‘Oh, he’s still in the area, Mr J,’ said Hetty. ‘I haven’t seen him myself, but you know old John who looks after the churchyard? Well, he has. He mentioned it to me a week or so ago. He saw him walking around the gravestones early one morning and recognised him at once. The Spiller family are all buried there, and John thinks he was looking at their graves. Not the first time he’d been there either — the postie saw him too.’

Jackman began to wonder about this man. Maybe Spiller wasn’t quite the devious psychopath he’d supposed him to be. He was pretty sure Jordan was their night stalker, but his motives were suddenly less clear. ‘Hetty, do you have any idea of where in the churchyard the Spillers were buried?’ he asked.

‘Oh yes, lad,’ Len said. ‘They lies at the back of the church itself, next to them two yew trees. Don’t walk widdershins around the church, mind. It’s ungodly.’

Hetty smiled. ‘He means unlucky. You must always walk clockwise around the church.’

Jackman was aware of the old superstition that if you walked three times anticlockwise around a church you invoked the Devil, and though he didn’t believe it, he always made sure he kept the church on his right when he went round it. ‘My mum taught me that when I was a small boy, Hetty, so don’t worry.’ He downed the last of his drink. ‘Phew! That was powerful, our Len.’

‘Wouldn’t do you no good if it weren’t now, would it?’ the old man chuckled.

Jackman stood up. ‘Thank you for your help — and the toddy. I suppose I’d better get home while I can still see straight.’

But Jackman didn’t go directly to Mill Corner. He drove to the church. Getting out his Maglite, he locked the car and hurried towards the ancient village church, which in the gathering dark was nothing but a dark shape looming above him. There were three graves belonging to the family Spiller, and on one of them Jackman found a single artificial red rose with a plastic wallet attached to it, a card inside. In the beam of his torch, he read: My heart has never stopped crying for you.

Jackman stood and stared at it, oblivious to the rain now trickling beneath his collar and seeping into his shoes. Had Jordan Spiller left this?

Vowing to return it if he was proved wrong, he took a spare evidence bag from his pocket and slipped the flower into it.

He hurried back to the car and drove the short distance to Mill Corner. They had a name at last, but what kind of man was this?

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE