Janice didn’t answer the question but posed one of her own instead. ‘If Karen wanted to hide, where do you think she might go to do that?’

Marge thought for a minute. ‘I can’t see Karen leaving Stirling, because that would mean leaving Jack. She still talks to him, you know? That’s what the chair was all about in the kitchen. So . . .’ She paused. ‘She spent a long time alone, no one noticing her. I’d say she stayed around Stirling somewhere. Or else she’s dead, just like her pal Mary.’

49

‘Well, how’d the date go?’

Chrissy smiled. ‘Very well, thank you.’

Rhona waited, expecting a bit more than that. When nothing was forthcoming, she added, ‘So what film did you watch?’

‘By the time we had our pizza, it was a bit late to watch a film.’

Rhona said nothing, just met Chrissy’s grin with one of her own.

‘What about you?’ Chrissy said as they continued to kit up. ‘What time did you get home?’

‘Too late for my dinner party,’ Rhona admitted.

‘Fuck,’ Chrissy said, suddenly remembering. ‘You were supposed to be eating with Liam.’

‘It would’ve been better if you’d reminded me of that last night,’ Rhona said.

‘Sorry.’ Chrissy assumed a pained expression. ‘So what happened?’

‘I found six missed calls from Sean as I was leaving the locus. I met the lingering aroma of something delicious in the stairwell, but the party was over and they had gone.’

‘Shit,’ Chrissy said in sympathy. ‘Was there any food left?’

‘Yes, in the slow cooker, with a note from Sean telling me to call. It was too late for that so I sent both men a text apologizing,’ she said.

‘You’re going to have to make it up to them,’ Chrissy advised. ‘In different ways, of course.’

Rhona nodded. ‘Liam’s with his parents now, so it’ll have to be when he next comes to Glasgow. As for Sean, I’ve asked him out to dinner at a place of his choice. No expense spared.’

Chrissy nodded approvingly. ‘Nice. Followed by a film afterwards at your place?’

‘Could be,’ Rhona agreed, before changing the subject. ‘Anything else come back on the evidence?’

‘Oh, I almost forgot,’ Chrissy said. ‘There’s an email through from Jen Mackie. I haven’t opened it yet, though the title suggests success of some sort.’

There were a couple of paragraphs and a request to look at the three attachments for further details.

Hi Rhona,

I’ve attached a soil map of the area of interest, including the woodland where the girls had their den, together with an Ordnance Survey map circa 1975. Note on the OS map there is a track running behind the wood, which has since become a tarred road. I believe it would have been possible to drive a vehicle along this track at that time.

As to the soil recovered from the outer sole of the shoes, it is an inorganic sandy loam mineral soil with high phosphorus, and contains well-preserved fragments of deciduous leaf material (beech, birch) and a pollen profile reflecting the understory of a wood (beech, birch, many mixed grasses, etc.), which has definitely not come from a peat. This likely indicates that she had walked last in a deciduous woodland. There’s no trace of fibrous peat, nor is there any of the pollen I would expect to find if the contact location was peat, such as Cyperaceae (sedges) or Sphagnum (mosses) – there were none found.