‘My mum had the record. Well, the cassette anyway. Or maybe the CD.’

Kaye was looking at Fox again. ‘Can we please go back and ask our questions, get whatever answers they want to dump on us, and then vamoose the hell out of here?’

‘When did CDs start appearing? Naysmith asked.

Kaye punched him on the shoulder.

‘What’s that for?’

‘Cruelty to my gearbox. Have you ever even driven a car before?’

‘Okay,’ Fox said. ‘You win. Joe, take us back to the station.’

‘Left or right at the next junction?’

‘Enough’s enough,’ Tony Kaye said, making to open the glove box. ‘I’m plugging in the satnav.’

Detective Sergeant Gary Michaelson had grown up in Greenock but lived in Fife since the age of eighteen. He’d attended Adam Smith College, then done his police training at Tulliallan. He was three years younger than Ray Scholes, married, and had two daughters.

‘Schools here good?’ Fox had asked him.

‘Not bad.’

Michaelson was happy to talk about Fife and Greenock and family, but when the subject turned to Detective Constable Paul Carter, he offered as little as Scholes before him.

‘If I didn’t know better,’ Fox commented at one point, ‘I’d say you’d been put through your paces.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Coached in what not to say – coached by DI Scholes, maybe…’

‘Not true,’ Michaelson had insisted.

It was also untrue that he had altered or deleted notes he had taken during an interview conducted both at the home of Teresa Collins and in the very same interview room where they were now seated. Fox recited part of Teresa Collins’s testimony:

‘You can charge me with anything you like, Paul. Just don’t think you’re putting your hands on me again. She didn’t say that?’

‘No.’

‘Verdict suggests otherwise.’

‘Not much I can do about that.’