His name was Jonathon Hamilton-Gordon. He stood in front of the changing rooms, eyes on the horizon, and told them the story as if he was being sick: he and his friend Thomas Anderson skived off after athletics. They drove to Glasgow, to Thorntonhall. They broke into Sarah Erroll’s house, through the kitchen. They were supposed to frighten her but his friend lost it and kicked her face in and killed her. Jonathon stood, breathing unevenly, holding his chest.

“Have you got asthma?” asked Harris.

“A little bit,” said the boy.

Harris got him to bend over, asked if he had an inhaler but he didn’t. As he held the boy’s shoulder and let him catch his breath, Harris looked over at Morrow.

Neither of them wanted this: their adrenaline was up, their fingers were tingling, they were ready for the chase but the fox had come over and shot itself at their feet.

The boy stood up, his breathing more regular. Morrow looked for a spark of emotion on his face but found nothing.

Harris was the first to speak. “Where was she when you went in?”

“Asleep,” he said, calm now. “Upstairs, in a room. It was round, the room.”

“Did you kill her there?”

“No, no, no.” He fell back a step and Harris lurched towards him, thinking he was about to run but the boy held his hands up and made it clear he was giving himself up. “No, I mean, I didn’t do it.”

So Harris rephrased the question with exactly the same intonation: “Did your friend kill her there?”

“No.” The boy was speaking to Harris and Morrow took the chance to move around behind and block him, why she didn’t know, she wasn’t in a fit condition to run after him or tackle him. “She ran downstairs. He did it there, at the bottom of the stairs.”

“How do we know you’re telling the truth?”

“My car. I’ve got baby wipes covered in her blood.”

They all turned towards the sound: someone approaching from the far corner, walking quickly. A big square man in a gray suit came around the far side of the building and stormed over to them, taking charge.

“Hamilton-Gordon, get back inside.” He swung his shoulder between them and the boy. “Officers, what are you still doing on the school grounds? Mr. Doyle asked you to leave.”

Morrow was catching her breath. “Sorry, you are…?”

“Mr. Cooper.”

“OK, Mr. Cooper. We’re bringing this boy upstairs to talk to him, and Mr. Doyle or yourself can sit in.”

“No.” Cooper held a massive hand up flat to her face. “Here’s what’s going—”

Morrow was full of adrenaline and disappointed at the chase being cut short. She spoke so loudly that Harris and the boy cringed.

“We are detaining this boy in connection with the murder of Sarah Erroll. You can participate in the process. If you do not choose to participate an alternative responsible adult will be found to sit in on the process. The purpose of the appropriate adult is to clarify events, step by step. Is that clear to you?”

Cooper’s hand withered back down to his side. He looked from Morrow to the boy. “Jonathon, I’ll phone your father—”

“We did it,” said Jonathon, but he couldn’t look at Cooper. “We did it, sir.”

“You…?”

“And Thomas Anderson.”

Back up in Doyle’s office the boy was more cowed. He listened to his rights, nodding, as if he knew them already. Then he began to talk again. He hung over his knees, hugging himself as he told them the details. He didn’t waste time emoting or making a case in his own favor but stuck to the bald facts of how and where. Morrow watched, able to because the boy had decided that Harris was in charge and told him. The confession sounded rehearsed. He didn’t hesitate or wonder, wasn’t dredging up facts. He had practiced this confession and it bothered her that he had.

Doyle gave her a slip of paper with Thomas Anderson’s home address. She handed it to Harris and he slipped out to the corridor and made some calls to the other boy’s local cops.

Morrow made them sit in silence until he came back, upping the tension, making them itchy to talk. When Harris came back he looked lighter, gave her a nod, and she motioned for him to start the questioning again.

“How did you get there?”

“I’ve got a car…” Doyle and Cooper sat up at that, “in the village.”

“Where’s your car?”

“In a garage behind the Co-op.”

“Where did you get the car?”

“Dad got it for me.”

Doyle was furious. “You’re sixteen years old!”

“Well, Dad got it for me.”

Cooper flared his nostrils at Doyle. Morrow made a note to ask about the father.

“Jonathon.” She sat down near him. “Did you tell anyone about this? After it happened, did you speak to anyone?”

