Aidan Tickett sat impassively in the interview room with the same solicitor as last time. ‘I’ve got nothing more to tell you,’ Aidan announced before they’d even sat down.

‘You don’t know what I’m going to ask you yet,’ Gillard said, as he prepped the tape. When everything was set he steepled his hands and asked: ‘You killed Tom, didn’t you?’

Aidan, pale to begin with, went ashen before recovering his poise. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Tomas Valdovas, a twenty-two-year-old Lithuanian barman who worked at the Anvil in the summer of 2018. He died in the bedroom of Dove Cottage, sometime that October, stabbed in the neck. His spine was severed.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Gillard could see a certain confusion in his face.

‘Did you not know the man? He worked behind the bar.’

‘I might have known him by sight, but he wasn’t a friend or anything. I know nothing about him.’

Gillard swiped through his iPad until he came across an image of a purple hooded jacket culled from an online retailer. ‘Recognise this item of clothing?’ He showed Aidan the image.

Aidan shook his head. ‘Never seen it before.’

Gillard swiped to a video, part of the footage taken from the National Express coach. ‘Yet here you are wearing the very same item of clothing thing, travelling to London on Tom’s ticket.’

‘Yeah, but that’s not me. We look very similar.’

‘I thought you said you didn’t know him?’

Aidan blinked, looking confused. ‘I said I might know him by sight.’

‘You “might” know him by sight but seem to be very clear that he looked like you.’

‘People said he looked like me.’

‘What people?’

Aidan’s eyes scurried from Rainy’s face to the video and back up to the ceiling. ‘Don’t remember. Friends, probably.’

‘Do yers have many blind pals?’ Rainy asked. ‘Yon fella’s got blond hair, and lots of it. You’re a wee ginger laddie to my eyes.’

‘Yeah, well, it depends on the light.’ Aidan folded his arms and set his jaw.

‘Aye, and works best when there isn’t any.’

‘So why were you on the coach, wearing Tom’s clothing?’ Gillard asked.

‘I wasn’t.’

Gillard turned the iPad back to Aidan and flicked through one picture after another. ‘You only got away with this because Guy Naylor identified you as Tom.’

Aidan said nothing.

‘And the only reason he would lie like that is to help cover up the crime you committed.’

‘I didn’t fucking kill him, all right?’

‘If you didn’t, who did?’

No reply.

‘Was it Rory?’

No reply.

‘Who were you covering for?’