‘I was pretending to be a boy. Fuck.’ Jake slaps himself on the side of the head. ‘Look, I was angry, okay. You told me about that bastard in jail and what he said he’d done to Billy and I couldn’t … I couldn’t deal with it. It was fucking with my head. I couldn’t sleep. I kept … I had these horrible thoughts, about the things he’d done to my brother and I felt like it was my fault. If I hadn’t hit Billy then he wouldn’t have run away and the paedophile wouldn’t have got him … he wouldn’t have …’ He twists to one side and pounds his clenched fist into the garage door.

‘That doesn’t make sense,’ Mark says. ‘Jason Davies is in prison and inmates don’t have access to computers. Why would you pretend to be a young boy?’

‘To trap one of them. I knew I couldn’t get to Davies but I still wanted to hurt someone. To get revenge for Billy.’

‘But we don’t know if Jason Davies had anything to do with Billy going missing,’ I say. ‘The police are still investigating and—’

‘They’ve been investigating for nearly seven months and found sod all!’ Jake rubs his clenched fist. ‘I had to do something.’

‘You can’t take the law into your own hands, son!’ Mark says but if Jake hears him he blocks him out.

‘I thought if I put a photo of me when I was thirteen or fourteen on Tinder then all the paedos would come running but they didn’t. A few older women sent me messages to say that you have to be eighteen to be on Tinder and then suddenly my account was suspended. Someone must have reported me.

‘So I did some research online. And I know how dodgy it looks –’ he glares at Mark – ‘but what was I supposed to do? I’m not a paedo. I don’t know where they hang out or how they do their twisted shit but I had to read about it, didn’t I? To find out, so I could pretend to be a kid.’

He wipes a hand over his brow. It’s airless and hot in the garage and Jake isn’t the only one sweating. ‘I got obsessed with it. I kept dangling bait, waiting to see who’d bite, but they’re really nervy. They won’t agree to meet up with you just because you say you’re fourteen. They need photos first, photos in lots of different poses to show you’re who you say you are.’

‘But those photos. Fucking hell, son.’ Mark shakes his head as though he’s trying to clear his brain of the images on Jake’s hard drive.

‘I know, I know. I couldn’t look at them either but I had to do it. I had to reel one in.’