‘She broke down. I tried to console her, but I couldn’t. She lost it completely and asked me to go. And that, Inspector, was the last time I saw her.’

When James left Ms Doyle’s house, he told himself that the visit hadn’t been a complete waste of time.

He’d learned that Mary Bateman’s state of mind had been such that she had even contemplated suicide. And she had also admitted that she was having to keep secrets that were tearing her apart.

Could any of that have been a factor in what led to the Christmas Eve killings? James wondered.

Just as intriguing was Mary’s apparent reaction to what the psychic told her about seeing and hearing a crying baby.

Was it just shock that brought on a flood of tears or did it trigger an unpleasant memory?

Ms Doyle insisted that she hadn’t made it up and that she truly believed she had made contact with the spirit of an unidentified child.

It left James wondering whether Mary Bateman had jumped to the conclusion that the baby was Megan Roth. If so, then did it mean she knew or believed that Megan had also died in the house twenty-four years ago, along with her parents?

Maybe that was one of the secrets she was keeping.

Before James drove away from Ravenstonedale, he called Tanner to tell him he was on his way to the office, but he didn’t get a chance to tell him what he had learned.

‘Your timing is perfect, James,’ the DCI said. ‘I was just about to phone you.’

‘Has something come up?’

‘You bet it has. We’ve found out that Dean Foreman lied to us when he said he didn’t leave his house on Christmas Eve.’

‘Did someone spot him?’

‘It’s better than that. We’ve got traffic camera footage that shows him driving south along the M6 from Penrith at just after nine that evening. He then turned off onto the A684 slip road that would have taken him through Sedbergh to Kirkby Abbey and after that Oaktree Farm.’

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

It was another dramatic development in a case that had more twists and turns than a big dipper and the discovery of the traffic camera footage triggered a swift response. Officers from police headquarters in Penrith were dispatched to pick up Dean Foreman and his wife and take them to Kendal for questioning. They were instructed to tell them that new evidence had come to light in the Bateman case, but not to specify what it was.

James took it upon himself to call Foreman’s lawyer, Peter Haig, to let him know what was going on. The sooner he got to the station to represent his clients, the sooner they could get started.