So here the couple sat, in silence, still dressed in the jeans and jerseys they’d pulled on when Sandy had roused them from their bed. Ronald must be in his late twenties if he was close to Sandy’s age and they’d been to school together, but he looked older. Grey somehow. Perez thought realizing you’d killed someone would do that to you. Ronald looked up when the men came into the kitchen, half rose in his chair, then the effort seemed too much for him and he sat down again. The woman had dark hair, twisted into a band at the back of her head, but untidy now, starting to come down. She sat very straight despite her obvious exhaustion, the shadows under her eyes. It seemed to Perez that she was furious, so angry that she didn’t trust herself to speak. He couldn’t tell if the fury was directed at her husband, at Sandy or at the situation in which they found themselves. Or Perez, for the intrusion into their grief. On one of the workbenches lay half a dozen rabbits ready for skinning and gutting. Baby clothes hung from an airing rack lowered from the ceiling.

‘This is my boss,’ Sandy said. ‘Detective Inspector James Perez.’ He followed Perez’s instructions to the letter, said nothing more, leaned against the wall in the corner of the kitchen, an attempt to be inconspicuous. Perez took the spare chair and sat at the table, between the man and wife, sensed again the tension in the room.

‘Sandy took your gun,’ he said. Not a question. He’d checked already. Sandy had got that part of procedure right at least. It was one way to start the discussion, factual, safe.

Ronald looked up again. ‘I don’t see how it could have happened,’ he said, almost on the verge of tears. ‘I was shooting between here and Setter, but nowhere near the house or garden.’

He turned towards his wife. She stared stonily ahead of her. Perez saw that this was the conversation that had been going on all night. The man had spent hours trying to convince the woman that the tragedy hadn’t been his fault and she had refused to excuse him, to make his guilt any less. Clouston looked like a child desperate to be held.

‘It was very dark,’ Perez said. ‘Dreadful visibility. You must have lost your bearings. It happens.’ Despite himself he felt sympathy for the man. This was his curse, what his ex-wife had called ‘emotional incontinence’. The ability always to see the world through other folks’ eyes.

Anna Clouston remained rigid.

‘Tell me in some detail what happened yesterday evening,’ Perez said.

And now the woman did speak. ‘He was drinking,’ she said. Her words were bitter and accusing. ‘As he does every night when he’s not actually working.’