The boy looked up, his eyes red from being rubbed with his knees and he looked past Morrow to the window. “I did,” he said lightly, “I made a confession to Father Sholtham.”

“And what did he say?”

“He told me to call Thomas and get him to give himself up with me.”

“Will Father Sholtham confirm that?”

He almost smiled. “Well, I don’t know if he can say what I said but he will admit that I spoke to him.”

“Did you call Thomas and ask him to give himself up?”

He was staring into the distance and chewing his fingertips.

“Jonathon, did you call Thomas?”

“He wouldn’t answer after the first time. He’s the guilty party. He didn’t want to give himself up. If you check his phone you’ll see that I called and called.”

She looked at his feet. He was wearing leather shoes, class shoes not sports shoes. “Have you got trainers, son?”

He shrugged. “I’ve ordered new ones from Mrs. Cullis in the linen room. They’ll be here any day. Might be here today.”

“I see. What size did you order?”

“I take an eight and a half. She’ll have a record of it. She had to write it down and everything.”

“Right.” She nodded, watched his face, saw an expression in his eyes, triumph or amusement, she couldn’t tell.

“What happened to your other ones?”

“Lost them.”

“When?”

He smirked at that. “This week sometime.”

“You ordered the new ones this week?”

“Yes.”

Harris asked: “And Thomas has those same shoes?”

“Yes, he does.” He was too quick with the answer, much too quick. “His shoes are in my room.”

Morrow interrupted. “Why are they in your room?”

“Oh, I must have picked his up thinking they were mine and then mine went missing so I had to order new ones. His name’s in them, I realized, after I took them to my room.”

“I see,” she said flatly. “Can I see one of the shoes you’re wearing now?” She held her hand out. He was reluctant, gave himself time to think about it. He bent down, pulled his laces loose, took the shoe off and handed it to her.

The leather instep was worn but she could still read it. It was a size nine and a half.

“What size were your previous pair of trainers?”

“I don’t know.”

“Would Mrs. Cullis have a note of the size?”

“No. I got them in the summer from Jenners.”

“I see.” She leaned forward. “You wouldn’t be ordering shoes in the wrong size to try and confuse us, would you?”

“No.” He seemed stunned that she’d managed to put it together. “I wouldn’t…ever.”

“You wouldn’t have taken your friend’s shoes and got rid of your own shoes so he’d get all the blame?”

“No.” Too quick.

“Jonathon,” she said slowly, “we’re going to take you to Glasgow and interview you formally. Would you like us to call your parents or would you like Mr. Doyle to call them?”

“Mr. Doyle.”

“You need an adult to sit in on the interviews—who would you like that to be?”

Without considering it, he pointed straight at Doyle. He didn’t need time to think it through because he’d already thought about it. Jonathon knew he’d dropped his guard; he scanned the room to see who’d spotted it and the eyes he met were Morrow’s.

“See, because my dad’s in Hong Kong,” he told her, a little flushed, “but he’ll be back next week…”

Morrow looked hard at him. “Where’s the motor, son?”

It was a small lock-up behind someone’s house. Built at the end of the garden but with a path to the street and the door at the side affording absolute privacy. Jonathon gave them the key and they opened it, and he told them the light switch was at the side, higher up than you would expect. Morrow flicked it on.

Harris stayed outside with the boy and Morrow stepped in for a look. She put her hands in her pockets as a reminder to touch nothing—it was easy to forget. The car was a black Audi Compact. An A3, chrome trim wheels. It was brand-new. She stepped back and looked at it. It was high spec, for a boy racer, but she could see that for a father with an infinite amount of money it would be a small car, a modest beginning.

She looked into the cabin. On the passenger side the footwell was full of brown smeared cloths, the door pocket stuffed full of them. The driver’s side was clean.

The garage door behind her rattled open, the sudden slap of light startling her. Tayside coppers were outside with a van they were loaning them to get the car back to the lab. Morrow bent back to the vehicle, looking in from the front of the bonnet, and she could see that the thin veneer of dust on the dashboard stopped in the middle. The driver’s side had been wiped clean.

Harris walked in, smiling, nodding at the Audi. “What d’you think?”

Morrow shrugged.

He was a little annoyed. “Oh, don’t look so happy.”

“I’m getting a bad smell off that wee guy.”