“I’ll get an ambulance sent out.” Hamish’s measured tone helped Frankie calm down. Something about the manner in which Margo had delivered her message had unsettled her more than she liked to admit. “And I’ll keep an eye on her,” he added.

“Thanks, Hamish.” She flashed him a quick smile, grateful for his stolid presence. There were only the five of them working the station: two constables, including the one fresh out of training, the two detectives – herself and DI Corstorphine, and Sergeant Hamish McKee. A small team more closely integrated than the larger stations, more like a family group than work colleagues. She tapped on the DI’s door, and the pungent aroma of aftershave washed over her as she entered his office.

“I saw Margo MacDonald. What’s up?” Corstorphine leant back in his seat, one eyebrow raised in his familiar interrogative stare. She stood in the doorway, working out her phrasing before speaking. It was a habit that led people to believe she was more slow-witted than she was, a perception she was in no hurry to correct.

“She said Oscar has killed himself. He’s hanging from the old oak by the Gamekeeper’s Cottage in Glen Mhor.” She refused to use the colloquial term for that particular tree, preferring to let the past be dead and buried. “I thought we should take a look before anything else.”

Corstorphine nodded, his expression unchanging. “When was this meant to have happened?” His tone betrayed a detective’s caution, treating every statement with a distrust learned from years of hard-won experience. He unwound his lanky frame from the comfort of the leather swivel chair he’d inherited from his predecessor, reaching for a mobile and a set of keys.

“She found his body this morning and last saw him early yesterday morning, so some time in the last 24 hours, presumably.”

“He’s an unlikely candidate for a suicide.” Corstorphine voiced what Frankie had already considered. Some people are suicides-in-waiting. They give the impression of drowning on dry land, a futility of purpose, of having already given up the struggle. Oscar was the type who’d face down death, wrest the sickle from death’s cold bone fingers and enjoy laying about him until stopped by a greater force.

“We’ll take the Land Rover. That track’s fairly unforgiving on the suspension.” He led the way to the station car park, the midday sun failing to dispel the mood that was settling on them both. Murder, suicide – it was academic at the end of the day. A potential dead body awaited them, and even though it was an individual whose passing would be celebrated in some quarters, the next few days were going to be heavy with onerous paperwork and unpleasantness.

III
SATURDAY 13:07

The two detectives sat in the 4x4, staring at the figure swaying in front of them, blue strobe from the Land Rover roof lights catching the body where it hung in the tree’s shadow. It was apparent even from a distance that he was dead; the neck wound alone would have killed him in seconds. DI Corstorphine turned off the engine and they dressed awkwardly in white forensic overclothes, pulling on blue latex gloves, incongruous in the rural setting, before reluctantly approaching the scene of crime. The heather’s perfume was insufficient to mask the earthly stench emanating from the body, a tang of iron from the blood discernible over more common odours. Tattered ribbons of flesh hung out of Oscar’s eye sockets where sharp beaks had penetrated, and the steady hum of flies increased in volume as they approached the body.