Mindful of the journey back to Edinburgh in Hardacre’s car, he bought himself half a pint of John Smith’s and sat down on a leather-covered sofa facing the bar, perusing the laminated menu and hoping that Margaret Bunyan would be punctual, because he had just realized that he was hungry.

She appeared a mere five minutes later. Although he could barely remember what her daughter looked like and had never met Mrs. Bunyan before, her expression of mingled apprehension and anticipation gave her away as she paused, staring at him, on the doormat.

Strike got up and she stumbled forwards, both hands gripping the strap of a large black handbag.

“It is you,” she said breathlessly.

She was around sixty, small and fragile-looking, wearing metal-framed glasses, her expression anxious beneath tightly permed fair hair.

Strike held out a large hand and shook hers, which trembled slightly, cold and fine-boned.

“Her dad’s over in Hawick today, he can’t come, I rang him, he said to tell you we’ll never forget what you did for Rhona,” she said on a single breath. She sank down beside Strike on the sofa, continuing to observe him with mingled awe and nerves. “We’ve never forgot. We read about you in the papers. We were so sorry about your leg. What you did for Rhona! What you did—”

Her eyes were suddenly brimful of tears.

“—we were so…”

“I’m glad I was able to—”

Find her child tied naked and bloodstained on a bed? Talking to relatives about what the people they loved had endured was one of the worst parts of the job.

“—able to help her.”

Mrs. Bunyan blew her nose on a handkerchief retrieved from the bottom of her black handbag. He could tell that she was of the generation of women who would never usually enter a pub alone and certainly not buy drinks at a bar if a man were there to undertake the ordeal for them.

“Let me get you something.”

“Just an orange juice,” she said breathlessly, dabbing at her eyes.

“And something to eat,” Strike urged, keen to order the beer-battered haddock and chips for himself.

When he had placed their order at the bar and returned to her, she asked what he was doing in Melrose and the source of her nervousness became apparent at once.

“He’s not come back, has he? Donnie? Is he back?”

“Not as far as I know,” said Strike. “I don’t know where he is.”

“D’you think he’s got something to do…?”

Her voice had dropped to a whisper.

“We read in the paper… we saw that someone sent you a—a—”

“Yes,” said Strike. “I don’t know whether he’s got anything to do with it, but I’d like to find him. Apparently he’s been back here to see his mother since leaving jail.”

“Och, four or five years ago, that would’ve been,” said Margaret Bunyan. “He turned up on her doorstep, forced his way into the bungalow. She’s got Alzheimer’s now. She couldn’t stop him, but the neighbors called his brothers and they came and threw him out.”