When I asked for his version of what had happened to his sister, he said to ask Father Feeney. Could Mary just be hiding, I asked him. He glanced again at the belt. ‘Mary was never afraid to come home, even if she got a belting. My wee sister wasn’t afraid of anything or anyone. But someone’s got her, and I’d start with the priest.’

McNab thought about McCreadie. How he’d kept in touch with Robbie over the years. A penance for not finding his sister? Or guilt at doing things badly? Bad outcomes usually came from a botched investigation. Maybe McCreadie had got the shove because he simply messed up and his tale of those at the top trying to hide something was a cover-up for his own failings.

Robbie McIntyre didn’t think so back then, or now.

McNab remembered the boss’s opinion about the case and about DI McCreadie. If the boss had some questions about those in charge back then, McNab was inclined to believe him.

His mobile buzzed as he prepared to move on to McCreadie’s piece on Mary’s sister, Jean.

‘DS McNab? Can you come see me? Now, if possible.’ Ollie sounded pleased with himself. ‘I believe I’ve located Father Feeney.’

29

The bulletins on TV and radio, the acres of coverage in the newspapers, had got it right after all. The remains discovered in the raised peat bog close to Advie Lochan were those of Mary McIntyre, aged eleven, who had disappeared on 1 May 1975.

Rhona leafed through the accumulated results. It had taken time to get everything they needed to confirm the identity of the remains. Their first problem had been the fact that the body has been in the bog for so long. As she’d tried to explain to Magnus, bogs were acidic and thus tended to strip the base pairs off the DNA, making it difficult to ‘read’. Success had come when they’d had to go for the petrous part of the temporal bone in the skull, which was well protected. Having managed to extract DNA, it was then a simple process to compare the profile from the deceased with a buccal swab taken from the surviving siblings.

To add to this, they’d located Mary’s dental records and digitally reconstructed her face from the skull of the remains. That image of the girl now sat beside the photograph given to the police by her parents all those years ago. Parents who hadn’t lived long enough to find and bury their small daughter properly.

‘At least the brother and sister are still around to give her a proper funeral,’ Chrissy said.

If the siblings had managed to put what had happened to their sister to the back of their mind, then this discovery would bring it all back with a vengeance, Rhona thought. Add in the resulting re-opening of the case, the trawling over the past, plus the interest from the press and public, and things wouldn’t be easy for them.