‘What’s that smell on your clothes? Have you been hanging around in a banana factory?’

‘It’s perfume – “Electricity” by Sebastian Longcoq. Grace bought it for me from the corner shop. It’s a bit on the heavy side, isn’t it? But I reckon it will fade.’

‘Or maybe it will deepen and linger, have you thought around that?’

‘Yeah, well, sadly there’s nothing I can do about it now. Where are you taking that nut?’

‘None of your business. Have a good night and if I don’t see you again it’s been nice knowing you.’

And with that he rushed away and disappeared behind a large beech tree. As I made my way onto the road, he appeared again on the low wall surrounding the play area:

‘One last thing,’ I said on his behalf. ‘How did McCoy know about the dongle?’

‘To be honest, I don’t know. Maybe one of his mates in the police?’

‘But you haven’t told anyone in the police about it, have you?’

‘No, you’re right, I haven’t. The only people who know about it are me and Grace, and I think I mentioned it in passing on the phone to Emily.’

‘You might want to think long and hard around that, mate. See you around sometime.’

And then he was gone. He had made a good point: there had to be a chance that it was Emily who had told McCoy about the dongle. This evening out was going to have to be handled with a large dollop of caution.

When I arrived at the Grove I used the side entrance and took up my seat at the bar where I usually watch the football. There was a match being shown later so if Emily didn’t turn up I could still have a few drinks with Andy and Nick. From my seat I could just about see through the bar to the entrance to the lounge room. After half an hour there was no sign of Emily (or Tommy), so I went through to the toilet to have a go at drying off the remaining damp on my trousers with the hand-dryer. I didn’t make much progress and by the end of my attempts the whole room smelt of warm bananas and even hotter concrete. I arrived back at the bar just in time to see Emily enter the pub, thankfully on her own. She was wearing a light green zip-up running top and baggy black trousers. She had her tan messenger bag slung on her hip and a large rucksack on her back that had some small tartan details but wasn’t overly Scottish in its attitude.