When she was finished, James gave the team the headlines from his conversation with Kenneth O’Connor and asked who had been instructed to carry out the follow-up enquiries.

DC Colin Patterson raised his hand and said he had already phoned O’Connor’s brother and he’d confirmed that he spent Christmas with him and arrived late on Christmas Eve.

‘I’ve put in a request for a warrant to search O’Connor’s home,’ Patterson said. ‘I’ve also sent the photographs you took of his shoes to forensics.’

James nodded his thanks and swiftly moved on to the aspect of the case that made it so intriguing – namely the potential link to the killings that took place at Oaktree Farm twenty-four years ago.

None of the officers in the room had been with the Cumbria Constabulary when the bodies of Simon and Amanda Roth were found, but he reminded them that their former colleague, Giles Keegan, had been in charge of the case.

‘The conclusion he drew was that it was a murder-suicide,’ he said. ‘Simon Roth hit his wife with a hammer and then killed himself with a shotgun blast to the head. Giles also strongly suspected that this took place after the death of their baby whose body has remained undiscovered. But he was never a hundred per cent certain that that is what happened. How could he be? Of course, we don’t know yet if that case is relevant to our own investigation but the similarities can’t simply be ignored. Who knows? Maybe this is the work of a copycat killer. Or perhaps Robert Bateman was so desperate about his precarious financial situation that he decided to do what his former boss did all those years ago.’

James pointed to the picture of the memorial stone in the cellar and read out the inscription.

‘It’s perhaps not surprising that the Batemans felt obliged to pay tribute to the Roths by placing this in the cellar. After all, Robert worked on the farm at the time and he took it upon himself to buy the place and keep the business going. But this whole thing gets even stranger when you take into account the wall that was installed to replace the interior cellar door. It created this small inner space that’s reached via the cellar steps. At some point in time a tiny peephole was inserted into the wall. It’s almost impossible to see it from inside the house, but it gives a view of the living room and kitchen. So, we need to find out who was spying on them and why. And whoever it was may well have been doing it this past week because fresh breadcrumbs were found on the floor there.’