‘Can’t do it, ma’am. They’ll know we were watching and word gets round here almost as fast as a dose of the clap.’

‘Jesus, Tripp, you’ve been spending way too much time with DS Lively,’ Ava muttered. ‘Fine. I want an ID made, though. I expect to see that bastard picked up on something in the next month. I don’t care if it’s just having insufficient tread on his tyres.’

‘Movement on the top floor, ma’am. Officers have let another person onto the roof.’

Ava turned on the speaker connected with Monroe’s wire.

‘Stay away from me,’ Janet Monroe sobbed, her voice wavering with emotion, her Latina accent more pronounced as she fought the wind to be heard.

‘Not a problem,’ a man replied.

‘Who was that? The voice is familiar,’ Ava said.

‘Looks like the counsellor’s arrived. Middle-aged, I reckon.’ Tripp scribbled notes as he spoke. ‘Edinburgh accent.’

‘I won’t come near you until you say I can. Please don’t think I’m here to make things worse. My name’s Charlie Packham. Can I ask yours?’

‘No point,’ Monroe replied.

Ava wished she wasn’t making quite such an authentic job of sounding desperate. She turned the volume down on their conversation.

‘I’ve met Packham. He works for Reach You with a specialisation in military counselling. Not afraid of being blunt, if memory serves, but he’ll have been fully vetted before being allowed to work in mental health units.’

‘We’ve traced the path through the system, which shows that emergency services sent paramedics who requested specialist assistance. The call goes out to whoever the duty agency is in the city and they send their closest counsellor. It seems random. I can run Charlie Packham’s name through the police database anyway to see if we get any red flags.’

‘Sure. No other faces we recognise in the crowd?’

‘Two, actually, but not in connection with this. Uniforms have identified one male who failed to attend court last week on a robbery charge and a woman who’s in breach of a probation order. They’ll both be followed and arrested later. Other than that, I’m surprised at just how much of a crowd has gathered. There must be two hundred people at the base of the building and that’s not considering how many are watching from the windows of adjacent blocks.

‘Here you go, results are in. Charlie Packham has no previous convictions, not even a driving charge. He’s completely clean. Google reports that he’s a former Marine who works for both Reach You and at the Royal Infirmary on an ad hoc basis.’