‘Yes. She’d been abused by this man who’d killed her best friend in front of her. The baby was proof of what he’d done and taking it was like some sort of insurance policy.’

‘But that would require careful thought, wouldn’t it?’ Carla said, ‘and I can’t imagine a fifteen-year-old being that savvy moments after her best friend was killed. Maybe she wanted to save it because she loved Aoife.’

The men shared a glance but Carla didn’t care. Something was irritating her, something she couldn’t remember, but which she had a feeling mattered to the case.

‘When did you say the officer left Hampshire Police?’

‘Right after the case went to court, so about a year.’

‘And you say he’d been in the police for about two years by that point?’

Eyre nodded, watching her carefully.

‘And his age at the time he transferred?’

‘I’d say around twenty-one.’

Carla stood. ‘Can I use your office?’

Bremer looked questioningly at her, but when she didn’t reply he said, ‘Sure.’

Carla grabbed her notebook and with an apologetic smile at Eyre, went into Bremer’s office and closed the door.

She rang HR. Three short minutes later, she heard what she’d hoped against hope she wouldn’t.

‘And you’re sure? He transferred from Hampshire Police?’

‘Absolutely sure. The third of September, 1984.’

It was Gerry. She’d remembered him telling her he was lucky he was only going to have to serve twenty-eight years to get his pension and it hadn’t occurred to her to ask why not the usual thirty. But now she knew. He’d transferred from Hampshire Police, bringing his pension with him, at precisely the time Mary had gone missing.

Gerry was the officer on the beach. The age fitted – Gerry was coming up to fifty-five, so at the time of the murder thirty-five years ago he would have been twenty. Then she remembered the phone call to Joanne.

Joanne who was thirty-five. Joanne who was adopted because she’d been abandoned.

Carla had no idea what to do. She’d kept the phone call a secret and now that call was the one thing to link Joanne to the O’Brian murder. And what about Gerry? The man who’d helped her so much over the years, and not just in work but in life, too. He’d been the first person she’d told when Baz asked her to marry him and the first she’d confided in over her fears of having a baby. She put her head in her hands. She couldn’t lose another person from her life, not now, not after Baz had gone.

Bremer knocked on the door and opened it. ‘You looked like you had a lead there?’

Carla looked up, startled. ‘Not sure, still firming it up.’