‘It’s him we don’t believe, Angela. He’s done. We have got him. He can’t get to you again. With your testimony, he’ll go away for a long time for the deaths of Simon Glover and whoever was buried under that greenhouse. You can get a divorce and move on.’

‘I don’t need a divorce; we aren’t married.’

‘We found a marriage certificate that says you were married in 2008,’ Imogen said, surprised.

‘That wasn’t me,’ Angela said. ‘It was my mother’s body under the greenhouse. He killed my mother. That marriage certificate was theirs.’

‘What do you mean? Your name was on it,’ Imogen said.

‘Reece told me she left after finding out about what we were doing. She left me a note and everything. Told me she never wanted to hear from me again, that I was disgusting and a disappointment. I was only fifteen.’ Angela wiped the tears from her cheek with the back of her hand.

‘Who was Joseph Purcell?’ Adrian asked, remembering the slot in the marriage certificate for the father of the bride’s name, a horrible feeling creeping over him.

Angela took a deep breath before speaking.

‘My grandfather. Angela was my mother.’

‘I’m sorry?’ Adrian said.

This changed everything. The situation Angela Corrigan was in wasn’t just domestic abuse – it was a whole host of other things that they hadn’t even considered. Even on the darkest days working for the police, this is not something you come across very often, thank God. Add child abuse, neglect, murder, rape, incest and God only knows what else to Reece Corrigan’s list of crimes. No wonder Angela was terrified of him. He’d had her whole life to show her just how powerful he was.

Chapter Seventy-Nine

As I stand here with the gun in my hand, I am scared to pull the trigger. It’s as if even in death he will somehow still control every aspect of my life. The gun is heavier than I imagined. I remember seeing R swinging it with such force when he was hitting Simon that night. I have remembered everything. Funnily enough, it was coming back here to the building site that finally pulled all the jigsaw pieces together. We were here that night, Simon and me.

We met at Simon’s place. R was conducting some kind of nefarious business deal in a pub somewhere and would then be going to his Friday night poker game. I sneaked out. I got a taxi into town and then a bus to Charmouth.