Rhona understood the feeling. She’d been focused entirely on the dress since her return from the meeting. Now cut up into areas of interest, it lay on the surface like a giant jigsaw puzzle, its pieces promising to complete the picture of who or what it had been in contact with. But as yet they were just that. Promises.

‘Any luck?’ Chrissy said.

‘Every contact leaves a trace,’ Rhona repeated Locard’s famous words.

‘And we can find more traces now than back when it happened,’ Chrissy said.

Which is what everyone, police and public, would expect them to do.

‘So,’ Chrissy said, ‘are you up for a drink? Then you can tell me what happened at the strategy meeting.’

‘You mean you don’t already know?’ Rhona shot Chrissy a look of disbelief.

‘Well, I might know something that happened outside the meeting room at the end when you were talking to DI Wilson and J. D. Smart.’ Chrissy looked pleased with herself. ‘Which I’m happy to tell you over that drink. Plus you can tell me how it went with Dr Walker last night, which I note you have not yet revealed.’

Chrissy was right: Rhona had avoided a discussion of last night’s event, mainly because she was still pissed off and unnerved by Edward’s sudden reappearance in her life. After she and Richie had walked out together, having missed the meal, they’d gone for a curry. Richie hadn’t asked her any more about Edward, which she was glad about. They’d eaten, and she’d gone home alone in a taxi to brood about Edward and his desire to offer Liam a job since he was coming home. Something Liam had not informed her about.

‘What’s up?’ Chrissy was saying as they got changed. ‘You look like thunder. You don’t have to go for a drink if you don’t want to.’

Rhona decided there was no point keeping it a secret.

‘Edward turned up last night at the dinner.’

Chrissy’s mouth fell open. ‘The Edward?’

‘That’s the one,’ Rhona said, slipping on her coat. ‘He even managed to sit at our table. So we left early.’

‘He spoke to you?’

‘Too right, he did. Made a point of asking me for our son’s contact details, so he might offer him a job on his apparently imminent return to Glasgow.’

‘What did you say?’ Chrissy was goggle-eyed.

‘I told him we didn’t have a son, since he’d denied Liam’s existence and that was after he’d wanted him aborted.’

‘Jeez,’ Chrissy said in admiration. ‘Wish I’d been there.’

‘Not sure Dr Walker felt quite the same way, although he did save me by quietly exiting and fake-phoning me from the lobby to ask me to attend a crime scene.’

‘I like that man,’ Chrissy said, impressed. ‘By the way, you never mentioned that Liam was coming back?’

‘That’s because I didn’t know.’

‘Ah . . .’ Chrissy now saw possibly the true reason for the anger. ‘You’d better contact Liam. See what’s happening.’