‘It’s my fuckin’ flat. You can’t tell me I’m not allowed to go in!’

A woman pushed between two officers, tripping on a tech bag and literally falling into the lounge.

Ava and Callanach both lurched forwards in an effort to shield the woman from the charred body on the floor, but too late. She was screaming before Ava could reach out a hand to her. Ailsa grabbed a sterile sheet from a quick-thinking SOCO and covered Osaki Shozo’s shocking state.

‘Oh my God!’ she screeched. ‘Osaki? Oh! Holy fuck, that can’t be real. What happened to my husband?’

A man burst through, all bulging biceps and amateur tattoos.

‘Kylie? Let me see my girlfriend!’ he shouted into the face of the uniformed officer attempting unsuccessfully to restrain him.

‘It’s a crime scene,’ Ailsa sighed softly in Ava’s direction.

‘Everyone out except SOCOs,’ Ava shouted. ‘Ma’am, I appreciate you’re distressed. We’re going to move you to somewhere we can talk.’

She nodded to the team of officers, who were now crowded at the flat entrance, suddenly in the vicinity, having been nowhere useful when the entrance to the flat should have been under guard. It took three of them to remove the posturing male, and another two to get the sobbing woman to her feet and out into the corridor.

‘If that’s the wife, then why is another man calling her his girlfriend?’ Callanach asked Ava.

‘Maybe the marriage was part of a cash-for-immigration-papers deal,’ Ava offered.

‘Perhaps, but her reaction was more personal than professional. If that was a business deal, she’d have been off the hook with a dead pseudo-husband and free to offer her services elsewhere.’

‘Could you two continue this outside, do you think?’ Ailsa cut in. ‘We now have additional scene processing to undertake and it’s time we made the deceased more comfortable.’

Ava and Callanach obliged. They found the woman in a police van outside the entrance to the flat. Her boyfriend – the need to follow proper procedure having finally occurred to the uniformed officers – was being held separately. Ava introduced herself and asked the woman’s name.

‘Kylie Shozo,’ she sniffed, accepting the bundle of tissues being offered by a policewoman.

‘Can you confirm who the deceased is?’

‘That’s my husband, Osaki. What in the name of Christ happened to him?’ She blew her nose noisily and dropped the tissues to the floor of the van.

‘Osaki Shozo?’ Ava clarified.

‘Obviously,’ Kylie replied with an open-mouthed frown. ‘Was it an accident?’

‘That seems unlikely, I’m afraid. When did you last see your husband?’

‘He was here this morning when we left. Everything was normal. Who did that to him?’

‘We don’t know yet. I was hoping you might be able to tell us if your husband was in any trouble or had enemies?’