He thrusts his hands into his pockets. ‘I heard a body’s been found. They think it’s been there years.’ He talks out of the side of his mouth. I’d forgotten he used to do that.

I wonder how he would have heard. Maybe a friend lives in this street.

‘Did you know the man who lived there?’

He frowns, the lines between his eyebrows transforming into deep furrows, giving him a wolf-like appearance. ‘I met him once or twice. A long time ago.’

He met him once or twice. How? How did Dylan know Clive?

‘Do you live around here, then?’

He shakes that mop of curls. ‘About five minutes away. I was just passing on my way to work.’ He looks at his watch theatrically. ‘Which reminds me, I’d better get going.’ He steps away from me but I grab his arm.

‘Wait!’ I cry. ‘Dylan. It’s me. Jessica Fox. I was Heather Powell’s best friend. I met you when you were going out with her sister, Flora.’

His eyes narrow as he surveys me. ‘Oh, yeah. I remember you. And Heather. She attacked me once.’

‘I know. I read about it in the newspapers.’ Heather had played down the incident at the time. She must have been embarrassed. I would have been, too. It was so out of character for her to be violent. Or was it? Now I know she shot her father, when she was only ten, I’m not so sure. The more I find out about Heather the less convinced I am of her innocence. I’m reminded of the differences that always lay between us, which I’d refused to see. Like how, out of the two of us, I always thought I was the stronger, harder, more independent one because Heather seemed quieter, softer than me. Yet the incident with the riding crop, the possessive way she acted around Flora, her justification to me of her uncle Leo when he’d killed a sheep that had wandered onto their land, all point to someone who was much steelier than I’d given her credit for.

And now this. A motive. It’s a difficult thing to come to terms with, but I have to accept that Heather shot dead Clive and Deirdre.

I’ve been conflicted over this for so long. But now I’m almost relieved.

‘What are you doing here?’ asks Dylan.

I realize I’m still holding his arm, and I remove my hand, suddenly embarrassed. ‘I’m a journalist now. I’ve been covering the story about Heather.’

I didn’t know he was living so locally. Could he have been following me? Had he planted those photographs behind my windscreen wiper and posted that bus ticket through my door? But why? What would have been his motive for following me and telling me to back off?

I still haven’t told Jack about the photographs.