sink money into legitimate businesses. A lot of money. I approached him and he was very interested in the deal. I set it all up for him, and well, you know the rest now.’

Donna swallowed the lump in her throat. ‘No, I don’t. Tell me the rest, Georgio. I think I have a right to know.’

Georgio looked into his wife’s face; it was a beautiful face even now, when it was drawn with worry. Weighed down with troubles.

‘In short, Lewis thinks I tucked him up. He then decided to make sure I was out of the ball-game. Wilson gave evidence against me, and now I’m stuck in here. I have it on good authority that Lewis will make sure I never get parole. Wilson died a while ago . . .’

‘I know that. He hanged himself.’

Georgio laughed low. ‘I knew he was going to hang himself before he did. Lewis told me. The only person who could have got me out of here is dead.’

‘But Wilson committed suicide - your barrister told me that himself!’