‘Because you’re a—’

A click and Chalmers’s voice came on the line. ‘You’ve reached Lorna Chalmers. I can’t come to the phone right now, but you can leave a message after the beep.’

‘This is DI McRae. When we discussed you joining the soup-kitchen team, I don’t remember saying anything about you having the morning off afterwards! Get your arse into the station now, Sergeant.’ He hung up.

Rennie whistled. ‘Oooh, someone’s in trouble.’

‘Don’t be a dick.’

That just got him a grin.

The number seventeen hissed to a halt, indicator blinking as a couple of middle-aged ladies dressed like oversexed teenagers clambered onboard.

A nasal Doric accent crackled out of the pool car’s radio. ‘Charlie Six, from Control, over? ’

Rennie flipped the switch. ‘Morning, Jimmy.’

‘Aye-aye, loon, you got DI McRae with you? ’

He looked across the car and mouthed the words, ‘Are you here? ’

Idiot.

Logan stuck his phone back in his pocket. ‘What do you want, Jimmy? ’

‘We’ve had a wee call from someone says they know who your clay-head thingy is.’

He grabbed his notebook. ‘You got an address? ’

Rennie sniffed, wrinkled his nose, then did a slow three-sixty. ‘Smells like someone’s burning old nappies.’

The house was on the end of a row of three terraced cottages, all huddled together at the edge of a patch of woodland on the Kemnay Road. Bennachie was just visible through jagged pine-tree branches, the shadows beneath them dark and deep. Throw in a gingerbread house and Hansel and Gretel would have flashbacks.

Cottages one and two bore satellite dishes and maintenance-free swathes of gravel where front gardens should have been, but number three was a riot of colour – flowers and shrubs and herbs laid out in intricate patterns around a winding bark path.

Logan opened the heavy wooden gate and stepped onto scrunchy chips of brown, surrounded by tall spiky leaves. Should’ve brought some breadcrumbs to scatter behind him. . .

Rennie stuck his hands in his pockets and meandered after him, stopping to sniff the flowers along the way.

The doorbell sounded deep inside the house, a faint diiiiiing-donnnnnng just audible through the wooden front door.

A bee bumbled from one purple foxglove to the next. A pigeon cooed. Rennie rocked on his heels.

Logan tried the bell again. ‘You sure they know we’re coming? ’

‘Yup.’

Two minutes later, the door creaked open and a pale lined face peered up at them, eyes squinted almost shut. She couldn’t have been an inch over four foot five, grey hair up in a lopsided bun, neck like a deformed sock puppet. She smiled, showing off perfect rectangular white teeth. You could’ve stood on her Teuchter accent, it was that thick: ‘Can I help you? ’

Logan checked his notes. ‘Miss Mary Gray?’

The squint got even more pronounced. ‘Are you the man from the council? ’

‘Police. You called about a facial reconstruction? ’