‘You should tell the inspector.’ It was as if Jen had come to a sudden decision. ‘He’ll not make it public if he can help it.’ She looked at Perez, a challenge. ‘Will you, Jimmy? But this is horrible. Knowing there’s a killer out there, having to keep the bairns indoors, and looking over my shoulder when I walk up from work on my own. That’s a sort of cancer too.’

If he’d been feeling well, Belshaw might have continued to fight, but he was weak and feverish and he gave up immediately, collapsed in on himself, so that he looked smaller. He told his story in strange barks and whispers, and the voice itself increased the tension in the room, like fingernails on a blackboard. Jen fetched him a glass of water before he began.

‘I don’t know when it started,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how long it went on. I think it stopped soon after Agnes died. Maybe John felt guilty, or maybe the woman finished it. If all she wanted was a bit of fun, the fact that he was single again could have frightened her off.’ He sipped the water. ‘We had football practice on Friday nights, just like now. We’d train the boys for an hour and then go for a beer, usually to the Mid-Brae Inn. It wasn’t so much for the drink as the chance to wind down. The start of the weekend for me, and a break for John. It sounds daft, as if I was some kind of kid, but I looked forward to those Fridays. I loved the company, the chat.’

He paused. In the background the computer game was reaching a climax.