Cal took a step to the side, away from Aileen, and thus revealed the main attraction.

‘Some state for one guy, eh?’ Cal suggested.

‘That your professional assessment?’

‘No. Speaking as a doctor, I have to confess I fear the worst.’

McDiarmid was lying in a heap between two bins, like another piece of trash waiting to be disposed of. Catherine had often taken an odd kind of solace from considering her job analogous with that of the binmen in Glasgow. No matter how hard you worked, there was always more waiting for you to clear up when you went back in the next day. That thought could sometimes wear her down with fears that her efforts were futile, but then she’d remember that if nobody showed up to do her job, or the binmen’s, the whole city would become choked with garbage, poison and disease.

McDiarmid’s legs were splayed beneath him like a marionette at rest. He looked so much smaller than Catherine remembered, devoid of the energy and latent aggression that must have amplified the impact of his presence. She thought of how tiny her boys always looked when they were sleeping compared to when they were bouncing off the walls during the day, then promptly tried to banish the image. Not here, not now.

Too late.

Have you seen a dead body?

Fraser’s voice got into her head before she could stop it, in the same way that the worst possible thing you might say could sometimes leap to mind in a sensitive situation. She had read that certain mechanisms of the brain could not distinguish between positive and negative, so the very awareness of what it was she didn’t want to think about would in fact provide the impulse that conjured it up. This scene was everything she wanted to protect her boys from, everything she didn’t want them to know about the world and, most particularly, about herself.

‘Single shot to the forehead,’ Cal told her. ‘Close-range, execution-style, resulting in an exit wound you really don’t want to see. No ligature marks or other evidence of restraint but plenty of facial injuries and defensive bruising to the forearms. He had the resistance beaten out of him instead, so he’d sit nice for the man with the gun.’

‘I’m guessing very little blood?’ Catherine suggested. ‘Indicative that they had their party elsewhere and just dumped the empty back here when they were finished.’

‘Spookily prescient, Superintendent McLeod. As ever.’