‘God, she was a complete nightmare.’ Zander slouched in his seat, arms draped along the back of the row. The viewing room wasn’t huge – just big enough for fifty or sixty cinema seats arranged in half a dozen rows. A ceiling-mounted projector flickered images onto the screen at the front of the room, where a handful of people murmured down the front, spinning back and forward through footage of people in frocks shouting at one another.

Logan settled into a seat a couple down from the director. ‘So she tried to break in? ’

‘Not to begin with, no.’ A shudder set his jowls wobbling. ‘She was so sweet at the beginning: wanted to study film at Glasgow University, was a huge fan of the books, could we give her a job as a runner so she could get some industry experience? ’

‘According to her dad, she was going to Aberdeen Uni to do accountancy.’

‘She was OK at the start – did what she was told, always showed up on time, and her knowledge of the books was just . . . encyclopaedic. Every time the writer had a problem she’d be right there, polishing his ego and keeping him happy. Even came up with some great local PR exercises: competitions in the papers, cast and crew helping out at a soup kitchen, guided tours of the set for some primary school, dramatizing a real witchcraft trial from the fifteen-hundreds. . .’ Zander sighed. ‘Then everything changed: she started arguing with the designers and the chippies and the painters about the sets not being exactly like the book. Then she had a go at the script team for making changes to the story and the dialogue – as if it’d even be possible to do the book line-for-line on the screen.’

DCI Steel slumped into the row of seats in front of Logan, clutching a wax-paper cup in one hand and a Danish pastry in the other. ‘Can’t believe there’s no shagging. . .’

‘Every time she did it I’d sit her down, and we’d have a talk, and she’d apologize and promise she’d do better, and beg for another chance. And like the big softy I am, I’d agree.’

‘Have you no’ got any archive footage or something we could look at? You know, for old time’s sake? ’

‘But in the end, she was haranguing the actors about how they were interpreting the characters, or speaking their lines, and I had to ask her to leave.’

Steel peeled the plastic lid off her cup and dark bitter tendrils of coffee coiled out into the cinema. ‘Doesn’t even have to be that hardcore, just a bit of girl-on-girl slippery. . . What? ’

Logan glared at her. ‘Could you give your libido a rest for five minutes? You can download some porn when you get home, OK? ’