They left the tree wrapped with police tape, instructing anyone unlikely enough to be in the vicinity of the deserted glen to not cross this line, and drove on to the cottage. The small sunlit stone building sat peacefully in the glen, making the nightmarish scene they’d recently left behind appear all the more unreal. Corstorphine pulled on another set of latex gloves and tried the door. It was unlocked and in unspoken agreement they entered. The rooms were spotless, kitchen knives all in place in a wooden rack, bed made. They opened a few drawers, nothing out of the ordinary. The drive back to the station was interspersed with little in the way of conversation, both detectives too wrapped up in their own thoughts.

“Can it be a coincidence he chose that tree to set a snare?” Corstorphine queried Frankie, the knowledge surrounding how the tree became known locally as the Hanging Tree all too much to the forefront of their minds.

“Who, sir? Oscar – or whoever laid the trap for him?”

“I think we can dispense with the idea of a suicide.” Corstorphine drove in silence for a while, concentrating on keeping the Land Rover’s wheels inside the existing track ruts. “I don’t know what’s going on with the gears lying around the tree, but nobody goes to that much trouble if they’re killing themselves. The question we should be asking is who had the motive?”

Frankie sighed heavily. “Who didn’t have a reason to kill him? He’s been making lifelong enemies ever since he reached nursery school!” She stared out of the Land Rover window, distant mountains wreathed in clouds threatening an end to the sunny spell they’d been enjoying. The change in weather chimed with her own mood, the day’s early promise fading away. She had been a young girl herself when the tree was christened, a lonely baptism of one solitary young woman ending her life. “Do you think any motive may have a connection with the tree then, sir?”

“Probably just a coincidence.”

“But why leave a rabbit up there?” Frankie voiced just one of the questions that worried them both. Snared like a rabbit. Hung in the Hanging Tree. Bits of artfully constructed bone gears littering the ground. It made no sense, and Oscar wasn’t likely to be offering them much assistance.

“We’ll start with Margo, she must know something.”

“You think she’s a suspect, sir?”

“At this stage, everyone’s a bloody suspect.” He slowed as the vehicle reached the road, checked each way and then moved off at a faster speed towards the town. “But do I think Margo killed him?” The silence that followed them back into town provided the only answer they had.

They sat in the interview room, Frankie and Corstorphine on one side of a table with Margo facing them. Three mugs of coffee sat untouched, thin tendrils of steam curling up into the stale air. Frankie switched on the voice recorder beside her, announced who was in the room and advised Margo that she was providing a witness statement of her own free will before Corstorphine spoke. He took the time to study her. She’d been beaten, and recently – the bruising was evident enough around her eyes despite the layers of make-up.