Monday morning, Ellen Wylie was back at her own desk in what everyone in the force referred to as ‘West End’, meaning the police station on Torphichen Street. Her reasoning was that it would be easier to get work done there, space not exactly being at a premium. A couple of weekend stabbings, one mugging, three domestics and an arson … these were keeping her colleagues busy. When they passed her, they asked about the Balfour case. She was waiting for Reynolds and Shug Davidson in particular – the pair forming a fearsome double act – to say something about her TV appearance, but they didn’t. Maybe they were taking pity on the afflicted; most likely they were just showing solidarity. Even in a city as small as Edinburgh, rivalries existed between stations. If the Balfour investigation shat on DS Ellen Wylie, it was in effect dumping on West End.

‘Reassigned?’ Shug Davidson guessed.

She shook her head. ‘I’m following a lead. It’s as easy to do it here as there.’

‘Ah, but here you’re a long way away from the glamour chase.’

‘The what?’

He smiled. ‘The big picture, the juicy inquiry, the centre of everything.’

‘I’m at the centre of the West End,’ she told him. ‘That’s good enough for me.’ Earned herself a wink from Davidson and a round of applause from Reynolds. She smiled: she was back home.

It had niggled at her all weekend: the way she’d been sidelined – bumped from liaison and dropped off at the twilight zone in which DI John Rebus worked. And from there to this – a tourist’s suicide from years back – seemed yet another snub.

So she’d come to a decision: if they didn’t want her, she didn’t need them. Welcome back to the West End. She’d picked up all her notes on the way in. They sat on her desk, a desk she didn’t need to share with half a dozen other bodies. The telephone wasn’t going constantly, Bill Pryde flapping past with his clipboard and nicotine chewing-gum. She felt safe here, and here she could safely reach the conclusion that she was on another wild-goose chase.

Now all she had to do was prove it to Gill Templer’s satisfaction.

She was off to a flyer. She’d called the police station in Fort William and spoken to a very helpful sergeant called Donald Maclay, who remembered the case well.

‘The upper slope of Ben Dorchory,’ he told her. ‘The body had been there a couple of months. It’s a remote spot. A ghillie happened on the scene; could have lain there years otherwise. We followed procedure. Nothing in the way of ID on the body. Nothing in the pockets.’

‘Not even any money?’

‘We didn’t find any. Labels on the jacket, shirt and suchlike didn’t tell us anything. Talked to the B and Bs and hotels, checked the missing persons records.’

‘What about the gun?’

‘What about it?’

‘Did you get any prints?’