“My girlfriend, Inspector, she suggested a holiday and, well, you know how it is. . . .”

“You’re going to fix a ticket?” asked Lewis as Gorrie punched in the number for Ms. Burns’s mobile phone.

“I was hoping you would,” said Gorrie.

The phone was off-line. Gorrie left a message, then dialed the hotel next. He had the clerk ring the room, but received no answer.

The plant manager at Cromarty Firth had emphasized how safe transporting spent uranium was. Gorrie decided to drive over to the plant and find out why the matter had been on his mind.

Caught unawares, reception took a few minutes to find a suitable minder to escort DI Gorrie to Horace’s office. When he arrived, he noted that the pile of papers had grown a bit, as had the smell of furniture polish. Horace himself remained unchanged, not quite dismissive, yet not what one might call polite either.

“I can’t recall Ewie Cameron calling me. You can check the diary with my secretary,” Horace told him. He held a fountain pen in his hand, and every time he answered a question he glanced down at the paper at the top of his desk, applying another check.

“Perhaps I will do that,” said Gorrie.

“Mackay called him concerning the plant?”

“I didnae know that he did.”

“He didn’t bring anything to me,” said Horace. “No problem was reported.”

Gorrie nodded. There might be many reasons Mackay wouldn’t talk to Horace about a problem, starting with the fact that he thought Horace was involved.

“I might talk to your secretary then, and Mackay’s,” said Gorrie.

“Please,” said Horace, who now put his head down practically onto the desk, checking off a succession of blanks on the paper in a wild flurry.

The secretary had not recorded any meeting with Mackay during the week before his death, and according to the records they hadn’t spoken outside of regular staff meetings since he had come on. Gorrie formed no judgment of that, just as he did not hold Tora Grant’s frown against her when he appeared at her doorway. Mackay had not been replaced and she was obviously overworked trying to help handle some of the paperwork. Gorrie’s first request—for a roster of the department—was met with an even deeper frown.

“Addie at Personnel,” she said, digging her fingernails into her folded arms.

Gorrie nodded. “Miss Grant, what is the procedure for removing waste from the reactor?”

“I’m sure I wouldn’t know all the steps. The procedure—you’d have to talk to the men. It’s not like taking out the trash, Inspector. Spent fuel has to be carefully handled. The regulations are enormous. It has to be cooled in one of the ponds near the reactor. The spent rods stay quite long—years.”

“Had there been a removal since Mr. Mackay arrived?”