I stood at the entrance to Edinburgh Sheriff Court; as the November winds belted me in the face, spring seemed a very long way off. The Fat Boy was gone, Kenny Cameron would have been safer being found guilty of the murder of his wife, and I felt responsible for the death of Renee Smith. I’d finished in court. I hadn’t the heart to do any of the trials, so I passed the cases to Eddie and Louisa; given the mood that I was in, the clients were better off in their hands. I turned right along Chambers Street and walked into the wind towards George IV Bridge. Joe had offered me another motorbike, but I didn’t want it.

Lost in my own thoughts, I didn’t hear the footsteps until they were upon me; a hand on my shoulder jerked me back to full awareness. Patsy Barnes stood at my shoulder, smiling ingratiatingly. She now knew who Graham Marshall was and she had no intention of letting the scoop of the century slip through her fingers. No doubt she saw a true crime book in it; this was her ticket to a bit of fast cash.

‘Can you spare five minutes?’ she said, her eyes pleading with me. I stuck my chin down into my black wool coat to protect my face, eyeing her suspiciously. ‘Quick coffee? Please?’

The café was busy and I wondered about the other people around us, what their stories were. To an outsider my life was wonderful. I was successful and earned good money, but no one seemed to notice that I worked 24/7 for my salary. My working conditions were the dives of Edinburgh, there wasn’t a skanky high-rise flat in the city that I hadn’t been in, or a drug addict or dealer I didn’t know by name. I took out my BlackBerry and scrolled down for messages while Patsy ordered. There were twenty-four pleas for help. If Patsy Barnes wanted a view inside my life then I was just in the mood to give it to her, but only after the caffeine and calories.

‘You seem tense, Brodie–is anything wrong in Dr Marshall’s case?’ she asked, obviously leading straight to what she was interested in. Of course she would only be interested in the headline grabber, but my job meant that sometimes I felt more like a social worker than a lawyer. ‘No, the Marshall case is going according to plan, better than I could have hoped actually.’ I stared down at the messages again. ‘Remember when we met I had just got a not-guilty verdict for Kenny Cameron?’

Her face lit up as she recalled the landmark case. ‘It was a great result,’ she said.