Corstorphine bit his tongue. “Yes, Lamb. Now! And ask your Josephine Sables to pop in urgently. I’ve something interesting for her. Tell her to bring the notebook. She’ll know what I mean.”

Corstorphine rummaged around in his desk, pulled out a small electrical screwdriver and returned to the interview room.

“Hamish, can you bring George Winter to the interview room? Oh, and raise a maintenance report when you get back to the front desk, the recording light seems to have stopped working on the voice recorder.”

By the time the desk sergeant returned, George Winter following in his footsteps like a lost wean, the screwdriver had been returned to Corstorphine’s pocket. “Can you stay in here sergeant? Make Mr Winter comfortable? I just need to get a fresh memory stick for the recorder.”

Corstorphine requisitioned a new USB memory stick and placed the old one on Frankie’s desk. “I know you’ve already got a lot on your plate, but I need a written statement for Margo to sign before she loses patience and leaves. Her interview is on this USB.”

“We’re getting calls from the press, sir. They want a TV interview for the evening news and…”

“Stall them. Brian will have called the Assistant Chief by now. I reckon we have at best an hour before he marches in here and tries to shut the whole investigation down.”

“He can’t do that! We need to find out the truth about those children and we’ve still to identify the murderer.”

“He can, and he will. It’s his prerogative to replace us with a hand-picked team from Inverness if he wants. We just have to make that as difficult as possible for him. Get Margo’s statement printed out and make sure she signs and dates it. Make two copies and countersign them yourself with the date and time. I’m going to interview George Winter now, then Craig Derbyshire, and hopefully I’ll get corroborative statements. Then we’ll see how Brian wants to play it once the cards are down.”

Corstorphine returned to the interview room, ran through the witness briefing and turned on the recorder. “The time is 10:24am, Friday 23rd May. Present are DI Corstorphine, Sergeant Hamish McKee and Mr George Winter. The recorder is now running. For the record, the voice recorder light has stopped working. We all OK with that?”

They nodded, wondering why he’d made a point of mentioning it.

“OK. George, you were at the orphanage run by the Sisters of Holy Mercy for how long?’

“I don’t remember anywhere else, so I must have been there as a baby. I left at sixteen like everyone else did. They didn’t want us once we were grown up.”

“Did you ever suffer from any abuse whilst at the orphanage?”

His eyes shot up from contemplation of the table. “Margo said the sheriff’s been killed, is that right?”