‘A white dress and a veil?’

When McNab didn’t respond, McCreadie said, ‘A wee girl called Mary McIntyre disappeared after her confirmation on May the first in East Kilbride, 1975. Her father reported her missing when she didn’t appear back at the primary school with the rest of the big group of pupils going for confirmation that day.’

He fell silent for a moment and from his expression he wasn’t having happy memories.

‘We put out a big search, but there were no sightings of her and we never found a body.’

‘Any suspects?’

McCreadie gave a sharp laugh. ‘From memory, quite a few, including her father, who had a fierce temper and liked to use a leather belt on his kids sometimes. There was a teenage boy who lived in the same street. An altar boy at the church. Even, for me at least, the family priest, Father Joseph Feeney. Didn’t like the man. There were more but they’re the ones I remember.’

‘And you never settled on one in particular?’

McCreadie looked as though he might say something, then shook his head.

‘Was she picked up in a car?’ McNab went on.

‘Well, if she is your bog body, someone transported her to the moor from the south of East Kilbride, but at the time there were no reported sightings of a suspicious vehicle in the vicinity. In fact, there weren’t many vehicles on the road back then.’

He continued, ‘It was a new council estate built on open land. Vehicles around the place were mostly ice-cream vans, the milkman, coal lorry, et cetera.’

‘How far did the search extend?’

‘For miles around. There were no sightings after the children went into the chapel to be confirmed.’

‘Was the girl actually confirmed?’

‘The priest, Father Feeney, said he thought so, but there were eighty kids that day, two classes’ worth from the nearby primary school. Hard to imagine quite as many these days, either in a class or in the chapel.’

It was a bit before his time, but there were similarities with McNab’s own childhood. He suddenly recalled his march to the chapel with his schoolmates, all wearing wee jackets and smart trousers. God knows where his mother had got his outfit. Probably borrowed it from someone, because he’d never seen it again. Thank God.

McCreadie went on, ‘There should be records and what little evidence we collected, if it wasn’t thrown out over the years. Oh, and I have something that might be of use.’

‘What?’ McNab said, his ears pricking up at this.

‘I liked to make my own notes in detail. I still have my personal notebooks about the case. They’re useful when I’m thinking up plots and characters.’

McNab suddenly imagined himself appearing as a character in a subsequent J. D. Smart thriller, and was not enamoured by the idea.

McCreadie had risen, somewhat stiffly, from the chair. It was at this point McNab wondered how old McCreadie must be.

‘I’m seventy next week,’ he said, seemingly reading McNab’s mind yet again.