“He was the wildest of all of them. A big lad. He got into the junior sevens—”

“Sevens?”

“The rugby sevens,” she said, and even this small, genteel lady was surprised that Strike did not immediately understand what, to Melrose, seemed more religion than sport. “But they kicked him out. No discipline. Someone carved up Greenyards the week after they kicked him out. The pitch,” she added, in response to the Englishman’s mystifying ignorance.

The port was making her talkative. Words were tumbling out of her now.

“He took up boxing instead. He had the gift of the gab, though, oh aye. When Rhona first took up with him—she was fifteen and he was seventeen—I had some folk telling me he wasn’t a bad lad really. Oh, aye,” she repeated, nodding at Strike’s look of disbelief. “Folk that didn’t know him so well were took in by him. He could be charming when he wanted to, Donnie Laing.

“But you just ask Walter Gilchrist whether he was charming. Walter sacked him off the farm—he was always being late—and someone set fire to his barn after. Oh, they never proved it was Donnie. They never proved it was him who wrecked the pitch, neither, but I know what I believe.

“Rhona wouldn’t listen. She thought she knew him. He was misunderstood and I don’t know what else. We were prejudiced, narrow-minded. He wanted tae join the army. Good riddance, I thought. I hoped she’d forget him if he left.

“Then he came back. He got her pregnant but she lost it. She was angry with me because I said—”

She did not want to tell him what she had said, but Strike could imagine.

“—and then she wouldn’t talk to me anymore, and she went and married him on his next leave. Her dad and I weren’t invited,” she said. “Off to Cyprus together. But I know he killed our cat.”

“What?” said Strike, thrown.

“I know it was him. We’d told Rhona she was making an awful mistake, last time we saw her before she married him. That night we couldn’t find Purdy. Next day she was on the back lawn, dead. The vet said she’d been strangled.”

On the plasma screen over her shoulder a scarlet-clad Dimitar Berbatov was celebrating a goal against Fulham. The air was full of Borders voices. Glasses clinked and cutlery tinkled as Strike’s companion talked of death and mutilation.

“I know he did it, I know he killed Purdy,” she said feverishly. “Look at what he did to Rhona and the baby. He’s evil.”

Her hands fumbled with the catch on her bag and pulled out a small wad of photographs.

“My husband always says, ‘Why are you keeping them? Burn them.’ But I always thought we might need pictures of him one day. There,” she said, thrusting them into Strike’s eager hands. “You have them, you keep them. Gateshead. That’s where he went next.”

Later, after she had left with renewed tears and thanks, after he had paid the bill, Strike walked to Millers of Melrose, a family butcher he had noticed on his stroll around the town. There he treated himself to some venison pies that he suspected would be far tastier than anything he would be able to purchase at the station before boarding the sleeper back to London.