‘This is Edinburgh, not Lagos or Caracas. One dead woman, another kidnapped, now a kidnapped child. That’s a substantial crime spree. What’s the probability of those events being unrelated?’

‘Have you seen a photo of Meggy?’ Baarda asked.

Connie shook her head.

‘I’ll show you.’

He opened his laptop and brought up an image of a girl who, if anything, looked younger than her twelve years.

‘This is recent?’ Connie asked.

‘From a few weeks ago. A classmate took it at school as part of a science project. No makeup, nothing precocious in her clothing or hairstyle. If she looked or was attempting to act older than her years, then I could see how a mistake about her age might have been possible, but until now we’ve been working on the basis that the link between Angela and Elspeth was the fact that he was attracted to this concept of the perfect mother. The fact that Meggy had noticed a strange man in a park isn’t enough to establish a link for me.’

‘What exactly did the friend say about Meggy noticing the man in the park?’ Connie asked.

‘Meggy’s home address is Durward Grove in the Inch area, south-west of the city centre. At the northern end of that road is Inch Park, which has a play area. The friend who also lives locally says Meggy saw a man there who she felt was watching her. He initiated a conversation, following which there was some incident where he bled. The friend wasn’t clear on the details of that. Meggy has haemophobia, so she was badly affected by that, and she told her friend the man was … I think freaky was the word, but she didn’t elaborate on that. It’s a large park with plenty of benches. Meggy made some comment about how most grown-ups know they should keep away from girls on their own, not choose the nearest bench to them. Bright kid.’

‘Really bright kid. Was that a one-off event – her trip to the park?’

‘No, we established from her father that her routine was to go to the park after school whenever it wasn’t raining, sometimes even when it was. She’d take a book and read there,’ Baarda said.

‘Take a book and read there? How many twelve-year-olds read a book in preference to plugging into social media these days?’

‘This is still a reach,’ Baarda said. ‘The shift in victim type alone makes the link between these offences tenuous.’

‘Meggy said the man looked freaky,’ Connie reminded him.

‘Plenty of adults look freaky to children. That could be anything from the way he was dressed to what he was doing, to the fact that he might have been humming or had a twitch.’

Connie pulled up a map of the area on her laptop.