The boy looked embarrassed. “It was Saturday night,” he said. “I wanted to be out of the house.”

“If you didn’t come home, where did you go?” Ramsay realised he sounded impatient and added: “It really might be important.”

“Just around,” the boy said infuriatingly.

“Perhaps you could be more specific.”

“We met a friend,” Ian said.

“Where did you meet him?”

“In the bus shelter on the green. It was too windy to hang around.”

At last, Ramsay thought. At last.

“Was anyone else around in the village?”

“I don’t know,” Ian said automatically. He sneezed into his handkerchief.

“Look!” his mother cried. “ Can’t you see how ill he is? Is all this necessary?”

“I’m sorry,” Ramsay said. He turned back to the boy.

“Please think. As you say, it was very windy. You would have noticed. Did you see anyone in the square or outside the church?”

“There was the woman,” the boy said.

“Which woman?” It was impossible to tell from Ramsay’s voice how excited he was.

“I don’t know who she was,” Ian said. “I’d never seen her before. She was hanging around the churchyard.”

“What time was that?”

“I don’t know. About nine o’clock.”

“What did she look like?”

“Small,” Ian said. “ Dark-haired. Scruffy. I don’t remember properly.”

The thing was a matter of complete indifference to him, but Ramsay waited, willing him to recall more details.

“She had a bright red jacket,” the boy said at last. “I’m sure she did. Dave made a joke about it.”

Mary Raven, Ramsay thought. It must have been Mary Raven.

“If you saw her again would you recognise her?”

“Probably.”

“What was she doing?”

“Nothing,” Ian said. “Just hanging around. Sometimes she walked over to the gate to the Tower. We thought she must be waiting for someone.”

But what a wait! Ramsay thought. From nine o’clock until eleven when Charlie Elliot saw her. Who could she have been waiting for? Alice Parry? Surely no story could be so important to a reporter on a local paper. What had she discovered?

“How long did you stay in the bus shelter?”

“Ten minutes,” he said. “ No more. It was cold.”

“What did you do then?”

“We went to Dave’s house,” Ian said. “His mam and dad had gone out to the pub.”

“What time did you leave Dave’s house to go home?” Ramsay asked.

“Just after midnight.”

“You must have walked across the green on your way home,” Ramsay said. “Was the woman still in the churchyard?”

“No,” the boy said. “ I looked. She had gone. No-one was there.”

“Did you see anyone else?”

“A couple of old men on their way home from the pub.”

“What about Charlie Elliot?”

“No,” Ian said. “I didn’t see him.”

“Did any cars go past?”

“Not that I remember.”

“You didn’t see a blue Rover that night?”