‘So who is he?’ Derek Mills had also got to his feet and was leaning against the front of the stage.

‘Do you want me to tell them, Tirian?’ Hawthorne asked.

Tirian nodded, unable to speak.

‘His real name is Wayne Howard.’

Martin Longhurst stood up, his own seat falling backwards and crashing to the floor. ‘He and Stephen—’

‘That’s right.’ Hawthorne was merciless. ‘He’s the boy your parents stitched up for the death of Philip Alden. Wayne and Stephen were best friends in Moxham Heath and it was your brother who inspired him to choose the name he uses now. When Stephen was on trial, he had a Narnia book with him. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. According to the gardener, the two boys used to meet by a statue outside Moxham Hall. That’s another lion – and in the book, lots of animals are turned into stone. Stephen called his horse Bree. He appears in the fifth Narnia book – The Horse and His Boy. And while we’re on the subject of horses, take a look at Tirian. He’s got a crooked nose, which he must have broken at some time in his life. I think he got that when he fell off a horse at Moxham Hall after Stephen persuaded him to take a ride.’

‘Tirian Kirke …?’ I was trying to remember where I’d come across that name.

‘King Tirian is a character in The Last Battle. I know all the Narnia books because I’ve read them with my son. And Digory Kirke turns up in three of them! When I first heard the name, I thought there was something dodgy about it. That’s why I asked him where it came from, but it was only when we went to Moxham Heath that I got the full significance.’

‘Wait a minute!’ I hated breaking in again, but there was one thing I had to know. ‘You’re saying that Tirian Kirke is really Wayne Howard. But you told me that you’d checked him out and everything he’d told us about himself was true.’

‘No, mate. I said I’d done a search on him and that everything he’d told us checked out. That’s not the same. His whole life story was fake. And for what it’s worth, that puzzled me too. When Tirian was telling us about himself, why did he have to throw in so many facts? The car accident that killed his parents involved a delivery truck. His aunt lived in Harrogate in a converted vicarage on the Otley Road, five minutes from the town centre. His drama teacher was called Miss Havergill … and so on. It was like he was blinding us with science. I told you when you were at my place – there were too many facts and they couldn’t all be right.’

‘He made it all up!’

‘No! Wayne Howard had been in the newspapers. He was the subject of a book. When he was finally released, he had to be protected and that was the job of MAPP: Multi-Agency Public Protection. They would have been the ones who set him up with a completely new identity, starting with his choice of a new name. There was no way he could go back to Moxham Heath – but he did have a relative in Harrogate, which is why he went there. He didn’t live with her, though. He was in an approved hostel. Just so you know, I have a mate in the Prison and Probation Service in Petty France and I talked to him this morning. He managed to dig out the truth.