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‘I think it’ll make them dig in further,’ Poe said. ‘From their perspective, the fewer people who know, the safer he is. Any ideas on how the Curator identified members of the jury?’

‘We have,’ Nightingale said. ‘Apparently, one of the jury gave a paid interview to the press a year or so ago. We think this might have been the killer’s way in. We’ve arrested the juror but he’s refusing to speak. His neighbours say that he recently bought a new car, though. It looks like he might have been paid to reveal the identities of the jurors who went for not guilty.’

‘Reckless bastard,’ Poe said. ‘What about Atkinson’s barrister and solicitor? And the judge?’

‘All safe,’ Nightingale confirmed. ‘Everyone else remotely involved in the hung jury has covert protection in case someone makes a move against them. If we’re lucky we’ll catch him in the act.’

Poe didn’t think they would but it was worth a try.

‘And the CEO’s son?’ he asked. ‘The one who was actually responsible for blinding those kids?’

‘He’s out of prison and we’re looking into him but it’s a long shot. The civil action that Atkinson and the families took, along with the massive fines they received after the Environment Agency prosecution, bankrupted the company. Made them social pariahs, so they haven’t been able to restart. I can’t see how they could afford someone like the Curator.’

‘When do we think this all started?’ he asked.

‘Why?’

‘Because the whistleblower’s bothering me,’ Poe said. ‘If this is a plan a long time in the making then Atkinson’s exoneration should have changed things. The Baldwins should be the targets now. But they’re not. So it either didn’t change things or this isn’t what we think it is.’

‘You’re thinking this might not be revenge for what happened to those kids, it could be revenge for what happened to the Baldwins?’

‘Why not?’ Poe said. ‘When J. Baldwin went bankrupt people will have lost money. That’s hopefully a much smaller pool of suspects.’

Nightingale made a note.

‘There’s a third option,’ Flynn said. ‘Someone who has held on to their hatred. Nurtured it to the point that new information wasn’t going to change things.’

‘Belief perseverance, it’s called,’ Bradshaw said, the first time she’d spoken in a while. When cops were talking cop stuff she tended to hover in the background.

‘Which is?’ Nightingale said.

‘It’s when a belief is maintained despite new information that definitively contradicts it. And it isn’t just restricted to people with low levels of education. In the 2009 paper “Experimental Studies of Belief Dependence of Observations and of Resistance to Conceptual Change”, Moti Nissani and his wife Donna did an experiment on nineteen PhD students. They were all given a flawed formula on how to determine the volume of a sphere. They were then given a measuring container to check their results. Eighteen of the nineteen refused to believe the measurements, despite their empirical observations.’

‘How’s that different to what I said?’ Flynn said.

‘I quoted actual research, DI Flynn,’ Bradshaw replied. ‘You guess—’

‘Tilly, you’re getting right on my fucking tits,’ Flynn snapped.

‘Are they still leak—’

‘How common is it, Tilly?’ Poe asked before things had a chance to escalate.

‘Common enough not to rule it out, Poe.’

‘Bollocks,’ Nightingale said. ‘If we can’t rule it out then I need to look at both suspect pools: people who either didn’t respect the lack of a guilty verdict or didn’t believe the whistleblower, and people who have a grudge against Atkinson because of what happened to J. Baldwin. I need more resources and we’re already stretched thin. I’m going to need a new budget meeting.’

‘While you’re trying to get blood out of a stone, ma’am, I’m going to get an address for Atkinson.’

‘How on earth are you going to do that?’

‘By playing to my strengths.’

‘Which are?’

‘Politics, obviously,’ Poe grinned.

Nightingale put her head in her hands and groaned.