Logan adjusted his safety goggles, zipped up his oversuit, and zwip-zwopped after her. The walkway clanged beneath his feet. The rancid barbecue smell got worse. And then they were there.

Christ. . .

His stomach lurched two steps to the right, then crashed back again. He swallowed, hard. Blinked. Cleared his throat. ‘What do we know? ’

‘Not much: victim’s male, we think.’ Another shrug. ‘He’s been chained to what looks like a section of that modular metal shelving stuff – the kind you get in your garage? Been hammered into the ground like a stake.’

The victim was kneeling on the hard-packed earth, his legs tucked under his bum. His bright-orange overalls were stained around the legs and waist, blackened across his chest and flecked with little glittering tears of vitrified rubber. Someone had forced his head and right arm through the middle of a tyre – so it sat across his body like a sash – then set fire to it. It was still burning: a small tongue of greasy flame licked up the side of the rubber.

The SEB tech groaned. ‘Bloody hell. . .’ She hauled a fire extinguisher from a blue plastic crate, pointed the nozzle, and squeezed the handle. A whoosh of white hid the poor bastard’s face from view for a moment, but when the CO2 cleared he appeared again in all his tortured glory.

His skin was swollen and blistered, scorched crimson; the eyes cooked to an opaque white; teeth bared, yellowed and cracked. Hair gone. Patches of skull and cheekbone poking through charred flesh. . .

Don’t be sick. Don’t be sick.

Logan cleared his throat. Looked out over the graveyard of burned-out cars. Deep breaths. The long corrugated metal roof of Thainstone Mart was just visible between the trees in the distance, what sounded like Tom Jones belting out ‘It’s not Unusual’ at a disco or corporate bash, dancing and boozing it up into the wee small hours. And when they were gone some poor sod would be up all night, clearing up all the spent party poppers and empty bottles before the next livestock auction.

The SEB tech thumped the fire extinguisher back into the crate. ‘It’s the rubber in the tyre – once it gets up to temperature it’s almost impossible to stop the damn thing from catching again.’

‘Get it off him.’

‘The tyre? ’ She gave a wee spluttering laugh. ‘Before the Ice Queen gets here? ’

‘Doctor Forsyth—’

‘Pukey Pete won’t even look at the poor sod.’ She sagged a bit. ‘Shame. It was nice having a pathologist you could actually talk to. . .’

Now the tyre wasn’t burning any more, other smells elbowed their way through Logan’s facemask: excrement, urine. He took a step back.

The tech nodded. ‘Stinks, doesn’t he? Mind you, if it was me – if someone did that to me? I’d shit myself too. Must’ve been terrified.’