St Johnstone suffered their second successive Scottish Premiership defeat at the Tulloch Caledonian Stadium.
Tommy Wright’s men fell two down within the space of six second half minutes but were able to set up a nervy finish for the Highlanders thanks to a Brian Graham goal.
Inverness had most of the first half pressure, but the Saints outfield players did a decent job of making sure Alan Mannus wasn’t too busy.
Chris Millar and Frazer Wright both perfectly timed blocks on shots from Graeme Shinnie and Marley Watkins respectively.
And there were a couple of Greg Tansey free-kicks, but that was about it.
It has to be said that, for their part, the Perth men posed even less of a first half threat.
The nearest they came to scoring was a Simon Lappin corner that Dean Brill struggled to deal with.
Saints enjoyed their best spell of the match after the break, and Graham and Gary McDonald just failed to connect with a David Wotherspoon cross from the right.
Against the run of play at that time though, Caley Thistle got their first goal on the hour mark.
Saints pushed their defensive line high but failed to catch Aaron Doran offside when Watkins played him through, and Watkins then got the ball back and struck it low past Mannus.
Just six minutes later it was 2-0 when Ryan Christie’s 20-yard angled shot found the bottom left hand corner of Mannus’s net. The Northern Irishman got a hand to it but the shot was a well struck one.
There was a lifeline for Saints on 78 minutes when Graham buried a glancing header from a Chris Millar cross to reduce the deficit back to just one.
And then, there was the welcome sight of Murray Davidson making his reappearance after eight months out of the first team through injury.
It was all Saints in the last few minutes, and Adam Morgan came close with a long range shot and Wright with a header from a corner.
But the home team survived the late pressure to emerge victorious.