Denise started to weep then and James wished he didn’t have more bad news to impart. He waited until she had stopped crying before carrying on.

‘There’s something else I feel you should be made aware of,’ he said. ‘It relates to Rachel’s former fiancé, Douglas Hannigan.’

‘Did he admit to sending her the birthday card with the threat inside it?’ Fraser asked.

‘He did, but we’ve also had it confirmed that your daughter is indeed the person who took those photos of him taking drugs and then sent them to the Gazette. The threat in the card was in retaliation, but Mr Hannigan insists that he only wanted to scare her. I should also remind you that he was nowhere near the hotel when Rachel died.’

James decided not to reveal that Hannigan had also been stalking their daughter. At this stage, there was no need for them to know.

The final matter he brought up was the formal identification of Rachel’s body.

‘We already know it’s our daughter lying in the morgue, but I know I have to see her,’ Fraser said. ‘Libby will be coming with me.’

Denise drew an anxious breath. ‘I’ve decided not to go. I think the experience will be too painful for me and I want to remember Rachel as she was when I last saw her. She looked so sweet in that ever so pretty maid-of-honour dress.’

Denise slumped against her husband then, and the tears flowed as James and Abbott got up and left the room.

CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

‘This issue with the WhatsApp message that Rachel sent to her sister is really bugging me,’ James said as he and Abbott drove away from Bowness. ‘I’m puzzled as to why everyone in the family has been so quick to believe that Rachel misinterpreted what she saw going on between Libby and Ethan in the garden. What if she didn’t and the pair of them have lied to us? If so, then maybe they also lied about what happened after that.’

‘I’ve been thinking about it as well, guv, and I’m inclined to believe them,’ Abbott said. ‘For one thing, we know that Rachel had been on the booze and so could easily have made a mistake. Plus, we’ve been told that the relationship between the two sisters was strained, and therefore she may have seen it as an opportunity to ruin Libby’s wedding and her marriage to Greg Murphy. And that’s not all. We also know from what she did to Douglas Hannigan that she was not averse to going to extreme lengths to get revenge.’

‘They’re all reasonable points to make,’ James agreed.

‘And there’s one other matter that has to be taken into account, and that’s the not insignificant fact that Libby had only just got married. Would she really have been stupid enough to become intimate with her ex at her own no-expense-spared wedding?’

James nodded. ‘That’s a good question. Perhaps we’ll get the answer to it when we put more pressure on Ethan.’