‘Did Chloe know?’ Vera thought this might be an even worse sin than murder, to involve his brainy sister, to make her choose between sibling loyalty and justice for Margaret. Because she’d feel guilty anyway – the favoured child, the apple of her mother’s eye. She had a brief flash of memory: her and the neighbours, and herself in a rare moment of honesty after too much drink, talking about a case when she’d failed; and Jack, wise and gentle, saying: ‘Hey, Vera. Just dump the guilt.’

Ryan looked up, suddenly defensive; the anger was spent, but he was still tense. ‘I didn’t tell Chloe.’

‘But she guessed?’

He turned away and said nothing.

Vera nodded to Joe Ashworth. The next part of the story was his.

‘When I first walked into the kitchen at Harbour Street, something was familiar,’ he said. ‘There was that sense of déjà vu. You were there, sprawled on the sofa, just a school kid in your uniform. I didn’t connect you with the lads I’d seen on the train. Then I recognized your mother – I’d been a fan when I was young – and I thought that explained the sensation of familiarity. If I’d remembered properly, we’d have had you in for questioning and the thing would have been over. Dee Robson would still be alive.’

Vera thought that Joe would have to live with that for the rest of his life. Thinking he’d been swayed by the soppy words of a popular song. Just dump the guilt, pet. In the end it was Val Butt talking about her violent son that had set them on the right trail. Besides, if they’d arrested Ryan on the first day, they’d never have found the body of Ricky Butt under the shed in Kerr’s yard. She still wasn’t sure what she thought about that, and the consequences for Malcolm. Sometimes perhaps it was better to let sleeping bodies lie. Then she decided that it would be an evil sort of world where a man could kill and get away with it, even if the victim was a toerag like Butt. Besides, this might give Malcolm a bit of peace in his last years. She could imagine him as an orderly in the prison library, catching up on the reading that he’d missed out on as a bairn. Vera thought she might even go and visit him there.

In the interview room the clear winter sunlight was pouring in through the narrow, barred window and Joe was continuing the interrogation.

‘Why did Dee have to die?’

There was no response from Ryan. He continued to stare at the scarred table in front of him.