Rhona looked down at her black dress and high-heeled sandals. ‘I came out in a bit of a hurry.’

‘McSween will get you some kit.’

Bill nodded to one of the men, who went out and came back minutes later with a plastic bag.

Rhona pulled out the scene suit and mask, put her coat into the bag and handed it to the officer. She took one shoe off at a time and, hitching up her skirt, slipped her feet into the suit. Only then did she step inside.

Rhona took in the small room at a glance. The hideous nicotine-stained curtains stretched tightly across the window. A wooden chair with a pair of jeans and a tee-shirt thrown over it. Two glasses on a formica table. A pair of trainers on the floor beside the bed. A divan, three-quarters width, no headboard but covered with heavy silken brocade in an expensive burst of swirling colours.

The boy’s naked body lay face down across it, his head turned stiffly towards her, eyes bulging, tongue protruding slightly between blue lips. The dark silk cord knotted round the neck looked like a bow tie the wrong way round. The body showed signs of hypostasis, and the combination of dark purple patches and pale translucence reminded Rhona of marble. Below the hips blood soaked into the bedclothes.

‘I turned the gas fire off when I arrived,’ Bill said. ‘The smell nearly finished off our young Constable, so I put him on duty outside for some fresh air.’

‘Did anyone take the room temperature?’

‘McSween has it.’

Rhona took a deep breath before she put on the mask. The smell of a crime scene was important. It might mean she would look for traces of a substance she would otherwise have missed. Here the nauseating odour of violent death mixed with stale sex and sweat masked something else, something fainter. She got it. An expensive men’s cologne.

‘McSween and Johnstone have covered the rest of the room. The photographer is working on the kitchen and bathroom.’

‘What about a pathologist?’

‘Dr Sissons came and certified death. Then suggested I get a decent forensic to take samples and bag the body because he needed to get back to his dinner party.’

‘Important guests?’

‘He did mention a “Sir” somewhere in the list.’

Rhona smiled. Dr Sissons preferred analysing death in the comfort of his mortuary. Taking samples of bodily fluids in the middle of the night he regarded as her territory.

‘That’s some bedcover!’

‘We think it might be a curtain, but we’ll get a better look once we take the body away.’

‘Did the doctor turn him over?’

‘Just enough to tell if he’s been moved. He said the left side of the face, the upper chest and hips had been compressed since death occurred. He’s lying where he was killed.’

Rhona opened her case and took out her gloves. She knelt down beside the bed.