‘Our entrance?’ Janice said, throwing McNab one of her looks. ‘Is there something you’re not telling me about Declan Walsh?’

McNab found himself having to confess to the possibility of that. ‘Ollie dug up some further information on the former Father Feeney, which hadn’t been confirmed, until maybe now.’

A second buzzer ring brought them into the building, which McNab thought still boasted of its former life. Chapels were chapels, he thought, whatever folk did with them.

Reaching the front door, they found it already open. In the doorway stood a slim, grey-haired man, who, to McNab at least, looked younger than his seventy years. The eyes behind fine-rimmed spectacles were a bright blue and the smile he wore as he ushered them inside the apartment looked genuine enough.

‘I’m so glad you’re here, although I did offer to come down to the police station and save you the bother.’

He led them through a hall and into a sitting room dominated by arched windows and a fine view.

‘Can I get you tea, coffee?’ he offered as he showed them to a seat.

‘Thank you, that would be good,’ Janice said.

When Walsh disappeared to wherever the kitchen was, they both took a proper look at their surroundings. The way people lived was a good indicator of their current view on life. Whatever the last ten years had brought to the former priest, it wasn’t poverty.

There were a number of impressive semi-religious paintings adorning the walls, prompting Janice to stand up and take a closer look.

‘They’re all by the same artist,’ she told McNab as she reassumed her seat. ‘Jordi Ferrer. Isn’t there a Catalan footballer called Jordi . . . Jordi – what’s his second name?’

‘Alba,’ McNab finished for her, wondering how the hell she knew that. The arrival of their host prevented him from asking.

‘Here we are,’ Walsh said brightly, laying a tray down on a polished coffee table. ‘I’ve made a pot of reasonably strong coffee and a pot of Earl Grey tea, so you have a choice.’

Having sampled the excellent and strong coffee, McNab now relaxed back in the leather chair he’d chosen, already suspecting, if Ollie was right, that it was the one normally occupied by the said Jordi Ferrer.

‘So,’ their host said, ‘I was distressed to hear that the remains found on the moor were those of wee Mary McIntyre. I always hoped –’ he shook his head – ‘no, prayed we would find her, although I feared she wouldn’t be alive.’ He took off his glasses at that moment and wiped them on a handkerchief he brought from his trouser pocket. ‘Her disappearance haunts me still. As I’m sure it does her remaining family.’

The small and poignant sermon over, McNab nodded to Janice to go ahead.

‘Can you tell us where you were when you first heard Mary was missing?’ Janice said.

It wasn’t the question he’d perhaps expected, but Walsh’s reaction definitely wasn’t the same as McLaughlin’s had been.