Some time ago – it may as well have been a lifetime ago – you were sent to stay in a grand old house on the Cumberland coast. Although you knew there was a war on and that things were hard for everyone you’d left behind, you remember that period in Glendinning House as the happiest of your life.

On the evening of Thursday the 12th of February 1992, the Chief Constable of Cumbria’s police force picked up the phone and prepared to call in all his favours. There’d been a murder. In fact, make that multiple murders, in a remote location, with no witnesses, persons still unaccounted for, and bits of the crime scene that simply didn’t make any sense. What’s more, he had reason to believe that this could have seriously bitten him in the arse if it wasn’t wrapped up quickly. He needed everyone he could scrounge on this one.