Sound travelled unhindered in the open-plan room, and any sneeze, burp or hiccup coming from a member of the squad was heard by all. Consequently, very few private telephone conversations took place within it, and everyone knew everyone else’s business. Whispering or a lowered voice alerted all to the possibility of a confidential exchange, and the listeners then re-doubled their efforts to make out what was said. If it had to do with the investigation they wanted to know, and if it did not, then, sadly, they discovered that fact too late.
When a young, solidly-built woman entered the murder suite, most of its occupants registered her entry, together with the fact that she was striding, purposefully, in Eric Manson’s direction. Her quarry was sitting with his feet up on his desk, nose flattened against his newspaper, chewing loudly on a sausage roll. His entire attention was being bestowed on a half-naked model, and he let out a gasp of admiration on reading her vital statistics. A sharp rapping on the front of his paper made him drop his shield but his face lit up immediately on recognising his visitor. As he stood up to greet her, arms extended for a hug, she sat down on the chair beside his own. Unable to disguise his disappointment with the rebuff, he followed her lead and, now seated, went to kiss her cheek. She accepted his offering as her due, something to be endured, but made no move to bestow any peck herself.
‘It’s about my mum,’ the woman began coldly.
‘Let’s leave that for now, eh, darlin’?’ Eric Manson replied, glancing around the room as if to alert her to their uninvited audience. ‘Tell me, how have you been getting on at uni, eh? You fixed up with a flat yet?’
‘No, we’ll not leave it, Dad. We’ll talk about it now. She’s back on the pills again and she needn’t be. If you just spent more… well, if you were ever there…’
‘I’ve a job to do, Kath, remember?’ he interrupted her, his tone conciliatory.
‘Yes, and so’s she. Every day she goes to that crappy surgery, answering abusive phone calls, fending off drunken patients and the like and then she has to return home to an empty house…’
‘It’s not always empty!’
‘Nearly always,’ Kathryn Manson corrected him. ‘And you spend a fair bit of your time in the pub, Dad, and she knows it. Think about it. She gave you a second chance, took you ba-’
‘Ssshhh… Kath, as I said, not here, eh, love?’ He looked at her plaintively and then nodded in the direction of Detective Sergeant Watt. The Sergeant was staring intently at his computer screen, occasionally typing a key at random, spellbound by the little domestic drama unfolding beside him.
‘Where, though, Dad? You don’t usually listen to me, but you know what? I think I’ve got ALL your attention right now. So let’s get on with it. My mum gave you a second chance, God alone knows why, and you’re throwing it back in her face. She thinks you’re seeing that cow from the papers again. Are you?’
‘Kath… Kath, for Pete’s sake. This is my office…’ Eric Manson begged.
‘So, are you?’ She was relentless.
The Detective Inspector suddenly stood up, but seeing that his daughter remained seated where she was, he sank slowly down again, looking at her, pleading silently with her for the conversation to end, but she returned his looks, stony-faced.
‘Well?’
‘Yes-no… I’m not sleeping with her…’ he sounded desperate and then, anger mounting, his voice changed. ‘It’s my bloody business. Not yours!’
Kathryn Manson, however, was not easily intimidated. She had a mission, and was determined to accomplish it. He had raised the volume of their argument, so she would simply do the same.
‘It is my business, Dad. Because it hurts my mum. She only came back because you promised to lay off that woman,’ she shouted.
‘And I have… I am, for fuck’s sake!’ Eric Manson raged in return.
At that very second DCI Robin Bruce walked into the murder suite with the Assistant Chief Constable, Laurence Body, in tow. Body, quick to sense the tension in the room, instantly marched over to the time-line to inspect it, leaving his Chief Inspector glaring at the antagonists. Kathryn Manson, dignity intact, rose to leave, but as she did so she bent towards her father’s ear and hissed, sotto voce but still audible to all, ‘You’d better have, Dad. Or I’ll be back. Back here, I mean.’
