‘Who was the father?’ Sandy wasn’t sure if any of this was important to the present case, but now he’d started he wanted the full story.

George was looking out of the window. ‘There’s no proof.’ He gave an awkward laugh. ‘No paternity tests in those days.’

‘But there would have been rumours. The girl would have known.’

Another silence. George seemed to be weighing up how much to say. ‘The story is that it was Gilbert Geldard himself. His taste was more for young things than for his middle-aged wife. Maybe that was why she never conceived a child.’

‘He raped a young girl to give his wife a baby?’ Even after all these years Sandy was shocked. He could see why the Malcolmsons hadn’t wanted to talk about it. ‘Or did Geldard pay for her services?’

George shrugged. ‘Raped, seduced, bought. In the end it all amounts to the same kind of thing. All wrong. All violent.’

‘Did Roberta ever know that her husband was the father of the child they’d adopted?’

Another shrug. ‘If you look at the picture of the girl in the museum in Lerwick and the picture of the man in Springfield House they look kind of similar. You’d think the woman would have wondered.’

Sandy was trying to imagine how Roberta would have felt if she’d found out that Gilbert was the father of her adopted daughter. It would be one thing to take on the child of a local lass as a kind of charity. Selfish, of course. You’d do it because you were desperate to take a baby into your arms. But you could persuade yourself at the same time that it was a good thing that you were doing – rescuing her from poverty, from life with a single mother. Saving Sarah Malcolmson from disgrace. But how would it be if later you found out that it was the result of your husband’s perversion? If the girl grew to look like the man you slept with at night. How would that make you feel? Would you still love the child? Or would you want rid of it?

George turned back into the room. ‘I don’t see why you want to dig all this up now. It has no relevance to the murder of two people from the south; they have nothing to do with our family.’