Rhona began to methodically unpack the remaining items, laying them out carefully in order of appearance. Apart from more books, there was a doll with a red dress and balding blonde hair, and, at the bottom of the box, a plastic bag. Lifting it out, she realized it wasn’t just there as lining, but in fact held something soft.

Opening it, she extracted the contents.

Moths had been hard at work, despite the plastic cover. Little holes patchworked the wool but, removed and shaken out, there was no doubting it had once been a blue hand-knitted jumper, of a size to fit an eleven-year-old girl.

43

‘She’s here already,’ Janice informed McNab when he walked in.

‘Well, so am I,’ McNab said. ‘Has the Prof arrived?’

Janice eyed him. ‘No, why?’

‘I called him and told him we were about to interview Karen’s sister. What?’ he added, taking pleasure in his partner’s bemused expression. ‘After which we can discuss his thoughts on today’s interview and the previous one.’

Janice gave him a sideways look of disbelief. ‘You’ve changed your tune,’ she said.

He hadn’t, he was just following the boss’s orders. Of course, he didn’t tell Janice that. At this point McNab noticed the coffee on his desk.

‘I don’t want us going in there with you needing a caffeine fix,’ Janice told him.

McNab smiled his thanks. ‘We’ll tell the front desk to put the Prof in the observation room when he does arrive.’

‘So how do you want to play this?’ Janice said as they walked.

‘Just like with McLaughlin. You start.’

By the gleam in her eye that’s exactly what Janice had wanted.

‘Why the change of venue?’ McNab said. ‘I thought you wanted to visit Mrs Jackson?’

‘Mrs Jackson asked to come here instead.’

‘Really? Most folk prefer not to venture inside a police station.’ McNab thought for a minute. ‘Maybe she’s got something to hide at home?’

‘After forty-five years, it’ll be well hidden,’ Janice told him.

They say you can make up your mind about a person in seven seconds. That first impressions are that important. Even as Eleanor Marshall, now Jackson, summed them up, McNab did the same with her.

She looked like a woman who’d been dragged down to a polling booth against her will and told to vote for the political party she most hated. There was a curl to her mouth and a defiant look in her eyes that didn’t suggest she had a mind to co-operate, no matter what she was asked.

After the introductions, she told them exactly what she thought about being questioned on something that had happened forty-five years ago. Particularly since she’d given a statement at the time when it was fresh in her mind. Anyway, Mary’s disappearance had blighted all their lives and she didn’t want to go back there again, ever.

Waiting quietly, a sympathetic look on her face, Janice let the woman have her say until the litany of complaints came to an end.