Alice knew as soon as they arrived at the Astra that the journey à deux to the Scowling Crags site would be an ordeal. Manson, fury still bubbling, slammed the driver’s door so hard that the wing mirror came loose. They then exited the pound, tyres burning as if in hot pursuit of a gang of international thieves, before rattling over the cobbles, heedless of comfort or safety. Every red light was treated as a personal slight, obeyed with ill-grace, accelerator depressed, roaring, for a racing start. On finding himself unexpectedly ensnared in a queue at Blackhall, he thumped the steering wheel loudly with both hands before, on impulse, screeching into the bus lane in an attempt to evade the jam. Discovering that he was now trapped between two stationary double-deckers he swore, while jinking out straight into the path of an on-coming heavy goods vehicle. Alice, eyes tight shut, cursed Kathryn Manson and her domestic concerns. Thanks to continuing discord within that dysfunctional household she would soon be deprived of her life, or limbs at the very least. With the Forth Road Bridge in sight, the Detective Inspector swivelled his neck from left to right, attempting to work out which stream of cars was moving fastest through the booths. A rapid swerve to the left and they were in the chosen lane, having missed, by inches, a collision with a red Mercedes and a motor cycle. Rigid with fear and flattening imaginary brakes with her feet, Alice smiled weakly at the motor cyclist, fist now raised at her, snarling, and signalling her responsibility for his near-death encounter.
As they bumped rhythmically over the bridge, Alice looked westwards, up the Forth estuary, seeking any distraction from this unpleasant situation. Between black clouds, shafts of sunlight were falling on the water, casting a silvery sheen on the vast expanse of tranquil, grey sea. In seconds the sun itself began to emerge from behind the dark clouds shadowing it, drifts of a borage blue sky exposed in its wake, and, as the car crossed the border into Fife, Alice became aware that her chauffeur had, finally, begun to relax. The car was no longer hurtling along at breakneck speed, and other vehicles were even being permitted to overtake them. Eric Manson lowered his shoulders and leant back into the driver’s seat, letting out, as he did so, a deep sigh.
‘Families, eh? Who’d have them!’ he said ruefully.
‘Sometimes more pain than pleasure, but not usually.’
‘You travel light, though, Alice. No commitments anywhere.’
‘I’m not an orphan, Sir.’
‘You’ve no man yet?’ Him and Mrs McLaren. Great minds, she thought, determined to side-step the question, certain that it was yet another volley in his little war of attrition. On the other hand, this time her interrogator was, himself, bruised and battered, unlikely to intend to commence hostilities on such a loaded subject. So instead, she smiled at him indulgently and shook her head. No reason for him to know. After all, he had met Ian Melville and their mutual antipathy had produced combustion on first encounter. His views on her lover’s suitability were all too predictable and unwelcome, and his dislike had been, as far as she was concerned, a positive endorsement of Ian.
Like the weighted, spherical toy clowns once favoured by little children and impossible to knock over, Eric Manson’s spirits soon bobbed back up, and by the time the Dunfermline turn-off was reached he was busy ripping the wrapping of a packet of cigars with his teeth, ready to smoke his companion out of the vehicle. Hands free of the wheel, he struck a match, sucked hard, and began to exhale acrid fumes into the enclosed space. His reluctant passenger wound down her window, aware that any complaint, or reminder that the car was her workplace, would be met with derision, the man’s delight in annoying her having been re-awakened with the resurgence of his normal, bumptious mood.
They turned right off the Carnbo road up a track marked ‘Blackstone Mains’ and began to climb into the Ochils. Within minutes the wheels of the Astra had sunk deep into its rutted surface and a strange swishing noise came from the car as its undercarriage compressed the undergrowth. After about quarter of a mile they arrived at the Mains, an austere farmhouse surrounded by a quadrangle of steadings, and saw a handmade wooden sign directing them further up the hill to ‘The Cottage’. The gradient of the final slope was steeper yet, their route resembling a dried-up river bed, little more than pebbles and shale with occasional boulders washed up here and there. Where the road ended they parked their motor, glad to stretch their stiff limbs, and both feeling as if they had travelled into some more remote past, a sanctuary untouched by the new century.
They looked around themselves in all directions, and saw laid out before them the glory of the place, a one hundred and eighty degree view of undeveloped countryside. Somehow they had reached paradise. Not the gaudy sort promised in every travel agent’s brochure, but something altogether finer and rarer, the true abode of the blessed. In the foreground were low undulating hills, scattered clumps of whin still yellow in bloom, and, sparkling in the bright sunlight, a series of burns bordered with flag irises and meadowsweet, culminating in marshland, larks and curlews calling high above. Beyond, in the distance, was a vast area of flat, fertile ground dotted with woodlands, the whole scene dominated by the great, shining expanse of Loch Leven. Looking on such a sight, the meanest spirit would have felt elated, a poet’s soul inspired.
