She frowned as she thought it over.

At twenty-five, Morag had had her uniform for just a year. At her last appraisal her sergeant’s most cutting comment had been about the way she refused to take responsibility on the ground. She was always too willing to pass the buck up the line, so he said.

She didn’t entirely agree. She thought reporting up the line was generally pretty responsible, in fact; information to support good decision-making had to be the key to any reasoned response. So she’d been trained, and so she believed.

But her sergeant was of an older school, toughened in the English inner city riots of the early 1980s, when the police were essentially at war with a hostile public. I remember my community policing training. A video shot through the back of a riot shield in Toxteth. My God, the looks on the faces of those yobs…

Her own presence, gliding through here in the marked police car, was having a visibly calming effect. Maybe a copper on the spot wouldn’t be a bad idea during the rush hour, later in the day. She deferred the decision.

In the meantime she had a more immediate problem: nowhere to park.

She was in luck. Ted Dundas was out in front of his house, prodding vigorously at a garden verge. When she pulled alongside she opened her window and leaned out.

Ted straightened up, leaned on his hoe and nodded. “Morag. Come to see me?”

“No such luck. But I need to get this beastie off the road. Can I—”

“Use the drive?” He dropped his hoe and, with an alacrity that belied his years and beer gut, he hopped over a low wall and opened the wrought-iron gate.

That was Ted for you: helpful without pressure or hassle. He’d been one of the most helpful elements in the station when she’d joined last year; she genuinely regretted his retirement from the force.

She briskly reversed the car into the drive. She climbed out, carrying her peaked cap.

On impulse, she looked east, towards Arthur’s Seat. The air was — odd. She thought she could smell ozone, like at the coast, or maybe before a storm But the clouds were high and thin. And the light above the Seat seemed strange Yellowish.

Morag reached out to lock her car As her fingers approached the handle, a blue spark leapt from her fingertips to the metal; there was a tiny snap, and her fingertips burned sharply. She snatched her hand back, involuntarily. “Shit.”

“Language, Constable,” Ted said. “I’ve been doing that all morning.”

“Storm weather, you think?”

“Maybe. What are you up to here?”

“A call from a Mrs Clark. Lost her cat. Insisted on a personal call.”

Ted nodded. “Two doors down. Ruth’s a widow. Be kind to her, Morag.”

“I will.” He calls her Ruth. Interesting. Gossip for the station canteen later.