When she arrived at the station she was called straight into Bannerman’s office. McKechnie wanted to brief her about the investigation into Grant Bannerman.

McKechnie wanted to make it clear that nothing had been proved against her boss. He had been found with the laptop in his home but they couldn’t show intent to steal. The other claims against him were more serious though: bullying, mistreatment of junior officers, sending staff out to get him his lunch…Morrow lost her patience at that.

“Who?”

“Who what?” asked McKechnie keenly, hoping for a clue, she suspected.

“Who did he send out for his lunch?”

He looked at his papers. “Doesn’t say.”

“He brought in sarnies, every day. He’s a drawer full of health bars, for f—” She caught her breath. “Look, sir, I’ve got two upstairs needing grilled and I don’t believe any of this. Can we talk about it later?”

He slapped the folder shut. “Yes.”

“Where is he now?”

“Suspension.”

“He’s sitting at home watching telly and I’ve got to do all this myself?”

McKechnie widened his eyes. “We have legal obligations, Morrow.”

“I need to go back to London to question the other accused as well.”

“People have a right to work in safety—”

“Safety? He’s guilty of nothing but being unpopular, sir.”

“Well, we have to investigate these things, the complaints—”

“With respect, sir, the complaints are bollocks. He’s not coming back here, is he? After this. Even if he’s innocent of everything, he’s not coming back here. And unless you can get someone in, I’m the only senior officer and I’m about to go on maternity.”

McKechnie knew all that already. She stood up, feeling reckless. “I’m gonnae”—she stopped herself—“get on with my job.”

McKechnie stood up to meet her, a glint of an apology about him. “Morrow, this is the world we live in now.”

“Aye.” She opened the door and stepped into the briefing room. Everyone was there. The night shift were gathering, the day shift hanging on to get the gossip. Everyone looked at her and most of them were smiling, thinking they’d done her a favor.

Morrow looked around at them. “You cowardly shits,” she said, imagining her words being read out before a disciplinary committee, tempering them, keeping it vague. “You’ve no compassion for the bosses because you’ll never be us.” She saw them continue to smile but hide it under hands and cups. “We’ll be an army of nothing but soldiers ’cause none of you’ll step up.”

She looked around to see if she’d gotten through to them and knew that she hadn’t. Something snapped inside her. “Harris?”

He stood up at the back. “Ma’am.”

“Get upstairs,” she said, and a sudden flare of anger made her add, “you fucking arsehole.”

Although Jonathon Hamilton-Gordon had asked for Doyle, his family had intervened and sent a friend to sit with him, just a friend, someone Jonathon knew personally. The man was ringing all sorts of alarm bells in Morrow. His clothes were too neat, he didn’t make eye contact with the boy. Though they sat next to each other at the table, their body language was cold. She felt sure he was a lawyer. The appropriate adult’s job was to tell the person they were with what was going on, explain what the big words meant or read out things they couldn’t if they had a learning disability. It was not to hand them slick legal advice, or give them tips on how to avoid charges.

She watched them on the remote view, worried about going in there with Harris. Leonard stood behind her; she looked worried too.

“That jumper is cashmere,” she said, looking at the neat man’s jersey.

Morrow looked at the jumper. It looked ordinary. It was green and had a crew neck. He had a shirt on underneath it. “Have you got X-ray vision or something?”

“It’s the way it hangs,” she explained. “It’s thinner. I bet that cost about two hundred quid.”

“No! Jerseys can’t cost two hundred quid.”

But Leonard was nodding, certain.

Morrow looked again. “They said he’s a family friend. I don’t think they’ve ever met before, what do you think?”

The boy and the man could have been strangers sitting next to each other on a bus. In London.

Harris appeared behind them, his mouth pinched, avoiding her eye. Morrow, still angry, turned and squared up to him. “Yeah?”

He looked past her to the screen. “We going in?”

“Aye,” she said. “Come on.” She swept past him and led the way down the corridor.

This interview room was big and clean.

The man was next to the wall and the boy on the outside. They stood up as Morrow and Harris came in, shook hands. Jonathon’s hand was dry and he seemed very calm.

She let Harris take the inside seat, put her folder down in front of her chair and they fitted the cassettes, started the recording, drew their attention to the video camera. Neither of them asked for anything else to be explained to them, not for time frames or what was happening next. The man asked for no clarification on the charges as she read them out and the boy barely listened to the caution.

Then they all sat in silence for a while until Morrow looked across at the man as if she’d just realized he was there. “Sorry, what is your name again?”

“Harold.”

“Whereabouts are ye from, ‘Harold’?”

He blinked and cut her off. “Stirling. I live in Stirling.”

“That’s right, we have your address downstairs, don’t we?”

Again he blinked and cut her off.

