Also, why did Ellie think he required more energy?

There were compensations, however. From his experience of being in public spaces, he was wont to spend far too much time scanning for faces he recognized from the Glasgow criminal underworld, usually identifying at least one. Happily, he was yet to spot anyone in that category during his early-morning workouts, although there were some very attractive ladies also pumping iron.

McNab hadn’t mentioned the eye candy to Ellie because, let’s face it, he had no intention of following up on any of it. Still, their presence did, if he was honest, urge him to work harder when he was there.

The after-workout swim followed by a hot shower was then enhanced by two double espressos from the machine in the cafe, and he was ready for the day. Hence he’d arrived bright and sparkly at the station this morning, which was causing the desk sergeant to crease his brows in consternation.

‘I’m not sure I like this version of you,’ he said.

‘You can’t please everyone all of the time,’ was McNab’s retort. ‘What’s happening?’

The sergeant continued to scan McNab as though he were a fake version of himself.

‘A lot. Dr MacLeod unearthed a body on moorland south of Glasgow.’

Whatever he’d expected in today’s news, it hadn’t been that.

‘Is it anyone we’re looking for?’ McNab said, immediately thinking of the current status of organized crime in the city.

‘Strategy meeting on it shortly. Best go up there and find out.’

McNab took a detour past his desk to check if his partner, DS Clark, was about. Janice was seated in front of her computer, staring at something she obviously found interesting.

McNab took a look over her shoulder to discover it was an article about bog bodies with a gruesome photograph of a twisted, blackened corpse lying in a grave.

‘You’ve heard, then,’ she said, catching sight of McNab and sitting back to give him a better view.

‘If it’s one as old as that,’ McNab said, ‘then we’re not involved. No one left alive to jail for it.’

Janice gave him one of her withering looks, of which there were a multitude to choose from.

‘Word is there was a plastic bag under the head. So a little nearer our time,’ she told him.

‘Mmmm. A time-frame clue. No longer available once we ban all plastic bags in this brave new green world.’

By the look on Janice’s face, his attempt at humour wasn’t welcome in the circumstances, which might suggest she already knew more about this than he did, a thought McNab wasn’t comfortable with.

‘Let’s go,’ he said.

The room was already busy, most of the assembled audience studying the visuals of the excavation site. McNab was a little taken aback by the images of the body. Although it was a similar colour to the one on Janice’s screen, that was, to his mind, where the similarity ended.

The child-size body wasn’t twisted into a weird shape like the bog man, but had been laid out on its back, with the head placed on what had to be a makeshift plastic bag pillow. A pillow that was revealed in other images to have contained clothes.