Corstorphine was tempted to follow Brian into the newsagents to buy a copy of the Courier as well, if only to see how the paper was reporting the deaths today, but he thought it best to avoid him after their recent encounter. Let him stew for a while, then he’d get him in for questioning under caution. He drove back to the station, wondering whether his considering the old DI as an accessory to murder was justified, never mind the opprobrium he’d face questioning one of their own. As he saw it, there wasn’t much choice – the woman’s death twenty years ago had a connection to the two recent murders; the papal coins left at the scene of both crimes was too great a coincidence. It was as if the murderer was deliberately leaving a trail, pointing him towards the events of that day in 1997, opening up the historical child abuse at the orphanage to scrutiny. If that was the case then the murderer must have suspected that June Stevens’ death wasn’t a suicide. Whoever it was had to be stopped before inflicting their own brand of justice on anyone else; the last thing he needed was a vigilante let loose to be judge, jury and executioner. Brian was the only lead he had at the moment; he really had no choice but to bring him in.

He kept an eye on the cars he passed, the people walking by. Any one of them could be the murderer, any one of them might have knowledge of the orphanage and what really happened behind those walls. I’ll give it a few days, Corstorphine told himself, wait until I’ve more to go on.

XIX WEDNESDAY 10:19

XIX
WEDNESDAY 10:19

Frankie followed Josephine back into the same sparsely furnished office that had been the venue of their last meeting, pointedly taking out her notebook to record the conversation.

“Thank you for coming so quickly.” Josephine shot her a quick, welcoming smile. “I’ve transcribed the most pertinent pages of June’s notebook into longhand, but for legal reasons I’ve been told I cannot pass them on without an official warrant. We have to protect our bottoms, I think is the way you say it?”

“Close,” Frankie responded. “We would say cover your arse.”

“Exactly.” Josephine beamed at her. “The discovery of June’s notebook and Margo’s ability to produce it after such a long time is one question that concerns us at the Courier. Are you planning to investigate this?”

“Is this off the record?”

“If you want it to be,” Josephine countered.

“Then yes, Margo has apparently had access to a lot more information than she initially led us to believe. So yes, we shall be asking her in for questioning.”

“And will you be reopening the investigation into the death of our reporter, June Stevens, over twenty years ago. Will this be part of your investigation?”