Carolyn watched her mother’s performance with a new, dull detachment. In the past, scenes like these would have upset her dreadfully. She would have hidden in her bedroom, her head under the blankets, trying to persuade herself that nothing out of the ordinary was happening. Now the hysteria hardly touched her. She wondered why she had ever considered her mother’s moods of such importance.

She watched the weeping woman with curiosity, as if her mother were a strange child throwing a tantrum in the street. James and Stella were so wrapped up in each other that they did not notice the change in Carolyn. They did not realise that she had hardly slept for nights and that she had eaten little. When she made her way to school, she stumbled with tiredness.

James was relieved to leave the house, but all day he was thinking about Stella, remembering how she had been before Carolyn was born, wondering if she would ever be like that again. Wednesday was the day before publication, the busiest time for the Express, but he could not forget her.

When Ramsay came to the office in Otterbridge, it was late morning and James Laidlaw was holding an editorial meeting. His door was open on to the large, open-plan office to allow the cigarette smoke to escape and he was working through the list of news lines supplied by his reporters to decide which items should go on the front page.

“It’ll be the Charlie Elliot murder, will it?” A large, elderly reporter with a peculiar crew-cut sat on the opposite side of the desk. He was looking at black and white photographs of the Tower, Charlie Elliot in army uniform, and Brinkbonnie village, squinting at them, trying to judge which picture had the most impact. “We’ll need to cover the Alice Parry story, too. It’s obviously related. I know the Journal’s done that in detail over several days, but we can run our own angle.”

“Yes,” James Laidlaw said. Worry about Stella made him preoccupied, rather aloof. Even his aunt’s death could not touch him. “What have we got so far?”

“A look at the facts as we know them, with details of Charlie Elliot’s last movements and a map of the area. An interview with the father, Fred Elliot. You know the idea: ‘ I was convinced my son was never capable of murder.’ I thought we might include a background piece on the planning issue. Something about the high feelings raised by new developments in small communities.”

James looked up. “ I’m not sure that would be relevant anymore,” he said. “ Not after Charlie Elliot’s death. It looks more like the work of a lunatic now.”

“We’ll hold the planning piece for another week then,” the reporter said. “We’ll concentrate on the murders.”

“What have we got from the police?” James asked. “ Not much. They’re giving nothing away.”