Greg stopped himself from going down that particular path. After last night, surely Josh would realize he’d saved him from an assault charge? Although, Josh could be mad at him for doing exactly that. He’d had a chance to deck Stratton and Greg had protected the owner of the Party House to save his own job.

There was always more than one way to read a situation, and by the look on Josh’s face at the moment, Greg’s way didn’t match his version.

A last thought surfaced as he stood, hesitant, outside the interview room door.

What if Josh should discover that both Stratton and Chalmers had been part of the group that had broken lockdown at Ard Choille? What if he found out that he, Greg, had partied there with them?

Greg

The body was hers. DI Snyder had confirmed this.

He’d known that all along, of course, but still his head buzzed with the words as though a wasp had found its way inside his brain.

That fact established, they were now back on the subject of the Party House.

It was strange, Greg thought, that the more often you tell a story, the more it changes, despite all your efforts. He’d tried to keep it simple, but Snyder had a way of pinning down details, exact details. Some of which he didn’t know or had chosen to forget.

He’d already had a cup of tea, courtesy of Maggie Carmichael, who’d come in to man the hall kitchen. It appeared the officers weren’t used to life without access to a drinks machine and had asked Malcolm if tea and coffee facilities might be made available.

The tea had been good and strong, exactly what Greg had needed, although at more than one point in the proceedings he would have preferred a dram. The first, when Snyder had told him that the body was Ailsa. The second was now, as he was questioned on his whereabouts when both the house and subsequent hot tub were being constructed.

‘Lord Main began building the tree house about seven years or so ago, before Ailsa . . .’ he began, before realizing that he couldn’t bring himself to say either the word ‘disappeared’ or ‘died’.

‘I wasn’t here during some of the time.’ He hesitated. ‘I went away to work on an estate in northern England. Came back when my father died. The house was almost finished by then. I took over my father’s position as head keeper on Blackrig. Not long after that, Lord Main died and his family sold the estate. Locals stopped calling it Ard Choille after Global Investment Holdings rented it out as a party house.’

‘What about the slabs down at the lochside? Were they there when Ailsa disappeared?’

And there was the question he’d been dreading.