The mother’s hair may well have been the same colour once, but it was now a nut-brown, with a line of grey at the roots where the dye-job had begun to grow out. Like with the kids, it was hard to pin her age down with any real accuracy, but Logan would put her in her mid-forties.

She was on the heavier side, and the way she’d fallen had caused one of her breasts to slip out of the vest top she wore beneath the dressing gown. It hung sideways so it was touching the floor and partially squashed beneath her armpit.

Logan didn’t know the woman, but he wanted to cover her up. To save her this final indignity.

But, he couldn’t give her that. Not yet. Not until she’d been measured, and pored over, and photographed from every conceivable angle. Not until a dozen or more strangers had been in and seen her lying there in all her shame and glory.

He muttered a near-silent apology, and turned his attention to the fourth victim. Male. A good bit older. Balding and grey, with a paunch of a stomach and a Rolodex of extra chins. Although, to be fair to him, the angle of his head probably wasn’t doing him any favours on that front.

Something about the man’s face stopped Logan in his tracks. There was something familiar about him, like he’d met him somewhere before.

He kept his distance, but squatted down to give himself a better viewing angle. The tape across his mouth and his wide-eyed look of terror were conspiring to make it difficult to identify him, but recognition was nagging away at the DCI. He knew this man. He knew him. He did.

The front door opened, just as something in Logan’s brain went click.

“Jesus!” he ejected, standing up.

“Not quite,” said a voice at Logan’s back. It was not the nasal tone of Geoff Palmer, which he’d been bracing himself for, but an Irish twang that came miraculously close to bringing a smile to his face, despite the circumstances. “Although, sure, I bet I’d look deadly in a crown of thorns.”

Logan pointed down at the man on the floor as the pathologist, Shona Maguire, stepped up beside him. He felt her tense and heard her give a little gasp—a rare reaction from a woman for whom death was just another day at the office.

“You OK?” he asked her.

Shona swallowed something down, then gave a single nod. “Fine. You?”

“Had better mornings,” Logan said.

“You know who did it yet?”

“Still working on it,” Logan said. “Expecting a breakthrough any moment.”

“Good to know. Probably don’t need me, then.”

“No, but since you’re here, you might as well have a look.”