And if the clothing belonged to the victim, the body was that of a young girl. Suddenly McNab’s earlier jokes regarding bog bodies seemed totally inappropriate.

The impact of the photographs on the officers in the room was palpable. Any abduction of a child was horrific. The discovery of their remains even more so.

The boss appeared at that point to give them an update. On DI Wilson’s entry the babble of voices fell silent.

‘As you’re no doubt aware, we received a report yesterday from Julie Black, a wild swimmer who, with her partner Dougal Thompson, discovered what they thought was a human hand protruding from an exposed peat bank at Advie Lochan, south of Glasgow. An officer confirmed the sighting and Dr MacLeod began an excavation of the site, the result of which is shown here.’

He continued, ‘The remains are mummified due to the chemistry of the location. Raised bogs are fairly rare now in Scotland. Bog bodies, as you probably know, have been found across Europe and identified as being thousands of years old. However, not in this case.

‘Plastic bags began being issued in supermarkets in 1965, which provides us with a much more recent time frame. The clothing in the bag included what looks like a white confirmation dress, tiara with veil and black shoes, suggesting the child, probably a girl but yet to be confirmed, may have been abducted sometime close to when she had taken her confirmation, which gives us another lead. However, there is no firm evidence at the moment that these are in fact the victim’s clothes.

‘From 1965 onwards a number of children have disappeared across the UK. Without another explanation for their disappearance, we must assume the probability that they were abducted and killed.

‘There are a few Scottish ones among these, but we can’t say for definite that this child wasn’t taken from elsewhere in the UK and brought north of the border for burial.

‘The post-mortem will hopefully provide us with more, and Dr MacLeod is back on site at the moment so there may be further forensic detail to follow. I want the identification of this child to be a top priority. So let’s get on with it.’

The boss’s look fastened on McNab and Janice at this point, indicating he wanted to speak to them in his office.

Once in and the door closed, he said, ‘I’d like you two to visit Jimmy McCreadie, who was a DI around the time we’re looking at and dealt with a missing child enquiry. I spoke to him on the phone earlier and he’s happy to talk to you. Unfortunately, a number of the investigation files on missing persons around then were lost or destroyed, so anything he can tell you may prove invaluable.’

McNab tried to do a mental calculation on the age of the old bloke they were about to visit.

As though reading his mind, the boss said, ‘Jimmy was the youngest DI on the force, but he managed to annoy the big brass by doing his own thing. He succeeded in getting himself demoted, took umbrage at that, departed the police and joined Special Forces instead. Despite all that he became a bit of a legend for the cases he broke open back in the day.’