‘I didn’t know,’ was the first thing she said, having sucked a couple of times on the cigarette like it was Entonox. ‘Please believe me, I didn’t know.’

Jasmine wanted to reassure her that they weren’t there to pass judgement, but remembered what Fallan had said while they waited.

‘Let her talk. Don’t fill in any awkward silences. Don’t make her feel better about herself. The thing that’s going to do that is telling us the truth.’

‘I didn’t even realise there was anything to know until Mr Sharp came to the house,’ she went on. ‘I heard him arguing with Willie, accusing him of lying about seeing those folk at Bothwell services all those years ago. I know Willie was never the most honest man in the world, especially back in those days, but that was the first time anyone had ever suggested he might not have been telling the truth about that. I didn’t even connect the two things at the time, never mind as the years went on.’

She took another drag on the cigarette and exhaled it in a drawn-out sigh.

‘Me and Willie weren’t married in those days. We were engaged, but we weren’t living together. The thing is, I didn’t even know Willie was the witness in that story until years later, when one of the papers did a piece on it. He never said anything to me about it at the time. Didn’t say anything to anybody, in fact: in Willie’s circles it wasnae a good idea to advertise the fact that you’d been talking to the polis, you know?’

Jasmine nodded but said nothing.

‘It would have been the Sunday, the day after Willie says he saw them; though bear in mind at this point he hadn’t come forward to the polis, let alone told me anything. He went to the polis a few days later, claimed he had seen a news report that jogged his memory. This particular Sunday, though, he got me to do him a favour.’

She looked away, towards the hills and countryside to the west, as though she could see there the path she’d taken and wished she could change it.

‘All right, so I wasn’t the most honest person in the world either in those days,’ she admitted. ‘It was just a fraud, that’s all. I’d done it before, always swearing off it later. I was terrified I’d get caught, but you can always do with the money, can’t you, and anyway, I reckoned: what’s the harm? It was a victimless crime. That’s what I told myself, anyway.