‘Don’t get your hopes up,’ Judith said as she inserted the key into the lock. ‘It’s not as interesting as you’d maybe think.’

On the one hand, Judith was right, and on the other, she was so very, very, wrong.

Chapter 35

After Judith opened the door, her friends didn’t speak for quite a few seconds.

‘Bloody hell!’ Suzie eventually managed, summing up the feelings of both her and Becks.

The room that Judith had opened was thick with dust and stuffed wall to wall and floor to ceiling with piles and piles of newspapers, magazines, brochures and leaflets, all stacked in towers up to ten feet tall that leant one against the other, or were heaped in great slicks of paper where a tower had collapsed, and the whole seemed to be held together by thick cobwebs that went from the skyscrapers of paper to the ceiling and to the walls.

Becks’ mouth opened in horror as she realised she was looking at her own tenth circle of hell. And then she sneezed. And sneezed again. She fished out a hankie from her sleeve and held it over her nose.

‘Why …?’ Becks started to ask, but abandoned hope of ever finishing her sentence.

‘I don’t like getting rid of newspapers.’

‘No shit, Sherlock,’ Suzie said. ‘But this isn’t just newspapers.’

‘There are local papers as well. And magazines. Periodicals have to be saved. And parish newsletters. Brochures of what’s coming up from the council.’

‘How far back …?’ Becks asked in wonder.

‘1970.’

‘Is that when your great aunt died?’ Suzie asked.

‘No. She died a few years later.’

Suzie’s eyes narrowed.

‘When did she die?’

‘A bit after.’

‘What year?’

‘1976.’

‘So you’d been hoarding papers for six years already?’

‘Look,’ Judith said irritably, ‘we need to go through to the other room.’

Becks was dismayed.

‘There’s another room?’

‘There are two other rooms. Come on.’

Judith picked her way between the towers of papers, her two friends following.

In the next room, each of the four walls were covered floor to ceiling in metal-framed bookcases, and every inch of shelf space was jammed thick with piles and piles of crisp-edged, yellowed newspapers.

‘This is where it all started,’ Judith said simply.

‘Back in 1970,’ Suzie said.

Judith could see that Suzie’s instincts were telling her that the year 1970 was important.

‘So what exactly are we looking for?’ Becks asked.

‘Well, if Elliot’s removed a rowing photo from his wall, it must be because it’s incriminating. So I suggest we find out who Elliot Howard rowed with when he was younger.’

‘You think the answer will be in here?’ Becks asked, already overwhelmed by the thought.