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could they not have given this to someone else?’ Angus Cadwallader looked up, shuffling carefully off his knees and upright before helping his assistant do the same. Only when he was safely out of the culvert did he finally give McLean a quizzical raise of theeyebrow and add: ‘I thought you were in Aberdeen today. Christ, talk about timing.’
    ‘I was,’ McLean said, remembering the windswept cemetery as if it had been a lifetime ago. ‘So, what’s the score here?’
    Cadwallader pulled off his latex gloves and ran a hand over his wet hair. ‘It’s difficult to say much from where she is. Rain’s washed her down from somewhere upstream, I’m fairly sure. She’s also very clean. Not been in the water too long, though.’
    ‘Cause of death? Time of death?’
    ‘Ah, Tony. You always ask, and I always tell you I can’t say. Not now. It looks like she’s had her throat cut, but that might have been post-mortem. As to time, well, it’s cold here, and she’s been in the water. But unless she was kept on ice, I’d say somewhere between twelve and twenty-four hours. Thirty-six tops.’
    ‘What about bruising? Any ligature marks?’
    ‘She’s ten feet down in a concrete culvert that’s barely wide enough for the two of us, Tony. Let me get her back to the mortuary, then I’ll tell you what happened to the poor wee lass.’ Cadwallader put a damp hand on McLean’s shoulder. ‘We’re not going to find anything here.’
    ‘You’re right, Angus. I just. Well ...’ McLean tailed off, unsure what he wanted to say. He needed answers, but even he could tell he wasn’t going to get any here. ‘I guess you’d better get her out of there then.’
    Cadwallader nodded to one of the SOC officers, who scurried off to get help. They followed him back up through the gorse to the roadside, just in time for another squall of rain. The pathologist hurried to his car, Tracyleaping into the passenger seat without even bothering to remove her white overalls. McLean quickly got into the back seat.
    ‘It’s not the same, Tony,’ Cadwallader said. ‘This isn’t another Christmas Killer victim.’
    ‘You sure of that, Angus? It looks pretty close to me.’
    ‘I’ll get the PM scheduled as soon as possible, but you know what I mean. He’s been locked up since the start of the millennium. And now he’s dead. This is something else. Someone else.’
    McLean shivered, though whether it was the cold he couldn’t be certain. ‘I hope you’re right, Angus.’
    The lumpy beat of an engine at tick-over and a spiral of steam in the damp darkness gave away Sergeant Price’s position, sitting in the warmth of one of the squad cars. When McLean tapped on the misted-up windscreen, he wound it down with obvious reluctance.
    ‘It’s your lucky night,’ McLean said.
    ‘Aye?’
    ‘I want this road closed for a quarter mile either side of the crime scene. First light, a search team’s going to be back to go over the whole area, and I don’t want anyone to have disturbed it in my absence. OK?’
    ‘But my shift ends in an hour. I’ve got stuff to do—’
    ‘I don’t want to hear it, sergeant. This is a murder enquiry, so you’re good for the overtime. I’ll be back at dawn, and I’ll expect to see your smiling face here to greet me.’

9
    He wanders the streets in a daze, feet following the familiar path they know from when he was on the beat. The steady rhythm of leather on pavement helps to dull his mind, stop the feelings that threaten to overwhelm him at every turn. Thinking is too painful, so he marches instead.
    What brings him to this place? He doesn’t really know. There must be some reason, but teasing it out might dislodge something else. Better just to go with the flow. It’s a second-hand bookshop, smelling of dust and libraries. The aisles between the shelves are narrow, towering over him, lined with countless ranks of words. He runs his fingers over uneven spines as he walks towards the desk at the