They arrived at just after one o’clock, as arranged. The address quoted turned out to be a red sandstone terraced house in Clarkston, to the south of the city, in a quiet neighbourhood a couple of streets back from the main road. There was a little girl playing in the front garden, strapping two plastic dollies side by side into a toy pushchair. She had black hair in pigtails and was wearing the skirt, shirt and tie of a school uniform.

Jasmine said hello to her as they opened the gate, but she said nothing and took off inside while they walked along the flagstoned path. The front door was open, and they could hear the little girl’s voice telling her mum that someone was coming.

Jasmine rang the bell anyway, and waited in front of the stone step. She could see inside along the hallway and found herself wondering: what’s wrong with this picture? The confusing answer appeared to be: nothing whatsoever. It looked like a shopping-catalogue picture of domestic contentment. Handsome building, tasteful decor, one cute wee moppet just started school, a stair gate and framed photos testifying to a curly-topped younger brother completing the family unit.

A door opened at the far end of the hall and Anne Ramsay emerged from an airy-looking kitchen. As she did so, a silver Volkswagen Passat pulled up in front of the house and its driver emerged briskly, as though racing to be first to reach them.

Perfunctory greetings and introductions were exchanged around the front door before Anne directed them towards the kitchen. She let Jasmine and Ingrams pass so that she could talk to her husband, asking him with a near-accusatory curiosity what he was doing home at this hour.

‘I told you I’d wrap up early so I could be here for this.’

‘Yeah, but there really wasn’t the need. I told you I’d be fine.’

Jasmine detected an unusual kind of tension between them and quickly identified it. It was the tension between two people who didn’t want to admit to themselves or to anybody else that there was any tension between them. It wasn’t aggro, wasn’t simmering resentment or grudges or huffs, but once you had noticed it, it was all you noticed.

The husband’s name was Neil Caldwell, Jasmine noted from some envelopes on a kitchen worktop. He was wearing a shirt and tie but didn’t look natural or comfortable in them. Anne Ramsay, for her part, was dressed down but still contrived to look rather buttoned up. She was in loose trousers and a T-shirt but struck Jasmine as being as better suited to office attire as her husband was to the informal.

‘So, what do you have for us?’ he asked rather urgently, before Jasmine or Ingrams had been offered a seat around the kitchen table.