In its condition as a moss-clad ruin, the cottage in the shade of the huge sycamore tree had once enhanced the rural idyll, but it was being restored, and its appearance now jarred, reminding the onlooker that, somewhere within the garden, the snake would be coiled. New PVC windows had replaced worn, wooden ones, and grey, cement tiles were edging out old, red pantiles. Even its sandstone facade had been marred by a patch of harling; metal gutters had been removed, plastic imposters taking their place. And all around lay the detritus of the DIY man: half-filled syringes of mastic, broken slates, soggy plasterboard and sheets of torn polythene. An unsightly yellow Portakabin had been dumped in the lee of the building, and the sound of drumbeats began to come from it. A whey-faced, teenage girl emerged. She saw the two strangers, but showed no alarm at their unexpected appearance.
‘Who yous after?’ she enquired dully, brushing a strand of dark hair out of her eyes with her hand.
‘Mr Norris. Colin Norris,’ DI Manson replied.
‘He’s out, away for the day.’
‘Where?’
She shrugged her shoulders, ‘You’ll need to ask ma mum.’
‘And where’s she?’
‘Shops. She’ll be back soon. You’ll just have to wait.’
A tall, thin boy, dressed all in black, leapt out of the cabin and flung his arms around the girl. She giggled and the two of them then returned, twined around each other, into their den. Instantly, loud laughter could be heard, followed by an increase in the volume of the music, which made the air vibrate to the pounding rhythm. Fleeing from the noise, an Indian runner duck waddled out of the cabin followed by its five upright ducklings, the family finding refuge through the open door of the cottage.
‘This place is a fucking pigsty,’ DI Manson muttered, lighting up another cigar.
‘I’d live here tomorrow,’ Alice said, knowing as soon as the words left her mouth that such a remark would be incomprehensible to her companion, a truth so impossibly unlikely that to utter it could only be a form of provocation.
‘Yeah, right,’ he said, ‘-and on your bloody own, I’ll be bound.’
Noticing a small outhouse with a corrugated iron roof, Alice went to explore it, bending double to go through the low doorway and finding herself in a foetid, unlit space. A loud moaning sound followed by a chorus of high-pitched squeals frightened her, and she peered into the blackness trying to make out the creatures responsible for the din. As her eyes became accustomed to the darkness she saw the curved outline of a large, prostrate pig. It was lying on its side, multiple teats exposed, and a mass of tiny piglets were tugging at them and scampering over each other, desperate to get their share. Delighted, Alice called out to her companion, ‘Come and see this, Sir.’
But DI Manson did not follow her into the hut. When she left it, eyes now dazzled by the sunshine, she found him sitting on the edge of a stone water-trough staring at the sole of his shoe, mobile phone in his left hand.
‘Thanks, Alice!’ he said. ‘Thanks to you I have stood on a massive bloody nail, and it’s gone straight through… and this place is covered in shit. I’m taking no chances, I’m going to get a tetanus jag right now at the surgery in Kinross. I’ll be back to pick you up in, say, two hours’ time. Norris himself is elsewhere, after all.’
As the rear of the car disappeared from the view, Alice noticed a ripple in the water of the trough as a stray raindrop fell from the sky. Soon, ripples collided with ripples as a summer downpour began, and she looked around for shelter, unwilling to intrude into the Portakabin, but keen to avoid a soaking. The porch would have to do; some refuge there, and as she ran towards it a red Escort bumped up the slope, coming to a halt with a heavy grinding noise. A woman got out, head bent against the rain, weighed down by four full carrier bags, and began to drag herself and her cargo to the doorway. Alice watched her slow, lurching progress, bags swinging against her legs, until finally they came face to face at the front door.
‘Hello. Where’ve you come from?’ the woman asked, surprise at Alice’s presence unmistakeable on her face.
‘Edinburgh. We got here about twenty minutes ago. I’m from Lothian & Borders Police.’
‘We? And how did you get here? I don’t see any car.’
