He shook his head, the knife still firmly held against Luke’s throat. ‘Sorry, Inspector, no can do. You see, I need this piece of scum to tell you what he did. And I have the feeling he might not want to do that without a little bit of… help, from me.’

Tears were coursing down Luke’s face and he was gulping for air.

Clare said, ‘David, I’m concerned Luke might be having a panic attack. And that knife… well, it does look sharp.’

David smiled. ‘Oh it’s that, all right. I sharpened it outside on a bit of stone, before he arrived.’

‘All right, then,’ Clare said, ‘why don’t you tell us, David? Get it all out in the open then we can see where we go from there.’

‘Suits me,’ David said, his eyes still trained on Luke. ‘But, where to start? Oh I know. How about conspiring to murder my brother? I reckon that’ll do for starters.’

Clare was watching Luke carefully to see if he reacted to this but his eyes were tight shut again. ‘What makes you think that?’ she asked David.

He shook his head. ‘That lot,’ he began, ‘they don’t take me seriously. Think I’m a bit of an oddball. Pretty careless when I was around. But me? I notice stuff. I’ve bummed my way round the world for the past seventeen years. I’ve learned to keep my wits about me and to read people. And this one,’ he jerked his head towards Luke, ‘I can read his sort like a book. He’s the ideas man, you see. Doesn’t have the balls to do the mucky jobs. So he makes the bullets for the other lunkhead to fire. Not literally, of course. Neither of them’s daft enough for that.’

‘Are you saying you heard or saw something while you were at Lamond Lodge?’