‘Just saying.’ She unravelled the end of the tape and tied it around the trunk of a big beech.

‘And you should have seen it when the chicken factory was right behind us.’

A pair of magpies swooped down, landing on the pool car, hopping on the bonnet, heads cocked to one side, watching as Sim picked her way through the trees that ran behind the caravan, twisting the tape around trunks and branches. Then out around a bush, then another tree, then the caravan next door, until she had a wobbly-sided rhomboid. ‘Should we not have a whole team or something? ’

‘Don’t want this splashed all over the Aberdeen Examiner tomorrow morning. Low-key.’

‘Smart thinking.’ She smiled at him. ‘And the cordon of blue-and-white, with the word “Police” written all over it, isn’t going to be a giveaway at all.’

The magpie cackled from the bonnet of the pool car.

‘Just. . . Shut up and put your suit on.’

‘Yes, Guv.’

Logan stood, hands in the small of his back, trying to stretch the knots out. The white Tyvek SOC suit let a little puff of broiling-hot air out of the elasticated hood, sweat trickling down his sides. Should’ve stripped off before putting the damn thing on.

PC Sim was on her knees in the bushes behind the caravan, picking her way slowly through the twigs and leaves. Singing a medley of show tunes to herself, the words all muffled by her facemask. Then she sat back, mid-song, and stared at something in her hand.

Logan slouched his way over, blue plastic bootees scuffing on the tarmac. ‘Find one? ’

‘This them? ’ She held up a small knot of bones, but didn’t hand it over. It was held together with a blue ribbon: that would be the one he’d chucked away on Saturday evening.

‘That’s them.’

Sim pulled an evidence bag from the box beside her, dropped the bones inside, then sealed it up and scribbled the details down on the form printed into the plastic. ‘So there’s this one, the broken bits from the ivy, and the ones from the kitchen bin. That it? ’

Logan shrugged. ‘Should be another couple around here. . . There were more, but I chucked them out. The scaffies did the rubbish collection last week.’

‘That’s a shame, I’d have loved to go rummaging through a communal wheely-bin full of other people’s mouldy poop.’

‘Poop? ’

‘Poop.’

Sim rocked from side to side, as if she was on some sort of dodgy exercise video. Sweat your way thin in a Tyvek SOC suit. ‘I give up.’

Logan sank down onto the top step, back resting against the caravan door. Cool sweat made a clammy hand of his shirt, gripping his spine. ‘There were at least three more sets.’

‘And you chucked them all in the bushes? ’

‘I think so. Maybe. . .’