I followed Gordon into the dark confines of the garage. It was a dark, cold space that reeked of damp and engine oil. One long wall was obscured by stacks of huge tyres and there were pigeons cooing in the steel girders high above. The light came from a row of bulbs that hung from straggly wires.

Gordon led me behind a large white vehicle with a hook on the back and nodded at the crumpled remains of Fairfax’s car. It looked like an old running shoe. It was battered both at the back and the front and the windscreen was completely missing save for a few jagged teeth of glass stuck into the metal casing.

‘Were a bad one,’ said Gordon. ‘Pleased I didn’t have to see him, and I’ve seen a lot.’

He crossed to a metal box on the wall and removed a small set of keys. He handed them to me with a little nod. ‘I’ll leave you be, then,’ he said, and disappeared into the darkness of the garage.

My heart was thumping. It felt as though the past few days had all been leading to this moment. I was making fists with my hands – the key digging into my palm. I was shaking as I put the key into the lock and at first I couldn’t turn it. Then finally it gave and as I opened the boot I was hit with an unmistakable reek. It caught my throat and seemed to stuff its fingers down my throat. It was the smell of rotten meat and corrupted earth; fouled water and decomposing tissue. It made me gag. I had to force myself to look into the dark space and I swear the smell was so strong I truly expected to see a mangled, rancid body laying there in the darkness.

There was no body. The boot was almost empty. All that lay inside was a spare tyre and a fine covering of dirt. There has to be a manuscript, I thought, as a pulse began to beat in my temple. A Dictaphone. Something!

‘All right back there, love?’ shouted Gordon, from somewhere nearby.

I forced myself to look closer. Surely there had to be something. A logbook. Leaflets. Something that showed this car had belonged to a real person with a real life. I closed my eyes and forced myself to think. Fairfax had been in a hurry. He needed to hide those secret words of his before anybody saw what lay on the grass. So he ran to the church and stuffed the papers into a prayer cushion that he thought nobody would ever look at. And then he bundled the body into the boot. Where was it now? Where were the other pages?