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"My dogs were better fed than some of the bairns running in the streets," Mr Shand says.

In their two league meetings last season, the bairns from Gorgie came out on top.

"If I hadn't seen the pictures of the bairns, I wouldn't be sitting with you now, and I just looked at them and thought, 'God, I can't leave them bairns'," she says.

"If the police had done their jobs in the first place and Nikki had got justice I might have had some kind of life with my bairns and grandbairns," she said.

He recalled that officers met a woman in the street in a "distressed state" who cried out "Oh God! It's the bairn, they've found the bairn" at about 10:30 on 8 October.