His thoughts turned to Joanne and how she must have felt last night. He imagined her return to Beanach, wondering if she’d been living with a rapist and a murderer. How frightened she must have been.

He’d fully expected to have no one answer when he called the landline. To discover she’d left for Inverness and the train back south. He’d already envisaged the various ways she might escape him.

Malcolm would have given her the Land Rover keys as requested, so she could have gone back to Beanach and immediately booked an early morning flight south to Luton, Gatwick or Heathrow. Been back in London in just a few hours.

But she hadn’t gone for an early flight and she hadn’t sounded as though she intended catching the sleeper.

So she might still be there when the police let him go. Although that all depended on Caroline.

They’d come for him shortly after the telephone call.

The room he was now in spoke of its intentions. It made him long for the wee back room at the village hall. If he’d felt intimidated there, he felt it a lot more strongly now. He’d been given tea, if you could call it that, in a paper cup. He felt a desire for the thick brown hot liquid suitably sweetened by Maggie, who knew how he liked it, served in a big white mug from the hall’s kitchen cupboard.

He would also have welcomed her ‘Here you go, Greg’ as she’d plonked it down in front of him.

Back home, he’d been a local caught up in Blackrig’s latest horror. Here, he was a man suspected of raping and murdering a seventeen-year-old girl.

The recording switched on, the declarations and introductions given, DI Snyder and DS Reid now observed him with notably blank expressions.

I have become someone else, he thought, even in their eyes. He knew he could remain silent, but had decided to answer their questions. Perhaps that way he might discover what evidence they had against him.

It was Snyder who took the lead. ‘Mr Taylor. We would like you to tell us again about the night of Saturday 22 July 2017.’

Greg, feeling the tightening of his throat, made an attempt to swallow before answering.

‘I’ve told you all that already.’

‘We’d like you to tell us again.’

He nodded as though understanding why this should be required, then reminded himself not to embellish. Just simple facts, even though they weren’t true.

‘I was manning the bar in the village hall with my girlfriend, Caroline Campbell.’

Snyder raised his hand to stop him there. ‘You and Caroline Campbell were living together at the time?’

‘No,’ Greg said. ‘She was living with her brother, Finn, in the village. I was living at Beanach.’