As she spoke, the woman deposited two of her bags on the ground before shouldering the door wide open and entering the cottage. Picking up the remaining bags, Alice followed her inside, and they trailed together through a tiny hall into a cramped kitchen. The inside of the house, like the outside, was a work in progress. Nothing seemed to have been finished. The floor was covered with sheets of newspaper, but in the gaps between them bare chipboard could be seen. A few stacks of logs lay beside the stained wood-burning stove, and on either side of it were cupboard units, exposing their innards to all, each carcass doorless. Despite its shabbiness, the place felt homely, inhabited and warm. Odd touches testified to its owners’ affection for it: pots of fresh herbs on the window sills and a vase of wild flowers on the kitchen table. As Alice put the shopping on the floor, a black cat wound itself between her legs, purring loudly as if reacquainting itself with an old friend. Mrs Norris, now bagless too, turned her attention back to her visitor.
‘So who are “we”? And, like I said, how on earth did you get here?’
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Norris, I should have explained. I’m DS Rice, from St Leonard’s Police Station in Edinburgh. I did have my Inspector with me, only he injured his foot on a nail outside. He’s taken the car-the one we used to get here-off to the surgery in Kinross. For a jag,’ Alice replied.
‘OK, but what do you want from us? By the way, would you like some tea, coffee or something?’
‘That would be lovely. Tea, if possible.’
Mrs Norris boiled the kettle, and then dunked a single, used teabag in both mugs before offering the watery mix to Alice.
‘So, how can I help you?’
‘Perhaps,’ Alice said, extracting the photocopy of the specimen handwriting from her jacket pocket, ‘…you could look at this for me.’
As the woman examined the paper, Alice studied her. She had a sort of worn beauty, and neither age nor experience had yet robbed her of its brilliance. Her hair was brown, threaded with white, and her eyes were of the lightest grey, pupils sharp against their faded colour. Her complexion, though, had been ravaged, as if she had been exposed to all weathers, a faint network of broken veins travelling across the bridge of her nose and her cheeks. Her hands were swollen, tight-skinned and red, with short, clean nails. The woman began biting her lip, and she continued doing so even after she had raised her face from the paper.
‘Mmm. What do you want to know?’
‘Can you identify the handwriting, please?’
‘Er… yes, but I’d like to know why, first, if I may.’ Blood had been drawn from the bitten lower lip.
‘Because we need to know the identity of the writer for the purposes of an ongoing investigation.’
‘Oh. Well…’ she hesitated, ‘it’s Colin’s writing, I think.’
‘Colin Norris. Your husband?’
‘Yes. My husband’s writing.’
‘Can you tell me where he is at the moment, Mrs Norris?’
‘Why, has he done something stupid again?’ Alarm was evident in her voice.
‘Again? Maybe. I don’t know. That’s why I’d like to speak to him.’
Mrs Norris sighed. ‘He’s in Edinburgh, helping his mother for a day or two. She lives in Gayfield Square.’
Mrs Norris was kind. Learning that her uninvited visitor could not be picked up for a further hour and a half, and seeing the discomfiture this state of affairs produced, she suggested that the policewoman entertain herself in the sitting room. She would find magazines for her, leave her in peace and attend to some household chores. Afterwards, they would have some lunch. A few copies of Which magazine, plus an old National Geographic, were handed over before Mrs Norris disappeared, her industry confirmed by the ensuing smell of furniture polish. Alice padded about the room, taking in her surroundings. On a mahogany sideboard sat a large silver cup, tarnished, and engraved with a short inscription. ‘Kilgraston School – 1971 – Senior Tennis Champion – Hilary Morrison’, and directly above it was a faded photograph of the 1971 tennis six, with a youthful Mrs Norris in the centre, holding a silver shield above her head. Further along the same wall was another framed photo, this time depicting the Glenalmond First Fifteen, and one of the names below the array of sturdy adolescents was that of Colin Norris. Elsewhere in the room the observant would have noticed, in amongst the frayed covers and thin curtains, relics of a more privileged existence, when shopping was done at Jenners and Forsyth’s rather than Ikea and B &Q.
Hearing the sound of the table being laid in the kitchen Alice entered it, intending to offer her services, to be met with cool stares from the boy and girl from the Portakabin. Mrs Norris, busy, and clearly flustered, introduced them.
‘DS Rice, this is my daughter, Rosanna, and her… er… boyfriend, Jason.’
