The police files arrive just before 10 p.m. with all the expected ceremony.
Alongside the two Murder Squad detectives, there’s a studious official from the Cabinet Office – beanpole thin with a rumpled mackintosh and rimless glasses – who waits impatiently while I read through every term and condition. Then, once my signature is done, the official and the two cars disappear in a haze of rain, gliding back to Whitehall like something illusory and deniable.
I always like the Abbey after dusk. Most of the staff have fled for children, home and their better halves. I brew unhealthy quantities of Yorkshire Gold and think of Harriet again and the warmness of her smile, that friendlier private self hidden beneath the surface.
The box of case files is heavy, like a small item of furniture. I find a pair of scissors and prise open the masking tape, seeing another ream of red-letter instructions regarding how the files must be handled.
I select several randomly and start picking through the debris of the investigation: witness statements, summaries of CCTV, a list of all house-to-house inquiries, made more difficult by the sheer remoteness of the Farm’s location. There are ANPR updates, the pathologist’s reports on both victims, a comprehensive forensic overview and written submissions from knife experts on the geometry of the wounds.
One file contains more background on the victims and attendees at the Farm, culled from the witness statements, cell site data and forensic trail, like a narrative synthesis after the crush of archival material. Glancing through, I realise how distant the world of 2019 now seems.
I take another sip of Yorkshire Gold. I nibble on a digestive. There is an excerpt from Melanie Fox’s witness statement. She was the one who ran the Farm, owned it even. Melanie Fox was the impresario who lost it all. She was the one who hired Lola Ridgeway; she talked to the press and had her fifteen minutes of fame and then went quietly into oblivion.
I turn to her statement.
The thin paper prickles against the skin. I sit back in the office chair, listen to the whir of central London behind me.
I focus on the page and begin.