Hunter stood sullen and unresponsive. He thought Mary Raven was an irrelevance. He was afraid of their colleagues stealing the glory of Elliot’s discovery.

“Go to Newcastle!” Ramsay said. “ Check her story. Find out what time she arrived there and as much as you can about her.”

Hunter nodded unenthusiastically.

“I’ll go back to Brinkbonnie,” Ramsay said, “and check the addresses of the lads in the bus shelter. They might have seen the woman in the churchyard.”

He felt a renewed energy and hope. Mary Raven’s denial became a challenge. He looked again through the café window. She was drinking more coffee and stared anxiously and absent-mindedly towards the wall.

Hunter found the house where Mary Raven claimed to have spent Saturday night in a quiet, scruffy street close to the hospital. There was a Chinese take-away on the corner and rubbish in the small front gardens. Many of the houses were owned by the same landlord and let to students. From one house came the sound of rock music. Outside another group of young people sat on the front steps talking in loud southern voices. Hunter felt he had wandered into an alien land. The group on the steps stopped and stared at him, though by the time he reached the house where Mary’s friends lived they had resumed their conversation. The house was near the end of the terrace, with a CND sticker in a bedroom window and a bicycle propped against the fence. He knocked at the door, hoping that he would find no-one there. Weren’t students supposed to go to college after all? Didn’t they have lectures and tutorials to attend?

The door was opened by a pretty blond girl wearing a kimono. She had a towel wrapped around her hair, bare feet, and pink toenails. She did not seem surprised by Hunter. Nothing surprised her.

“I didn’t expect to find anyone in,” Hunter said. “ I thought you were all at the university.” He would have liked to mention grants, taxpayers’ money, but felt his disapproval would be lost on her.

“No,” she said vaguely. “ Not today. No lectures. I’ll be going in to the library later.”

She looked briefly at his identification card and stood aside to let him into a poorly lit hall. The plaster was peeling onto the floor, and as she walked ahead of him into the living room he saw the small white pieces stuck to the soles of her feet.

The living room was large and well proportioned but almost empty. A huge Japanese paper lampshade hung from the ceiling. There was a settee with a pine frame and brown cushions and an expensive stereo with a shelf of cassettes and a box of records. The carpet was threadbare and not very clean. Hunter sat gingerly on the settee. He could feel the wooden struts of the frame through the thin padding of the cushion.