‘And then?’

‘She asked me if I’d enjoyed the play. That struck me as odd. She was the critic. Why would she be asking me my opinion?’

‘What did you say?’

‘I asked her the same – “Did you?” I didn’t care, of course. I just wanted the conversation to be over. It was quite difficult to hear her, with the band playing nearby. Anyway, she gave me a queer little smile and ducked the answer. “That’s my little secret!” I suppose she didn’t want to give anything away until she’d written it down.’

He poured himself a glass of water and took a large gulp. I watched his Adam’s apple travel up and down.

‘I’m sorry to have to disappoint you, Mr Hawthorne. But that was it; the full extent of my conversation with her. I cannot begin to imagine what was going on inside her head or why she would think, even for a minute, that I would have any interest in ever seeing her again. I made an excuse and walked away. I left the party almost immediately.’

‘Perhaps she was deliberately trying to upset you,’ Hawthorne suggested.

‘It’s possible, I suppose.’

‘So, tell me about the book. What was it that pissed you off?’ In his own way, and despite his language, Hawthorne was at his most affable. ‘The hard copy’s out of print, by the way, but I picked up a copy on Kindle for nothing. I haven’t had a chance to read it all yet, but from what I’ve seen so far, I don’t think it’s one I’ll be recommending to my book club.’

‘Do we have to do this now?’

‘If we’re going to find out who killed her, we need to move fast.’

I hardly needed reminding. The DNA, the fingerprints, the Japanese blossoms, the witness statements. Cara Grunshaw could be at my front door at any time.

Hawthorne had evidently created some sort of bond of trust with the accountant. Longhurst nodded slowly and put the water down. ‘Very well.’

We waited.

‘I can’t tell you everything you want to know about the summer of 1998,’ Longhurst began at last. ‘You have to remember that this comes from the perspective of an eighteen-year-old boy and I wasn’t even in Moxham when most of this happened. My parents had sent me to boarding school, to Marlborough College, and when this business with Stephen took place I was on my gap year, teaching football to children in Namibia. They wrote me a letter, explaining what had happened and urging me not to come home, even though that was my first instinct. They wanted to keep me out of the spotlight, to protect me, and they were largely successful … at least until that book came out.

‘As I’m sure you’re aware, my parents were fairly well known around the time of the millennium, which is to say they often appeared in the newspapers, in diaries or gossip columns. They had set up a business that started with children’s clothes but then branched out into a much wider range of products – toys, books, furniture. You may remember the name. It was called Red Button. There were Red Button shops, Red Button restaurants and even Red Button holiday resorts and adventure centres by the time they finished. They were extremely wealthy and they were closely connected to centre-left politics, by which I mean, of course, New Labour. This was the same year that Peter Mandelson made that famous remark about being relaxed with people getting filthy rich, or words to that effect. He spoke for the prime minister … and it could have been my mother and father he had in mind.