Rosanna and Jason, as if no introductions had been made, sank into their chairs and began helping themselves to the bread and soup laid out before them. But when Alice took the chair next to her, Rosanna stopped eating to speak.
‘A policewoman, eh… maybe you could help Jason?’
‘How?’ Jason asked, glaring angrily at his girlfriend.
‘With the charge.’
Jason nodded, mollified, looking now at Alice expectantly.
‘See, Jason’s on a charge,’ the girl continued, ‘and he’s already up for something else. Maybe you could get it dropped for us, eh?’
Curious, Alice asked, ‘What’s the charge?’
‘You tell her, Jason, eh?’ Rosanna giggled.
The youth blushed before answering, ‘Er… peein’ in folks’ letterboxes.’
Eric Manson arrived back at exactly the time promised, and from his breath it was apparent that he had consumed his lunch in a pub. Hobbling out of the car he instructed his Sergeant to take the wheel, disability now to the fore, and then reclined on the back seat, legs up, eyes closed, snores vibrating his torso before they had even reached the motorway. On waking at the City boundary he became irascible, demanding that Alice ferry him to his house, rest having been advised. But on passing a service station he ordered her to stop and teetered unsteadily out, clambering back into the car clutching an undistinguished bouquet which he then transferred uneasily from hand to hand until his final disembarkation at ‘The Hollies’.
Consequently, Alice arrived alone at Gayfield Square, delighted to have shed her companion, still pondering on the slow smile she had noticed lighting up Mrs Manson’s face as she escorted her lame husband through their doorway.
A departing resident let her into the tenement building. The stone stairs leading to the topmost flat were worn and uneven, and as Alice trudged upwards she was assailed by scents of cooking: wafts of a curry-scented breeze on the first floor, bacon frying on the second and, she hazarded, chopped onions on the third. Now breathless, she rang the old-fashioned doorbell and the door, after a short delay, was opened by an elderly woman, well-spoken and immaculately turned out in a polo-neck jersey with pearls and a tweed skirt. In the drawing room, Colin Norris, unshaven and clad in a paint-spattered boiler-suit, was standing on a wooden stepladder admiring his own handiwork. Only about one square foot of the old cream paint remained on the ceiling, the roller tray now empty of Snowdrop White. Unaware that his mother had company he shouted: ‘Who was that at the door, Mum?’
‘It’s a Police officer, dear, it seems she wants to speak to you. I’ll get some tea and leave you both to it.’
As the man descended the ladder Alice glanced at him. Everything about him looked wary, on guard. The second their eyes met, he covered his with his hand, massaging his temples and sighing audibly for her benefit. When he lowered his head once more to discard his roller, she noticed that the few grey curls left on it were thin, unwinding before taking their final bow and leaving his scalp forever. Although he must have been well over six feet, he appeared smaller, as if trying to minimise his presence by stooping, camouflaging his physical bulk. Because of his diffident manner Alice was taken by surprise when he took the initiative, leading her to the sofa and then sitting close beside her, an action too open and hospitable for such an apparently timid creature. She showed him the photocopy and the caption and he identified both writings as his own, seeming puzzled at the need for doing so.
‘I need to ask you, Mr Norris-where were you between seven pm and ten pm on Monday 12th June?’
The man waited a few seconds before answering. ‘I’ve no idea, Sergeant. Does it matter?’
‘Yes, sir, it matters. Can I ask you to think again?’
Again, there was an unusual delay before he spoke: ‘Well, that’s ages ago now, and I’m sorry but I haven’t a clue.’
‘What about between eight and eleven pm on Wednesday 5th July?’
‘Last week, eh? I don’t know, but I’d probably be at home. I don’t go out much nowadays.’
‘If you were at home, sir, would anyone have been with you?’
Colin Norris looked the policewoman directly in the eye as he answered. ‘My wife, she’d have been there, I expect. I can’t be sure, I’ll have to think about it, but we’re both normally there. What’s all this about anyway? Couldn’t you just cut to the chase, please?’
‘Of course, sir. The specimen of writing on the photocopy was extracted from a series of letters written to Sheriff Freeman. You may have read about him in the papers. He was recently murdered.’
Had the man harboured any genuine doubt about the nature of her enquiries, it was now dispelled. He began to pat his curls and run his fingers through his little remaining hair.
‘In the papers,’ he repeated, nodding.
‘Yes, and I understand that you wrote those letters-threatening letters-to the Sheriff.’
