Logan shot a glance back at the doors, like he thought he might catch Ricketts peering through the narrow gap where they didn’t quite meet in the middle. “I tell you, if we ever get victims turning up with all the blood drained out of them via two wee holes in their neck, I know whose door I’m knocking on first.”

He saw the four sheets that covered the four mounds—each one smaller than the one before—and he fell silent. Despite the chill of the refrigerated air, he felt stiflingly warm, and gave a tug on his tie to loosen it further than it already was, in the hope it cooled him down.

“OK, so the good news,” Shona began, with a faux enthusiasm that fooled neither Logan nor herself. “Three-quarters of them didn’t suffer. Not physically, at least. Not for long. They were all stabbed in the right ventricle. Directly. Bang on, every time.”

“That’s unusual?”

“Very. They’d have passed out almost immediately, and brain death would’ve occurred in maybe three to five minutes. But the accuracy, though… That’s the impressive part.”

“What about the other stab wounds?” Logan asked. “There were a fair few of them. Sure the direct hit wasn’t just luck?”

Shona shook her head. “I think the other wounds were done after, probably to hide the fact they knew what they were doing. On everyone but the male, at least. His was different. I think—and Geoff might be able to shed some more insight on this with blood splatter—but I think that he was stabbed around the rest of the chest first, then the heart last. Like whoever did it wanted to hurt him. Make him suffer for a while.”

“So, it could have been a personal grudge, rather than a random attack?”

“I’ll let you be the one to figure out the motive,” Shona said. “But the wounds were certainly inflicted in a different pattern, there were far more of them, and they were done with more force, so go ahead and make of that what you will.”

Logan filed the information away, then moved on through his list of questions. “How accurate can you be on time of death?”

“I can tell you it wasn’t within the last thirty-six hours,” Shona replied. “Rigor mortis has gone, and there are some early signs of bloating, so I’d say we’re looking at three days. Stomach contents show the last meal they ate was fairly substantial, so if you want my opinion—and you do, obviously—I’d put time of death at between…” Her lips moved as she counted below her breath. “…seven o’clock and eleven o’clock on Thursday evening.”