“Nice part of the world, out there, nice. What is it you do for a living?”

Harold sighed at this, and glared a prompt at Jonathon, who responded, “Aren’t you supposed to be questioning me?”

She cocked her head at him. “Really?” She turned back to Jonathon. “Can you really have more to say after all that you said in front of Mr. Doyle? All that stuff you told us and physical evidence you gave us…”

Harris smirked next to her and she could see it made the boy angry.

“I do want to get this over and done with,” he said, trying to appear helpful.

Morrow looked languorously through her notes. “Son, see whatever happens here? Whatever happens here, this is not going to be ‘over and done with’ anytime soon—”

“I didn’t mean that,” Jonathon said, “I meant these questions. I want to get these over and done with.”

“What do you think is going to happen when these questions are over and done with?”

He shrugged carelessly, glanced at Harold’s hands, which were folded one gently over the other. Harold looked straight at her, defiant, proud. He genuinely thought he was getting bail for Jonathon. He’d told him he was too, which seemed unprofessional. Jonathon hadn’t told him about the car or how much he’d said already, she realized.

“Hmm.” She continued looking through her notes. “D’you watch a lot of cop shows on TV?”

He checked with Harold and Harold nodded him on. “No. I’m at boarding school, we don’t get to watch much TV.”

“You don’t get to have a car either.” She smiled at him. He didn’t smile back. “No, the reason I’m asking is because I wonder if you’ve ever heard of ‘the prisoner’s dilemma’?”

“Is that a cop show?”

“No.”

Jonathon looked quite amused by this train of conversation and pushed himself away from the table, swinging on the back two legs of the chair. “What is it then?”

“Two guys in two rooms being questioned about the same events. Yeah?”

He nodded.

“Both want to keep it a secret. Suppose, for example, they’ve done a bad thing.” She gave him a hard look. “If you can imagine that scenario.”

He sucked his cheeks in as though killing a smile.

“These two guys in the two rooms have done a bad thing together. And they’ve been caught—”

“Or given themselves up,” he said.

“What’s the difference?”

“Well, in one scenario they’re sneaking off,” he smirked. “In the other they’ve—you know—done the deciding.”

“I see.” She nodded at Harold. “An interesting distinction. So the two guys are in two different rooms and neither of these guys knows what the other one is saying about what happened. They give different versions. I was out of the room the whole time, say stuff like that.” She dropped her voice and smiled, conspiratorial, as if she was sharing a family receipt: “We work out what happened from the contradictions.”

He let his chair drop forward onto all fours. “Don’t they just blame each other?”

“Well, that can happen, yes, sometimes, classic episode.” She nodded happily. “They give each other up. One says ‘he did everything, I’m innocent,’ the other one says, ‘no, it was him, I’m the innocent party.’ Quite the conundrum for the police. Then we have to fall back on our physical evidence, try to piece it together. Work out what happened. Course, it costs more because the case goes to court, everyone pleading innocence and that, but ye get that pay-off, you know?” She smacked her lips. “Sentences are much longer. The feeling that everything’s been looked at and looked under, cross-examined, pulled apart…”

Jonathon smiled and licked his lips, pushed back, rocked his chair again. “Is that what’s happening here?”

“No. Here you’re saying he did it and you happen to have lots of physical evidence that he did it. In your version you did nothing and all the physical evidence about what you did is missing. Isn’t that a stroke of luck? Apparently you were off saying your prayers while it happened.”

He sat forward and nodded seriously. “OK.”

She looked at him and at Harold and found them both looking smug. She turned a page of her notes. “Oh.” She looked closer at the page. “Oh, dearie me. Two sets of footprints are stamped all over Sarah’s soft face.” She looked up and smiled. “What kind of prayer is that? I’m not religious so—”

Jonathon shot forwards. “No—”

“OK.” Harold stood up. “We’re stopping here for a comfort break.”

Morrow looked confused.

“That,” he said, “is aggressive, intimidating questioning of a minor.”

She stood up very slowly, holding her stomach and giving him a wolfish smile. “Harold, are you a lawyer?”

Harold snorted indignantly through his nose. “We want a comfort break.”

Morrow slapped shut the folder on the desk. “Take as long as you like. I’m finished. You’ll be taken downstairs now and charged.”

Jonathon stood up. “Then can I go home?”

Morrow widened her eyes at Harold. “No, Jonathon, you’ll be taken to court and they decide.”

“And they’ll let me go home?” Suddenly panicked, he looked tearfully from Harris to Morrow to Harold.

No one answered. In the pause Morrow saw something die in Jonathon Hamilton-Gordon’s eyes.

She slipped his gaze, ashamed of the glee she felt at the death of hope in a child. She picked up her folder. “You’ll be taken downstairs now and charged with Sarah Erroll’s murder…”