A brief moment’s panic ensued. Should he? Did he have time? Did they even have anything in common? What did she want? His wife sat on his office desk, legs crossed, looking down at him in that way of hers. “For God’s sake, James, get out there and enjoy yourself for once!”

He smiled at her ruefully. “I don’t really want anyone else. It’s you I want. It was always you I wanted.” The conversation was happening in his head, he knew that – it didn’t make it any less real.

“Face up to it, James. I’m gone. I’m never coming back. You made me a promise. You said you’d live life for both of us.”

“Oh, hi, Jenny. Yes, that would be good. I could do with a break from work. Where were you thinking?”

“Same place as last time, if you like. The food wasn’t too bad and it will save me having to cook for myself. Shall we say eight?”

“Eight is fine. I’ll see you then.” He added as an afterthought, “Looking forward to it.”

“Me too. See you then, bye.”

Corstorphine sat at his desk, aware of his wife’s pleased expression looking down from her perch beside him. “OK, you win. Now let me try and make some sense out of these bloody murders before I lose my job.”

He sat at his desk, computer waiting with infinite machine patience for his input. He’d previously attempted to use the police VALCRI system for a search on bone gears, without success. This time he tried Google with Toulouse as a search term. Within seconds he had found references to the clockmaker, Henri Dupont, together with photographs of bizarre clockwork mechanisms fashioned from animal skeleton remains. Not all of them were timepieces. His most celebrated creations were mechatronic animations with a macabre bent. There was a small dog: mostly skeleton apart from the head and two paws clutching an even smaller guitar. The video link beckoned and the dog became alive – gears whirring in place of a heart, strings plucked and the head inclining towards the camera from where glass eyes observed him with an air of studied boredom.