monologue.
"There were no other suspects?"
Duff shrugged. "There was the mystery boyfriend. But, like I said, that could easily have been one of those four. Jimmy Lawson had some daft notion that she'd been picked up by some nutter for a satanic ritual. That's why she was left where she was. But there was never any evidence of that. Besides, how would he find her? She wouldn't have been walking the streets in that weather."
"What do you think happened that night?" Macfadyen couldn't help the question.
"I think she was going out with one of them. I think he was fed up with not getting his way with her. I think he raped her. Christ, maybe they all did, I don't know for sure. When they realized what they'd done, they knew they were fucked if they let her go free to tell. That would be the end of their degrees, the end of their brilliant futures. So they killed her." There was a long silence.
Macfadyen was the first to speak. "I never knew which three the sperm pointed to."
"It was never public knowledge. But it's kosher, all the same. One of my pals was going out with a lassie that worked for the police. She was a civilian, but she knew what was going on. With what they had on those four, it was criminal, how the police just let it slip away."
"They were never arrested?"
Duff shook his head. "They were questioned, but nothing ever came of it. No, they're still walking the streets. Free as birds." He finished his pint. "So, now you know what happened." He pushed his chair back, as if to leave.
"Wait," Macfadyen said urgently.
Duff paused, looking impatient.
"How come you never did anything about it?"
Duff reared back as if he'd been struck. "Who says we didn't?"
"Well, you're the one who just said they're walking the streets, free as birds."
Duff sighed so deeply the stale beer on his breath washed over Macfadyen. "There wasn't much we could do. We had a pop at a couple of them, but we got our cards marked. The police more or less told us that if anything happened to any of the four of them, we'd be the ones who'd end up behind bars. If it had just been me and Colin, we'd have taken no notice. But we couldn't put our mother through that. Not after what she'd already suffered. So we backed off." He bit his lip. "Jimmy Lawson always said the case would never be closed. One day, he said, whoever killed Rosie would get what they deserved. And I really believed that the time had come, with this new inquiry." He shook his head. "More fool me." This time, he stood up. "I've kept my end of the bargain. Now you keep yours. Stay away from me and mine."
"Just one more thing. Please?"
Duff hesitated, his hand on the back of his chair, one step away from escape. "What?"
"My father. Who was my father?"
"You're better off not knowing, son. He was a useless waste of space."
"Even so. Half my genes came from him." Macfadyen could see the uncertainty in Duff's eyes. He pushed the point. "Give me my father and you'll never see me again."
Duff shrugged. "His name's John Stobie. He moved to England three years before Rosie died." He turned on his heel and walked.
Macfadyen sat for a while staring into space, ignoring his beer. A name. Something to start running a trace on. At last, he had a name. But more than that. He had justification for the decision he'd made after James Lawson's admission of incompetence. The names of the students hadn't been news to him. They'd been there, in the newspaper reports of the murder. He'd known about them for months. Everything he'd read had reinforced his desperate need to find someone to blame for what had happened to his mother. When he'd started his search to unearth the whereabouts of the four men he'd convinced himself had destroyed his chance of ever knowing his real mother, he'd been disappointed to discover that all four of them were leading successful, respectable and respected existences. That wasn't any kind of justice.
He'd immediately set up an Internet alert for any information about the four of them. And when Lawson had delivered his revelation, it had only reinforced Macfadyen's decision that they shouldn't get away with it. If Fife Police couldn't bring them to book for what they'd done, then another way had to be found to make