“We have to get Brian Rankin in for questioning. He’s the last one alive that we know had a connection to the orphanage.”

“Do you think he’s in danger, sir?”

“He might be. The notebook claimed he wasn’t involved in any abuse, is that right?”

Frankie thought back to her conversation with the Courier’s editor. “The notebook specifically mentioned that nobody had identified him as an abuser, more as someone who covered up whatever was happening.”

“The laird’s death is going to be all over town tomorrow. That locksmith was bursting to be the first to get the story out. Two murders are bad enough, three will bring a shitstorm of pain down on our heads.”

“What do you suggest we do now?”

Corstorphine went through his options, such as they were. “Trouble is, if this orphanage business goes as far up the tree as the Courier have suggested then we are going to have a devil of a job investigating anyone involved. The ACC has already warned me off opening the June Stevens suicide case, he’s not going to take well to my taking a retired DI with an exemplary record into custody, even if it is for his own protection.”

The car pulled smoothly onto the road leading out of the estate, suspension no longer reacting to the ruts and rocks littering the churned-up forest track. They sat in silence, both engaged with their own thoughts. Frankie could still see the laird’s face, twisted in the agony of death. His windpipe hung loose from a torn throat, a bone showed white against the red mess of his leg. The vision in her mind was made all the more shocking by his being clothed in expensive tweeds: an upper-class zombie just waiting for animation to jerk him into unlife. The murderer had known the movements of each of his victims intimately; he knew Oscar rode his quad under that tree every day, standing in the saddle to avoid being bounced by the roots. He knew the minister had to ring the church bell himself, locked in the belfry with no possibility of escape once the timbers had been sufficiently weakened; and he knew the laird would eventually visit the cold store. Routines, habits, learned by patient observation over, what? Days, weeks, years?

“Whoever the murderer is, sir, he must have been living in this community for quite a while to know each of the victim’s movements.”

“And your point is, Frankie?”

“My point is, it’s more likely that the murderer is one of us, sir. Not some newcomer who’s lived here a short while. What if our murderer is one of the abused orphans that we haven’t been able to track down?”

“Because they don’t appear on the lists, or are going under assumed names?”

“Oscar wasn’t listed as an orphan, but he was allegedly abused as a child.”