He’d called ahead to ask if it was okay to visit, and Jean Barclay had said of course. McNab wondered if she just wanted to know what had been happening up the street, or whether she knew already. News travelled fast in small communities and McNab suspected this street was likely as much a community now as it had been half a century ago.

Jean opened the door to him and, with a cautious smile of welcome, invited him in.

McNab had met Jean Barclay on a couple of occasions. When she’d given her initial interview and confessed to not being able to identify her sister’s confirmation dress. When she’d been asked to give a DNA sample to check against the body they’d found. And, finally, when she’d been told that it was her sister.

‘The family liaison officer has just left,’ she told McNab as she ushered him to a seat in the comfortable living room.

‘They’re looking after you then?’

‘I can’t thank them enough. If only we’d had that level of support when Mary disappeared . . .’ She tailed off.

‘Different times,’ McNab offered. ‘Hopefully we’re improving.’

She nodded. ‘Can I make you a tea or a coffee?’

McNab asked for coffee. ‘Strong,’ he said.

‘I remember.’ She gave a little smile. ‘You’re addicted to caffeine?’

‘It’s better than the drink.’

His joke fell flat, but, maybe worse than that, McNab caught a fleeting glimpse of fear, as though he’d touched a nerve somewhere.

A quick glance around caught the portrait gallery on the sideboard. He already knew the set-up. A family photograph of Jean with her husband and two children. Plus one of each of the kids graduating from college or university.

On his earlier visits, there hadn’t been one of Mary. Now there was. A single small framed snap had appeared at the front, perhaps because she’d finally been found.

Jean Barclay’s swift return with the coffee suggested she’d already had a pot warm and waiting. McNab accepted the large mug and took a mouthful.

‘Sam’s a lover of strong black coffee too,’ Jean told him.

‘Is your husband about?’ McNab said.

She shook her head. ‘He’s out.’ She didn’t venture to say where.

Samuel Barclay hadn’t appeared to have been on the scene when the wee sister went missing, so had stood back from the family appeals and the investigation in general. McNab had got the impression of a man of few words, who was concerned about the horror his wife was being put through again after forty-five years. He always spoke quietly, his Irish accent undiminished in the forty-three years since he’d arrived here from Donegal.

Jean was waiting patiently for McNab to reveal the reason for his visit, if it wasn’t about the stramash at the top of the street.

‘I know about the body you found in the old McLaughlin house,’ she eventually said.

McNab nodded, wondering how much she knew.

‘Folk are saying it’s Alec McLaughlin,’ she said tentatively. ‘He’s been hanging about here, so I wondered.’