Zoe rolled her eyes. ‘He’s offered me a lift home. That’s all.’ She put the lipstick away in her bag. ‘And I can assure you he won’t be getting over the threshold.’

Clare nodded. ‘All right, Zoe. Just take care, yeah?’ She watched her leave then wandered into the kitchen. The sink was full of unwashed mugs and suddenly it seemed an awful lot of effort for a cup of tea. She decided instead to check with SOCO – see if they’d found anything in the minibus. If not, she’d call it a day. And then she remembered the note she’d scribbled on her pad on the way back from Edinburgh.

She found Janey in the incident room. ‘Don’t suppose you could do something else for me?’

‘Sure, boss. Fire away.’

‘Gaby Fox and Luke Gasparini were guests at a wedding I attended on Saturday. They were definitely in the church early afternoon and they claim they spent Friday night at the hotel too. I’m pretty sure it’s a cast iron alibi but…’

‘You want it verified?’ Janey said.

‘Please. I know she’s the victim’s sister but we can’t assume they’re not involved. The hotel’s only an hour and a half away. It’s perfectly possible one of them could have slipped through to St Andrews for a few hours. They’d have had plenty time to be back for the ceremony.’

Janey scribbled on her notepad. ‘Leave it with me.’

Clare thanked Janey and went back to her office. She tried calling SOCO but there was no reply and there was nothing in her emails either. ‘Tomorrow then,’ she said to herself. She logged off her computer and, picking up her bag, walked through to the front office. ‘I’m heading home, Jim,’ she said. ‘I’ll have my mobile if anyone needs me.’

She walked out into the cool evening air. A couple of reporters looked hopefully in her direction but she went straight to her car, head down. The temperature had dropped and the blue sky from earlier was gone. But it would still be mild enough to sit in the garden. There was a cottage pie she could heat from frozen which would give her time to walk Benjy. And she might open that lovely bottle of red Al Gibson had bought the other week. She’d meant to save it for the weekend, but it had been a long day.