‘Exactly. And Sara and Aidan never met or contacted Howard Smallwood, did they? You and I met him at the Waterside Cafe. You and I met him in Otters. I doubt Sara and Aidan even knew his name. He was certainly never a name that was mentioned as a suspect, so why would they think anything of seeing him on the list of displaced families?’

‘You’re joking.’

‘I wish I was. But it gets even more tragic than that. “Mrs Annie Smallwood plus one boy, seven.”’

‘Howard Smallwood was seven years old?’

‘So it seems. And there was only him and his mother.’

‘So he’s not even sixty? Christ, he hasn’t aged well.’

‘That’s what a lifetime of bitterness and anger does to you. Seven’s an impressionable age for boys, trust me. He lost his family home, the house his mother had been bringing him up in single-handed. That’s going to leave one hell of a scar. There’s your motive. He said it himself in his letter. Kill the only remaining people responsible. Or, at least, responsible in his mind. We’ve got him at the scene of the murder, plus evidence of him sending a death threat to Roger Clifton a week and a half before he’s murdered.’

‘But why now? Roger and Arthur were only boys themselves when the villages were flooded. In fact, I don’t think Arthur was even born, was he?’

‘No, not until a year or two after. But a seven-year-old boy can’t go around committing murder, can he? Maybe the bitterness and anger built up too much over the years. He saw them as the continuation of Arthur Clifton Construction and held them responsible.’

‘But he could’ve done it at any point in his adult life, surely? Why wait until he’s pushing sixty and starting to slo… Oh, fuck.’

‘What?’

‘Fuck.’

‘Dex, talk to me.’

‘When we met Smallwood at Otters, he made some comment about a lump on his brain that was ready to kill him. I think he called it an olive. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but do you remember what he said on the phone the other day? He said he was going away late Sunday night, so we’d have to be quick. He wasn’t talking about coming to him with research questions. It was a direct challenge to us to catch him. A deadline. He’s going away. Tonight. He’s going away to die.’

‘Oh shit.’ Caroline praised Dexter’s memory and keen eye for detail, although right now it had caused her more stress and anxiety than she’d felt in a long time. She looked at the clock. ‘Shit. Shit. We need to find him. Now. Where does he live?’