‘I’m Annabel Grey.’ She held out her hand. Her voice wasn’t loud, but it was clear, an actress’s voice, and Willow expected everyone in the airport to turn and listen to her, was surprised to look round and see that there was no reaction. ‘And this is my father.’

‘Richard Grey.’ He held out a hand. The voice defined him. Public school, Willow thought. Then Oxbridge. He’s a politician. Or an actor. No, a lawyer. Because that was the impression he gave, walking beside his student daughter. That he was there as her advocate rather than as her father.

Annabel was wearing city clothes: a floral knee-length dress, black tights, black pumps and only a short grey jacket to keep out the Shetland cold. In London perhaps summer had already arrived.

Willow introduced herself. ‘I’m the Senior Investigating Officer in the case.’ Needing some recognition from this woman who seemed bent on ignoring her. Despite herself, the inspector resented the effect the visitor was having on Sandy Wilson.

‘So you’re in charge?’ Annabel said. ‘You’ll find out who killed Jerry and the other man?’

There was, Willow thought, something childlike about her directness. No guile or pretence.

‘Yes,’ Willow said. ‘I will.’

The woman stared at her for a moment before giving a brief, approving nod. ‘You see, Dad. I said it was right to come.’

They drove to the police station in silence. Willow switched up the heating in the car, worried that the girl would be cold, and found herself almost nodding off; she’d never been able to think clearly in the heat. Sandy, driving, was still tongue-tied and awe-struck. Willow sat beside him in the passenger seat, leaving father and daughter to take their places in the back. The woman, poised and apparently unemotional now, despite the sign of earlier tears, looked out of the window at the passing landscape. She spoke just once when they passed a brown tourist sign pointing to the Ravenswick Hotel.

‘Isn’t that where Jerry grew up, where his parents live?’

Sandy slowed the car so that she could see the grand house and the walled garden, but Annabel Grey made no further comment on the place. ‘What a lovely setting!’ the father said. He put his arm around his daughter’s shoulders and pulled her to him.

Willow thought Jerry’s women had this in common: a lack of hysteria, a dignity in grief. Evie Watt hadn’t cried either, when she’d learned of John Henderson’s death. Not in public at least.