Seaton Carew in the off-season is a place of peeling paint and faded dreams. The former fishing village on the North East coast lies between the dubious twin attractions of Hartlepool and a nuclear power station. It takes a particular type of person to fall in love with a place as empty as this.

Step forward John and Anne Darwin, who declared seven years ago that they had found their perfect home in a pair of adjoining Victorian houses near the beach.

To Robert Meggs, who sold No 3 and No 4 The Cliff for £170,000, Mr and Mrs Darwin were an unremarkable couple but on the day that they moved in Mrs Darwin said to him: “If this doesn’t work out, we’ll lose everything.” With hindsight, the strange remark carries a striking resonance.

The Darwins were both brought up in Hartlepool and attended Catholic schools. They met when they were in their early teens and married in 1973, when he was 23 and she 21. He was a science teacher; she was a secretary.

Two sons were born and the Darwins might have seemed destined for a life of respectable anonymity in the village of Witton Gilbert, Co Durham. But it was not to be. After 18 years in education, Mr Darwin grew restless. He left teaching for banking and then the prison service.

His father, Ronald, recalled this week that his son “always had big dreams and ambitions”. Mr Darwin, who had boasted that he would be a millionaire by the age of 50, started to play the stock market. But 2000 and 2001 were unhappy years for the market and many small investors suffered heavy losses. It was in the middle of the slump that the Darwins decided to sell their home in Witton Gilbert. Gary Walker, who bought it, was amazed to discover 15 phone lines had been installed in one bedroom and recalled that bailiffs would knock regularly on his front door to demand payment for unpaid debts.

At Seaton Carew the Darwins lived in one house and rented out 15 bedsits from the adjoining property, funding the venture with a £245,000 business loan from the Yorkshire Bank that was protected by a life insurance policy. There was a further £50,000 life policy with Barclaycard. This was to be a new start. The couple could take their dogs for long walks along the beach and Mr Darwin could indulge his passion for canoeing.

Their fortunes seemed to have taken a turn for the better, yet perhaps not quickly enough for Mr Darwin. The seeds of an audacious plan may have been planted as he sat at the window gazing at the sea.

On March 21, 2002, Mrs Darwin reported that her husband was missing. He had apparently taken his kayak to sea in calm conditions 12 hours earlier.

The rescue operation lasted several days and cost at least £50,000. Mr Darwin’s paddle was found within 24 hours, and his battered kayak washed up on a beach six weeks later.

Mrs Darwin spoke of her anguish in an interview six months later. “People die. They have a funeral. They have a headstone. There is something to mark the fact that they existed on this Earth. All I want is to bury his body.”

Police were not so sure. One man involved in the search said that an officer had remarked at the time: “We shouldn’t be on the beach in Seaton Carew. He’s much more likely to be on a beach in Malága.”

Whereas many former neighbours of the couple struggle to recall Mr Darwin in any detail — he was described as “a bit of a nonentity” — opinions of his wife were uniformly positive. “A good heart and a good soul,” one said.

Thirteen months after Mr Darwin disappeared an inquest was held. An open verdict was recorded and a death certificate issued. Mrs Darwin stood to gain a lot of money from her husband’s death but for the next four years she led a low-key life, her trips to Panama attracting little attention.

So matters might have rested, because good Catholic widows are not supposed to be international fraudsters. And dead men tell no tales. They also rarely walk into police stations.

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