Sunlight glinted off the roadworks on the other side of the street, a deep hole in the patchwork tarmac ringed around with orange cones and barrier tape.

Justice Mill Lane bustled with cars, taxis and drunken half-wits. A pair of girlies were bent over their friend, at the kerb, outside the nightclub next door, one holding her hair the other stroking her shoulders as she vomited in the gutter. Her short skirt was tucked into her knickers at the back. Classy.

A pack of greasy-looking young men laughed like hyenas outside the slab-faced communist-styled lump of a building that used to be the local swimming pool, trying to get one of their number to wear a stolen traffic cone as a wizard’s hat. Someone in the distance roared out the words to ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ as if it was a battle cry.

Eight o’clock on a Monday evening. . .

Logan hunched his shoulders against the noise and pressed the phone hard against his ear. ‘What body? ’

‘OK, OK. . .’ There was a deep breath. ‘Kintore. Neighbours complained about the smell, so the local station sent round a uniform. There’s a body in the kitchen and blood . . . everywhere.’

‘Has the—’

‘I can’t cock this up! I’ve never dealt with something like this on my own. What? What do I do? ’

O’Donoghue’s door clunked open and Chalmers appeared.

DCI Steel was right behind her, blinking into the sunshine. ‘What’s this about a body? ’

‘Will you shut up? ’

‘I’m sorry, I’ll shut up. Just tell me what to do!’

‘Not you.’

Steel stuck her chin out. ‘Don’t you tell me to shut up!’

He turned his back on her. ‘Get your notebook out. I need you to call Control and tell them you’re confirming it’s a suspicious death. Tell them you need a crime scene manager, the PF, the pathologist, the IB, and enough bodies to search the place and get door-to-doors started.’

‘I can do this. . . I can do this. . .’

‘And get the scene secured – you know the drill: no one in or out. Now give me the address and I’ll be there as soon as I can.’

Steel poked him in the chest with a yellowed finger. The words floated out on a tide of whisky fumes: ‘We’ll be there. Head of CID, remember? ’

Chapter 21

21

Blue-and-white ‘POLICE’ tape stretched across the driveway, tied to a For Sale sign driven into the lawn on one side and next-door’s cheery garden gnome on the other. Not exactly impenetrable, but better than nothing.

Bees hummed in the syrupy summer air, thick with the Turkish-delight smell of honeysuckle and roses. A nice street, in one of the older bits of Kintore, only a handful of eighties bungalows breaking up the solid granite cottages and terraced houses. The clacking diesel growl of a train going past behind the property on the way out to Inverurie.