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immaculately manicured.
    ‘Thank you.’ Fin’s response was mechanical.
    ‘Sit down.’ Smith spent more time looking at his papers than at Fin as he spoke. ‘I’ve got thirteen CID, including the local boys, and twenty-seven uniforms working on this. There’s more than forty officers on the island I can count on.’ He looked up. ‘I’m not sure why I need you.’
    ‘I didn’t exactly volunteer, sir.’
    ‘No, you were volunteered by HOLMES. It certainly wasn’t my idea.’ He paused. ‘This murder in Edinburgh. Do you have any suspects?’
    ‘No, sir.’
    ‘After three months?’
    ‘I’ve been on leave for the last four weeks.’
    ‘Aye. Right.’ He appeared to lose interest, and returned again to his paperwork. ‘So what grand illumination is it you think you’ll be able to cast on our little investigation here?’
    ‘I’ve no idea, sir, until I’ve been briefed.’
    ‘It’s all in the computer.’
    ‘I have a suggestion, though.’
    ‘Oh, do you?’ Smith looked up sceptically. ‘And what might that be?’
    ‘If the post-mortem hasn’t been carried out yet, it might be an idea to bring in the pathologist who did the PM on the Edinburgh murder. So we’ll have a first-hand comparison.’
    ‘Great idea, Macleod. Which is probably why I already had it.’ Smith leaned back in his chair, his self-satisfaction almost as overpowering as his aftershave. ‘Professor Wilson arrived on the last flight yesterday.’ He checked his watch. ‘PM should be starting in about half an hour.’
    ‘You’re not flying the body to Aberdeen, then?’
    ‘The facilities are good enough here. So we brought the mountain to Mohammed.’
    ‘What would you like me to do?’
    ‘Frankly, DI Macleod, nothing. I’ve got a perfectly good team here that’s quite capable of running this inquiry without your help.’ He sighed in deep frustration. ‘But HOLMES seems to think you might be able to say whether or not there’s a connection with the Leith Walk murder. And God forbid we shouldn’t do what HOLMES tells us. So why don’t you sit in on the postmortem, take a look at the parallel evidence, and if you come up with anything we’ll give it a gander. Okay?’
    ‘I wouldn’t mind casting an eye over the crime scene.’
    ‘Feel free. Detective Sergeant Gunn can give you the tour. The local boys aren’t really equipped to be of much use to us anyway. Except as dogsbodies.’ His contempt for everyone outside of his own team, including Fin, was clear.
    ‘And I’ll want to take a look at the files.’ Fin was pushing his luck. ‘Maybe talk to some of the witnesses. Suspects, if there are any.’
    Smith pursed his lips and gave Fin a long, hard look. ‘I can’t stop you doing that, Macleod. But you might as well know that I expect to have this whole thing wrapped up in a matter of days. And just so you’re not under any illusion, I don’t believe there is an Edinburgh connection.’
    ‘Why’s that?’
    ‘Call it instinct. People here aren’t very sophisticated.’ He smirked. ‘Well, you’d know that.’ He was tapping his pencil on his desk now, irritated by having to explain himself to a junior officer from another force. ‘I think this is a crude copycat killing. There were plenty of details published in the papers at the time. I think the killer’s a local man with a grudge trying to cover his tracks, trying to make us look somewhere else. So I’m going to shortcut the whole process.’ Fin resisted the temptation to smile. He knew all about shortcuts. He’d learned very early in life that they could lead you off on tangents. But DCI Smith was not privy to such wisdom. He said, ‘Unless the PM throws up something unexpected, I’m going to take DNA samples from every adult male in Crobost, as well as any additional suspects we might come up with. I figure a couple of hundred at the most. Economy of scale. A whole hell of a lot cheaper than a long-running investigation tying up officers in