Part of me wasn’t yet convinced that Dr Graham Marshall was indeed Kevin Milne. The main reason for my doubt sprang from my own background. I had been raised by a loving single parent in the high-rise slums of Leith. Mary McLennan had worked two jobs and arranged for me to sit the scholarship exam for Gordonstoun. The school favoured by royals offers nine free places to children from villages in the northeast of Scotland, so Mary used her sister’s address and got me in the back door–without that shove up the social ladder I would be sticking on labels in the whisky bonds. I knew how hard it was to make that move: but as I had already contemplated, prison must have provided all sorts of opportunities that Milne’s natural environment could never have done.

‘Aren’t you going to ask me why I think my husband is guilty?’ Alison asked.

Not trusting myself to speak, I nodded.

‘He’s a cruel man.’ A bitter laugh escaped from her lips. ‘He thinks I don’t know that he dreams of strangling me. Sometimes I pretend to be asleep and I can feel his eyes on me. He’s considered many different ways of killing me. I found his little notebook,’ she laughed again. ‘Of course, I couldn’t let him know I’d found it. I put it right back where it was.’

‘You could have left him,’ I said. I have never understood why people stay in abusive relationships, even after defending Kenny Cameron.

‘Do you think he would have let me?’ she said. She shook her head, ‘No, no. He’d never let me leave. I’m all he has.’

‘Perhaps lots of men dream of killing their wives.’ I was playing devil’s advocate, something that I felt was going to prove to be extremely difficult in this case.

‘He doesn’t just dream of killing me. He draws it and describes it.’ Her eyes were cold and hard. She took a deep breath and continued. ‘I can always tell when he has been studying his little book–it’s the only time he comes to bed wanting me.’ I sat still and listened. I’d learned enough over the years in practice to know that no words would bring her any comfort; she just needed to talk. After all, it wasn’t the kind of topic she could bring up at a New Town coffee morning. Alison paced up and down the floor of my office. Unlike her husband, she did not stop to stare at herself in the gigantic mirror: perhaps staring at her reflection brought her no sense of comfort.