If the police question me directly about what I know, I’m not prepared to lie. They need to know what James is involved in, just as I need to tell them I saw him arguing with someone. But putting myself in her shoes, I can understand why she’s asked me. ‘I won’t tell them unless they ask. But after the funeral … If you don’t tell them, I’ll have to, Stephanie. For Hollie’s sake.’

If she was hoping for more from me, she doesn’t say. She stays long enough to finish her coffee, putting her mug down now and then, as if she wants to say more, before thinking better of it. As she leaves, cowed by grief and shame, she seems smaller somehow, and I think about how desperation drives people to extremes. First James and his investment, and now Stephanie, prepared to lie to the police; each with motives they’ve somehow justified to themselves.

I think of the headline I read on the flight before all of this started. The more I talk to my neighbours, the harder it becomes to find anyone at all good in this village.

Chapter Seventeen

Jo

We have few facts around Hollie Hampton’s death, and with the lack of answers from the villagers – and the failure of the press to extract anything more than we have – my hunch grows that the community is closing ranks.

Meanwhile, there’s been a breakthrough with Operation Rainbow, the case I was meant to be working on before Hollie’s death – a covert investigation into a child porn ring that’s been tenuously linked to Abingworth. Hollie’s death will explain the police presence in the village, but two such high-stakes investigations running side by side has stretched our force to its limits.

Spending most of the morning in the office, I catch up with new evidence that’s come to light, most of which has come from two fifteen-year-old girls who were invited to a party by a man they met in a pub on the outskirts of Chichester. Fortunately, one of them became suspicious when she saw a text message on his phone, and they left the pub without him. He came after them, but they managed to get away thanks to the intervention of a couple who happened to be passing by.