Conway shook her head. ‘I threw around possible motives for a while, but nothing looked like it clicked. Went back to how she wasn’t there for Selena, what she would’ve done to make up for it; the kid got stroppy, but she didn’t give me anything new. I didn’t want to push too hard: if she started going to bits, Mackey would’ve walked, and I wanted to give you time. What’ve you got?’

I said, ‘Rebecca was going through the shovels and spades in the groundskeepers’ shed. The day before the murder.’

Conway went still. Stopped breathing.

After a moment: ‘Who said?’

‘Gemma. She was looking to buy diet pills, walked in on Rebecca. Rebecca jumped a mile, did a legger.’

‘Gemma. Joanne’s lapdog Gemma.’

‘I don’t think she was bullshitting me. They weren’t covering for themselves, anyway. They didn’t cop that there was anything dodgy about Rebecca being at the tools. They thought the suss bit was her being in there at all – thought she was buying drugs off the groundskeeper to give to Chris, because she was into him, and then he turned her down and she lost it. I said Rebecca was too small to do the job; they said if Chris was sitting down, she could’ve hit him with a rock. If they knew the weapon was a hoe, no way could they have stopped themselves bringing it up. They don’t have that kind of self-control. They don’t know.’

Conway still hadn’t moved: feet braced, shoulders braced, hands dug in her pockets. Things going fast behind her eyes. She said, ‘I don’t see it. The drugs thing, maybe that could play; Rebecca could’ve been bribing Chris to stay away from Selena. But remember the condom? Chris went out there expecting a ride. You think Rebecca’d been shagging him? Seriously?’

I said, ‘I don’t think the earlier meetings were Rebecca. Remember what Holly said? When she realised something was up with Selena, she tried to talk to Julia about it. Julia didn’t want to know: told her to forget it, Selena’d get over it sooner or later. Does that sound like Julia to you? She’s a scrapper. One of her mates is in trouble, she’s just going to stick her fingers in her ears, hope it goes away?’

Conway moved then. Her head went back, moonlight on the whites of her eyes. ‘Julia was already on it.’

‘Yeah. She didn’t want Holly getting involved, making things more complicated. So she told her to leave it.’

‘Fuck,’ Conway said. ‘Remember what Joanne told us? She put her bitches on night duty, make sure Selena had stopped sneaking out to see Chris. No sign of Selena, but they saw Julia, all right. They thought she was meeting Finn Carroll. And we went along with that. Pair of fucking fools.’