Again, Alice caught the man’s eyes, and this time he held her gaze.
‘I did write them, yes.’ Although hoarse, his voice sounded unashamed, unrepentant.
‘Could you tell me why, sir?’
He nodded again, apparently keen to take up her invitation.
‘Yes. I wrote them because I was, quite frankly, desperate… DESPERATE. I wanted him to stop the wind farm development. He could have, you see. It was in his power. He owned the access strip, and without it, without his co-operation, the whole thing would have foundered… and then, of course, I’d have been all right.’
‘Why were you so desperate for the wind farm not to go ahead?’
‘Because,’ the man sighed, ‘…because if it did, my life would be over.’
‘What do you mean “my life would be over”?’
‘I expect you have been there, Sergeant, to my house, I mean?’
‘Yes, I was there this morning.’
‘Then you may understand. A tiny bit. That cottage is… well, my last chance really. I used to be in shipping, highly-paid too, then I lost my job. Our office in London was “downsized”. Actually, I was the only casualty, through no fault of my own. Naturally, I picked myself up and managed to land a job in insurance but… well… I’m not a salesman, so after two years they “let me go”. Next I tried selling wills, it was a kind of franchise, and… in a nutshell, it didn’t succeed. But Hilary, my wife, kept my spirits up, she’s always believed in me. You know she even got a job herself. Bloody good effort… Christ,’ he shook his head, ‘and I’ve led her a bloody dance. Eventually we used everything we had, every last penny, to buy the cottage, and since then I’ve worked day and night to do it up. So has she. When it’s finished… well, how could it fail? As a bed and breakfast, I mean. It’s such a perfect spot. You’ve seen it, it’s Shangri-La, the real thing. How could we fail there, how could anyone fail there…’
‘And the wind farm?,’ she reminded him.
‘In that wonderful place, they plan to dump thirty turbines. The view from the cottage, instead of being… unsurpassed, would be totally blighted. Then who, in their right mind, would want to come to a place like that on holiday? To look out over a mass of those ugly great things and listen to their perpetual clicks and whirrs. Nobody, that’s who. But I’m not going to let them destroy everything.’
‘So that’s why you threatened the Sheriff?’
‘Yes, that’s why I threatened him. But what else could I do? What would you have done?’ he pleaded, and, getting no response, continued. ‘It was nothing to him. A bit more money for an already rich man. I tried, just once, to speak to him about it, but he brushed me aside, said he was in a hurry, had to go to a meeting or something and then he left. Rude bugger! But, you see, without him, his participation, the thing can’t go ahead, however willing every other landlord in the scheme is. I’ve fallen pretty low, you know. I can’t even educate my own child properly, as I’d like. As Hil would like. But I can’t… I can’t hit rock bottom. I’d take her with me. And the worst of it is, believe it or not, she’d stay with me. But we are going to make a go of this. I’ll grow the vegetables, do the general maintenance, even be the butler, and she’ll cook. She’s a cordon-bleu, you know. Eventually, we’ll maybe be able to send Rosanna to public school, just for her last two years…’
‘You threatened the Sheriff. Maybe you killed him, too?’
‘You think I murdered Sheriff Freeman?’ the man asked, disbelief patent in his voice.
‘You threatened to put “a stop” to him, didn’t you?’ Alice answered.
‘I know, I know I did.’ He seemed irritated. ‘I had to. Obviously. I had to threaten him otherwise he wouldn’t stop it, would he? The wind farm, I mean.’
‘So did you do it? Kill him?’
‘Of course not,’ Colin Norris was now speaking fast, ‘of course not. It’s a ridiculous idea. They were only words. Words on paper. I wouldn’t do that, and if I had, you’d be the last person I’d be telling…’
‘Quite, sir. What about Nicholas Lyon?’
‘What about Nicholas Lyon, whoever he is?’
‘Did you kill him?’
‘Jesus Christ!’ the man laughed out loud, ‘what are you going on about? I don’t even know who he is. What in heaven’s name do you think I am? I only wrote letters, silly letters, for God’s sake!’
Abruptly, Colin Norris stood up as if to stop any further questioning.
‘Have you got a car, Mr Norris?’ Alice rose beside him, maintaining eye contact.
‘Yes, a white Vauxhall Corsa. It’s parked in the square.’