“Hi, Corstorphine. The lab results have come back on the toxin. Luckily it’s a quiet time in the lab before the day starts so they fast-tracked it. Tetrodotoxin – found in Puffer Fish, Blue- Ringed Octopuses, Poison Dart frogs – you get the idea. It’s a particularly nasty one, over a thousand times more toxic than cyanide. The poor bastard didn’t stand a chance, he’d have been dead within minutes. The thing is, this toxin causes total body paralysis whilst the mind is unaffected. He’d have been fully aware that he was dying, and most likely felt everything as he suffocated. She must have had it in for this one!”

Corstorphine thanked him for the information and sat quietly whilst he wondered what to do next. Women were not typical suspects, but Abigail Stevens had the motive. Her mother murdered by Oscar Anderson – he’d have enjoyed telling the young girl the gruesome details of what he did to her mother before he hanged her in the tree. The minister – had she told him the truth, looking for someone to believe her and help her escape from the orphanage? What had the minister done, did he abuse her when she came to him for help? The laird, she’d taken a lot of trouble to make his a slow death. Was he responsible for having her locked in the hole, the cold stone cell that Craig Derbyshire had said she’d often been confined in, maybe because she wouldn’t stop talking about her mother’s murder? Then Lord Lagan; this was personal. She had wanted him to suffer, needed him to feel the pain and panic as he fought unsuccessfully for breath. What had he done to her as a young child to keep that anger alive after so many years? And Brian, the old DI. Had she given him the gun out of mercy, payment for him taking her out of the orphanage and providing her with a new life? She’d demanded interest from him for not pursuing her mother’s killer, for letting the children suffer and die. That payment could only be his death.

The station door opened, alerting Corstorphine to the time. It was 7:30 a.m. and the team would be arriving in the next half hour to put in another day’s hunt for the murderer. Hamish put his head around the door, the frown lifting off his face as he saw the DI at his desk.

“Morning, sir. You been here all night?”

Corstorphine shook his head. “No, sergeant, just the last hour.”