‘Take off your wet things, Geordie, and sit by the range. I’ll make you a hot drink after I call the coastguard.’

2

Rhona surveyed her cleared plate with satisfaction. Not much of a cook herself, she usually settled for a takeaway after work, especially if she’d been at a crime scene.

Once at a locus, she could be there for up to twelve hours, meticulously processing the victim and their immediate surroundings. That didn’t stop her getting hungry, of course, plus her forensic assistant Chrissy McInsh was famous for the size of her appetite. There had been plenty of times when a ‘starving’ Chrissy had felt the need to send a uniform off to the nearest chippy while still working a scene.

If Rhona arrived home hungry from a long day at the lab, she went straight for the menu cards in the kitchen and ordered whatever would arrive the quickest.

Not tonight, however.

Tonight she’d come home to the scent of slow-cooked venison in red wine with mushrooms, garlic, onions, carrots and potatoes prepared by the man opposite . . . Sean Maguire, the dark-haired, blue-eyed saxophonist who, although they weren’t actually living together, did on occasion both feed and bed her.

This evening the sex had come first.

Sean indicated her almost empty wine glass, offering to top it up. Rhona nodded as another blast of rain hit the kitchen window.

‘Jeez,’ Sean said, ‘that’s one serious wind.’

According to the radio update, Glasgow wasn’t in the direct line of the storm sweeping in from the Atlantic, although the forecaster did mention the great gale of ’68 when many of the tenement buildings, similar to Rhona’s, had had their roofs torn off by the strength of the wind.

On this occasion it seemed the worst of the storm was hitting Orkney, where gusts of over ninety miles an hour had been recorded. At this point, Rhona wondered how Magnus’s house, Seaview, was faring, built as it was on the shores of Scapa Flow.

‘Has Magnus gone home for the Easter break?’ Sean said, reading her thoughts.

‘He usually does.’ A professor of criminal psychology at Strathclyde University, Magnus Pirie liked to return to his native island whenever he got the chance. ‘I’ll maybe check on him later,’ she said. ‘Make sure he’s not blown away.’

As Sean began to clear the table and stack the dishwasher, Rhona intervened. ‘I’ll do that. You’d better get ready for the jazz club – although judging by the weather, you may not have much of a crowd tonight.’

‘The diehards always turn out, come hell or high water,’ Sean reminded her.

‘You’re going to get soaked,’ she warned. ‘Maybe you should try for an Uber?’