More typing. Then a little swearing. Then some rustling. And finally Hay came back on the line. ‘I knew it sounded familiar: Nicholas Alexander Balfour was a Victorian spiritualist and medium. He performed séances all over the UK, even did one for Victor Hugo on Jersey in 1853. Balfour was strangled in Inverurie by a widower called Sandy Hugh. Hugh thought his dead wife was going to appear to Balfour and reveal that he’d poisoned her.’

And then, over a hundred and twenty years later, Agnes Garfield came along and dug up Balfour’s bones. Which made sense – after all, she’d arranged nearly all of her last skeleton on Logan’s roof, she’d need to get another one from somewhere.

‘Thanks.’ Logan hung up, and almost got his phone back in his pocket before it started ringing again. ‘Oh . . . bugger off.’ He answered it anyway. ‘Hello? ’

A wet gravelly voice, half Aberdonian, half public school. Wee Hamish Mowat. ‘Ah, Logan, I have a favour to ask.’

Crap. . .

He held the phone against his chest. ‘Rennie: call Control and see if they’ve got anything out of Dr Marks yet.’

‘Yes, Guv.’ Rennie wandered off towards the car, poking away at his mobile phone, spiky blond hair glowing in a sliver of sunlight.

Logan waited until he was out of earshot. ‘Hamish.’

‘You see, it’s a rather delicate matter involving a group of foreign businessmen and a team of local entrepreneurs.’

‘The cannabis farms? ’

‘Have you ever read Darwin’s On the Origin of Species? ’

He rested back against one of the church’s remaining walls. ‘We found another Oriental victim this morning. Someone took a hammer to his knees.’

‘The theory of evolution is an extremely elegant thing, don’t you think? I’m all for survival of the fittest, but sometimes competition for resources can get out of hand and that’s not good for the ecosystem. Everything gets out of balance.’

‘It’s the McLeod brothers, isn’t it? They’re the ones crippling all these Oriental men. What are they, moving in on their territory? ’

‘I don’t like to take sides in these things, Logan. It’s of no matter to me which species outcompetes the other as long as the ecosystem remains intact. And the longer this drags on for, the more damage is done.’ A pause. ‘Perhaps you wouldn’t mind giving evolution a helping hand? ’

The sliver of sunlight that had made Rennie’s hair glow like a novelty light bulb gave one last flash, then the clouds swallowed it. A single drop of rain burst on Logan’s arm. Then another.