Dolly nodded in agitation. ‘He wanted to know where you were, Donna. And who you were with, like. I told him you’d gone to Liverpool with Alan Cox, I didn’t know what else to say. They wanted to know where he was and all. He was livid, Donna. Paddy looked capable of murder. ’

Donna sank down on to a kitchen chair, her mind racing. What the hell had happened? It seemed the world was going mad. If she hadn’t gone out to Sri Lanka, none of the last few days’ events would have occurred. Alan was right to say that anyway. She had caused a lot of problems by rooting around and finding so much out. But what else could she have done? Little children were involved. Babies.

She had had to sort all that out, no woman could have left that to chance. No woman in the world.

Except a woman like Candy, she reminded herself. Except the women who sold their children off like so much dirt.

Myra Hindley wasn’t as unique as people made out. There were many others like her, cold-blooded enough to harm a child, whether they did it purposely, with their own hands, or handed them over to someone else to harm. The child was still damaged, and at their instigation.

‘And Davey Jackson was with him, you say?’

Dolly nodded. ‘He tried to stop Paddy. In fairness to him, he did try to stop him, Donna.’

‘That was big of him, I must say! Pity he wasn’t so concerned for the children he employs!’

Dolly’s face screwed up in bewilderment. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘I’m talking about a brothel out in Sri Lanka. I am talking about pornographic pictures of children coming down phone lines from Asia to England. I am talking about taking the porn and putting it on to floppy discs and making the pictures into porno mags for paedophiles, sold all over the British Isles by mail order. I am talking about Georgio, Paddy, Davey, and all the others being involved in it. That, Dolly, is what I’m talking about. You were right all along.’

Dolly’s face dropped. ‘So it was Georgio then. He was behind it all.’

Donna nodded.

‘I had a feeling on me it was him,’ Dolly admitted shakily. ‘I don’t know why, but I just knew it. That’s big business. No wonder Paddy wanted to find out what was going on.’

‘It’s big business all right, and Georgio wanted to make it so big he stripped all the businesses here to do it. I must have been half-blind over the years, blind and deaf. Dolly, how could I have lived with a man all these years and not realised he was just scum. A piece of scum!’

Dolly sighed, her own fear forgotten now as she looked at the broken-hearted woman before her.