As Perez drove east, the landscape grew greener and less snowy. The sunshine was pale and lemony and shone straight into his eyes. Anna Blackwell’s parents lived in a bungalow on the outskirts of Berwick, and as he approached he caught sight of the view across the red roofs of the town and the river Tweed, then out to the sea.

Perez had phoned the night before to warn them that he’d be coming. When he rang the doorbell, Anna’s father peered through faded lace curtains at the front window before letting him in.

George Blackwell was older than Jimmy had expected and quite frail. He must have been approaching fifty when Anna was born. His wife was sitting in an armchair in the overheated sitting room, staring at daytime television. On the mantelpiece there was a photo of Anna. She looked about ten and she was in shorts and a T-shirt playing on a beach, kicking a ball.

‘We’ll speak in the kitchen,’ George said. ‘Joan will be fine on her own in here. She loves that baking programme.’ He bent and kissed the top of his wife’s head. The woman turned briefly and smiled vaguely. ‘She was a great cook before she got ill.’

The kitchen was small, old-fashioned and very clean. They sat at a table that was so tiny their knees almost touched.

‘It must be very hard,’ Jimmy Perez said, ‘that your wife’s so poorly.’

‘It’s only hard because she’s so much younger than me, and I worry what will happen to her when I die. Anna and I talked about it. She said I wasn’t to fret and she’d look after Joan when I wasn’t able to.’ George looked up at the detective. ‘Anna must have been desperate in order to kill herself. She wasn’t a girl to forget a promise.’

‘I’m not entirely sure that she did kill herself,’ Perez said. ‘That’s why I’m here.’

‘An accident, you think?’

‘No, I don’t see how it could have been an accident.’ Perez found it hard to look at the man. ‘She’d had a bit to drink, but probably not so much that she’d swallow that many pills by mistake.’

‘Someone killed her?’ The man was so shocked that the words came out as a shout. ‘Is that what you’re telling me?’

‘I’m saying it’s a possibility. I need to ask some questions. Personal questions, if that’s all right with you.’

‘You can ask,’ George said. ‘I’m not saying I’ll be able to answer. After Anna left home for university she had her own life.’

‘And a child?’

George nodded. ‘She was in her first year in Edinburgh. She came home one weekend and told us she was pregnant. I couldn’t take it in. We’d just been told that my wife had dementia. Joan had always been so fit and she was only sixty. No age at all. We had our own problems and perhaps we couldn’t give Anna the support she needed.’

‘Did Anna tell you anything about Lucy’s father?’