He considers again the footage he was sent. Is it really proof that someone wanted to harm Kate? The police insisted her crash was an accident. She should have kept her head down when she got the job as a super recogniser, not done any media interviews, but hers was a remarkable story: ‘The Woman Who Can’t Forget a Face’. And when she started identifying criminals, lots of them, the force couldn’t resist the good publicity. This week, they’ve been at it again. At least Kate’s name hasn’t been mentioned in the newspaper court reports.

Half an hour later, Jake is at the Bluebell in Rockbourne, propping up the empty bar with a pint in his hands. It’s a traditional no-frills country pub: low-beamed ceilings, beer barrels behind the bar. All floorboards and blackboards and a no-nonsense landlady. And he’s definitely been here before, when he was walking the Ridgeway with Kate and their friends all those years ago. It’s not how he remembers it and, annoyingly, the barman on duty is not the person in the CCTV footage.

‘Don’t suppose you remember seeing a friend of mine in here a while back?’ Jake asks him, pulling out a photo of Kate.

‘No, mate,’ the barman says, shaking his head.

The landlady comes over to look at the photo.

‘Never seen her before,’ she says dismissively.

Jake’s sure the pub wasn’t this unfriendly when they stopped by on their walk.

‘Who’s asking?’ the barman says, watching the landlady disappear out the back.

Jake clocks a further hardening of tone. ‘She’s an old friend, that’s all,’ he says.

‘Left you swinging in the wind?’ The barman grins. His teeth aren’t great.

‘You could say that.’

Jake is overwhelmed with a sudden urge to confront this man, challenge him about Kate’s spiked drink, the terrible consequences. He knows something, even if he’s not the barman in the video.

Picking up his pint, Jake moves over to a corner table in case he does something stupid. Kate must have stopped off here to decompress after work, make the switch before joining him on the boat. She was drinking a lot by the end of their relationship. So was he. Maybe she came here more than once.

He glances around the pub, at the camera above the door, the one next to the optics behind the bar. A lot of security for a quiet country pub. And a strange place for Kate to visit on her own.

He’s about to leave when the barman comes over to clean the adjacent table. He’s then at Jake’s table, unnecessarily wiping down its spotless surface.

‘If you’re a journalist, you need to fuck off,’ the man says under his breath, still wiping.

‘I’m not a journalist,’ Jake says, sipping from his pint. ‘And I’m not fucking off anywhere.’