‘I remember Michael talking about you,’ Emma said with a smile.

‘I’ll just show Emma and her mum out,’ McNab said, keen to leave the room full of inquisitive faces. ‘I’ll be back shortly.’

All three were silent as they headed downstairs. McNab was conscious again of the intensity of Emma’s presence. She was thinking something but wondering if she should say it. McNab found himself wishing, whatever it was, it would be kept until tomorrow.

Reaching the main entrance, he opened the door and prepared to say his goodbyes.

‘They said on the news that it might be a girl called Mary McIntyre,’ Emma said. ‘Is that true?’

‘We haven’t confirmed who it is yet,’ McNab said, taken aback by the direct question.

Emma nodded. ‘Because I’m not sure they’re right.’

22

‘So what’s your plan?’ Janice said as McNab opened the box of notebooks.

‘You’re my right-hand woman. You tell me.’

They’d vacated the incident room and moved instead to an interview room because McNab had got fed up with the whistled snatches of The X-Files theme tune that had followed Emma and her mother’s departure, her history with McNab being common knowledge.

Janice had been more circumspect when McNab told her what had actually happened in the boss’s office.

‘Some folk think they know it all, and that includes my colleagues.’ She’d darted McNab a look that had included him in the subset she was referring to. ‘When the only thing we really know is that we don’t know anything.’

‘What the hell does that mean?’ McNab had said tetchily.

‘It means the kid helped us before and she may do it again,’ Janice said. ‘Right, let’s see what we can glean from the notebooks.’

McNab hadn’t been convinced. ‘You heard it from the author’s mouth. J. D. Smart makes things up to entertain his audience.’

‘Not back then,’ Janice had said. ‘Back then he was trying to understand.’

‘You bought all his crap,’ McNab had retorted. ‘When in fact he tells lies for fun and profit.’

At that point Janice’s eyebrows had disappeared behind her fringe. ‘Where did you get that line?’

McNab wasn’t sure. He hoped he’d thought of it himself but was inclined to believe he’d just read it somewhere.

‘We can’t dismiss the notebooks,’ Janice was now saying.

‘Who said we were?’

McNab grabbed the top one from the box. It was the one he’d already glanced through. The tight writing, almost formed so that no one but the author might be able to read it, reminded McNab of doctors’ prescriptions before the computer was invented.

‘How many have you looked at?’ Janice was asking.

‘Just the first one,’ McNab admitted.

‘So let’s get started.’

She lifted number two and, opening her own bona fide notebook, sat them side by side. Her brow creased as she began to read, or more likely decipher, the close writing within.

McNab opened the first of Smart’s books with a flourish, then his own police notebook to emphasize his intention. Whatever response he’d expected from Janice, he didn’t get it. To all intents and purposes she was already deep in the words.