‘You’ll be away at college,’ Toby told her, ‘and you’ll have too much to occupy your time to think about doing anything daft back here.’

Gilly’s face creased into a perplexed frown. ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ she said. ‘I’ll still be living here, even if I do get in.’

‘There’s no “if” about it,’ Toby said, ‘or at least there won’t be if you stop worrying about stuff best left to other people and concentrate on this.’

They continued the lesson, but neither was paying proper attention. For his part, Toby was thinking back to those bookmarks he had made whenever the name Dora McCreedy had popped up during his searches of the newspaper archives, the elusive elements of a story he had known was there somewhere beginning to slide into place.

Gilly seemed to be preoccupied by something else entirely, but Toby only gathered an inkling of what when she said, ‘I don’t have to live near the college, though, do I? It’s not like… a rule or anything?’

‘No, you don’t have to,’ Toby agreed. ‘But practically speaking, I think you’ll need to live somewhere closer. I don’t think the transport links to any of the campuses are good enough from Newton Dunbar. At least,’ he added, somewhat ruefully, ‘they’re not at the moment, and won’t be for years. You don’t want to spend all your time travelling to and from lessons. You’ll want that time to study and hang out with friends. Don’t worry about that now, though. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.’

Gilly nodded absently, but clearly wasn’t going to get anything more out of this lesson. Toby couldn’t blame her. His mind was elsewhere too.

‘Let’s call it a day, shall we?’ he said eventually. ‘I know we’ve still got half an hour to go but—’

‘Great,’ Gilly said quickly, standing up and gathering up her things. ‘Thanks. See you tomorrow?’

She was gone before Toby had had a chance to reply. He returned to his research instead and somehow, as dark and devious as the path he found himself on was, he wasn’t surprised by where it led.

Two days later, Toby was sitting in a coffee shop in Aberdeen, waiting for the writer whose byline had appeared beneath the article about Rachel. A young man in his twenties, Russell Linley was exactly as Toby had expected: suit way over the limits of his paycheque, slick hair, flash car. Toby could have picked him out from a mile away and indeed did, watching the younger man walk towards the cafe through its large glass window. Toby wondered if he’d ever swaggered like that when he’d been a new young reporter. Probably. Before Soumanwolo, at least.

They ordered coffee – Toby a basic filter, Linley some complicated concoction that required far too many capital letters in its name – and then found a table in the corner.

‘So,’ Linley said, after they’d exchanged the usual niceties. ‘You said you’d read a piece of mine you wanted to talk about? Tipped you off to something big, have I?’