Berry, Hawksmith, Shozo, he thought. All with a history of suicidal thoughts if not actual attempts. All now dead. Now Ava Turner was roaming the crowd at another potential suicide, watching not the actual events but the onlookers themselves. Waiting for someone to reveal themselves? Lance wanted to be wrong. To go home, write up his story – one with a happy ending – for his news blog. But he knew he wasn’t. Coincidences happened when you were holidaying on a different continent and you bumped into your best friend from junior school on an otherwise deserted beach. Coincidences and dead bodies, though, rarely – if ever – had anything to do with one another.

He started his engine and followed the ambulance at a respectful distance, making sure he wasn’t spotted. The police would no doubt be doing the same. He’d have to be careful not to make himself a suspect, but it was pretty obvious that the police thought they might catch a serial killer in the crowd. It was a story he couldn’t have walked away from if he’d wanted to.

Toying with the idea of calling Callanach for confirmation, he decided against it. His friend was supposed to be removing himself from active duty and the last thing Callanach needed was to have someone take advantage of his insider knowledge when he couldn’t be a part of the action. That was all right. Lance could wait and watch. A lifetime of journalism had made him patient.

The ambulance failed to head for the nearest hospital as Lance had expected, instead, after taking a circuitous route, opening its doors in Kimmerghame Drive. Janet Vargas – the name had popped up online in spite of the fact that Lance would have considered it improper to give identifying information – was escorted indoors by the two paramedics.

They must have made sure someone was at home to look after her, Lance thought. No psych evaluation. No prescription. Of course, it was possible Janet had all the medication she needed waiting for her in her flat, but that just begged the question: why hadn’t she taken it, or why it hadn’t worked? The seed of the story, already firmly planted in Lance’s mind, sprouted and did its best to reach for a light source. Too soon for that.

He identified a sufficiently inconspicuous parking space, checked his emergency car stash of drinks and packs of crisps – bugger the low-fat diet – and settled down to watch Janet Vargas’ building for no other reason than because that’s what his gut was telling him to do. In an hour or so, he’d wander in, grab one of the pieces of junk mail that would have been dropped on the floor somewhere and stick it under a door on the top floor. Give himself what looked like a reason for being inside while he got the lay of the land.