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cover up for McNab or McNab to protect his superior officer. The victim of the assault, known as the Gravedigger, had a vested interest in implicating Bill, which is what he had done.
    The Gravedigger’s clothes had been removed and bagged after the alleged assault. There had been no blood, only bruising, the result of a well aimed kick to the testicles. Despite the awkwardness of the situation, the duty officer had quietly insisted that both policemen give up their shoes. And thank God he had.
    At first glance the trousers had shown no evidence of the kick, but an electrostatic image using an aluminium sheet had lifted dust marks invisible to the human eye. The pattern route had been singularly unsuccessful, the partial print an inconclusive match to either man’s shoes. It was her analysis of the dust particles that had pointed to the truth.
    McNab had been in the back of the Gravedigger’s van. Bill had not. McNab had kicked aside rubbish to get at what lay beneath, and he had deposited some of that rubbish on the Gravedigger’s crotch. Microscopic, but without doubt a match. DI Wilson had not kicked the Gravedigger, however much he might have wanted to. McNab had told the truth all along.
    A rush of emotion swept over her. McNab had been desperate to prove that his boss wasn’t guilty of assault. So desperate that many believed he had lied to keep the DI out of trouble, even to the point of ruining his own career.
    There were no shadows in the pristine glare of the laboratory, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t sense McNab’s presence. She glanced up at the door, remembering the way he would always knock before entering her domain; his studied look, the way his mouth would turn up at the corner as he observed her at work. She remembered the last time he’d been here. It was the morning after she’d used him to fill the frightened loneliness of her night. He had replaced bad dreams and memories with something gentle and loving. The next day when he’d turned up here, she had been curt, extinguishing the thinly disguised glimmer of hope. She had told him as far as she was concerned it had never happened. ‘Whatever you want,’ had been his reply, but she had felt his hurt.
    She shook her head to dispel such thoughts and slipped the results back in the folder. She couldn’t bring McNab back to life, but she had done her best to prove his story true. She glanced at the clock. There would be no word back from the court for another hour at least, and she had a post-mortem to attend.
    The victim’s body was regarded as a scene which must be as thoroughly investigated as the locus of the crime. The attending team in Scotland consisted of two pathologists, the investigating officer, on occasion the Procurator Fiscal, and herself.
    When Rhona arrived, DI Slater was already kitted up and waiting to go in. His eyes above the mask regarded her coolly. Slater was used to post-mortems and she had no doubt he would be unfazed by the gruesome nature of this death. For some reason that irritated her. You had to have a certain amount of detachment in this job, if only to survive, but Slater’s attitude smacked of cold disinterest. She had seen it in the last case they’d worked on together. His preoccupation with nailing a high profile Russian gangster with kudos attached had seriously endangered the life of a child. McNab had been the real detective then. Like a terrier he had dug away at the decade-old evidence, never giving up, even when Slater had ordered him to. For Slater, McNab had been a nuisance, despite the eventual proof that the DS’s intuition had been right all along.
    All of which illustrated Slater’s real problem. He didn’t listen, regardless of the quality of the team he had around him.
    Slater appeared to be contemplating a remark, no doubt about the imminent court case, then apparently thought better of it. Rhona busied herself donning the suit and mask. As far as she was concerned, they had nothing