Corstorphine was also deep in thought. The file that the desk sergeant had brought him posed more questions than answers. His predecessor, Inspector Brian Rankin, had retired seven years previously. It was his name on the report into the June Stevens suicide that Corstorphine had been studying, an errant eyebrow raised higher as he devoured the contents of the document that Hamish had deposited on his desk. The forensics report was light at best, glossing over the woman being found hanging from the lower branches of the old oak in the glen, cause of death – suicide by hanging. There was no mention of any vehicle. Did the old DI think a young mother would abandon her daughter, carry a heavy rope the length of the glen and then manage to effectively kill herself? The photographs embedded in the file neglected to show any item she could have used as a step to position the noose around her neck before kicking it away. Come to think of it, he had only been able to reach the lower limbs of the tree by using his Land Rover as a makeshift platform, so how the hell had this poor girl managed to climb the tree and tie the rope unaided? Then there was the witness who reported the death, some Australian tourist apparently, who had never been identified, calling from a public call box. By rights he should have been a person of interest, but no real attempt had ever been made to trace him. The more he read, the more uncomfortable he felt.

Corstorphine leaned back in his leather seat, cradling the back of his head in his arms. The report contained witness statements which all broadly agreed that June Stevens had been behaving oddly for several months prior to her apparent suicide. None of the witnesses had suggested she was depressed, the words they used had been distracted, worried, frightened. One report had described how she had suddenly become overly protective of her daughter, refusing to let her out to play with friends, describing her as ‘a prisoner, locked in the house’. These were not character statements that he’d associate with a potential suicide, more descriptive of someone suffering from a mental illness. In which case, she may have taken her own life whilst the balance of her mind was disturbed. He glanced up as Frankie’s car entered the car park at the rear of the station. The case was long closed, it would be a devil of a job to try and go over the evidence this far on – and there was no way his superiors would sanction anyone digging over ancient history without solid evidence that the original case had been mishandled. Anyway, Corstorphine told himself, there probably wasn’t anything to connect the girl’s suicide to Oscar’s murder – just a coin found at the scene which by chance was minted on the date of her death.

He glanced up at the office clock, it was coming up to four. He stood, pulling on his coat as Frankie entered the office. “How did you get on?” Corstorphine could see from her face that he shouldn’t expect an answer he was going to like.