Frankie brought in the morning’s Courier and placed it on his desk. The front page was a photo of the Hanging Tree, still adorned with police tape, making it look like a festive maypole in the wilderness. Right month for it, Corstorphine voiced silently to himself. The headline shouted in large bold print, ‘Gamekeeper Snared in Tree’ with, ‘Police investigate second death at cursed tree’ as a strapline. An old photograph of Oscar stared sullenly up from the page.

“So much for keeping it under wraps!” Corstorphine sighed heavily. There was no point in berating his staff, there were any number of ways the story could have got out. He belatedly remembered his date, Jenny, telling him the hospital staff were all talking about the gamekeeper’s death. How long before the minister put in an appearance on the front page?

“Sir?” Frankie interrupted his thoughts. He looked up from the paper, her forehead had developed several deep lines – her thinking face, he called it. “What is it, Frankie?”

“What do you make of John Ackerman’s comments about the sheriff and Oscar being in cahoots?”

Corstorphine wondered if Frankie had been watching too many Westerns. “In cahoots?”

“Yes, sir. John Ackerman suggested they were hand-in-glove. Do you think there’s any truth in that? Oscar certainly seemed to lead a charmed life – not one prosecution ever stuck.”

Corstorphine shrugged. Not being born and brought up in the town meant that he was always going to be seen as the incomer. Local history and knowledge came to him drip by drip and he often relied on Frankie and the others to fill him in on feuds and alliances that went back several generations in some instances.

“What do you think, Frankie? You’ve lived here all your life, is there something we’re missing, some other line of enquiry we should be following?”

“I don’t know, sir. If John Ackerman says the sheriff has it coming, shouldn’t we warn him he may be in danger?”

“I don’t think that’s necessary, Frankie. As a sheriff he’s put any number of people behind bars, he knows to take precautions. I’ve been to his house on the estate, big wall around it, alarm system, CCTV – he’d not be such an easy target as Oscar was.”

“But if it’s the same person that got to the minister…” She left the thought hanging.

Corstorphine remembered the coin that forensics had found under the tree and dug out the report from underneath the newspaper on his desk. “When did that lassie kill herself, Frankie? What year?”

She adopted the same look of concentration, brows furrowed downwards as she retrieved a memory. “I was seven at the time, so that would make it… 1997, sir.”

He passed over the photograph of the coin. She studied it in silence before they locked eyes. “Looks like there may be a connection to her death after all.”

Corstorphine nodded. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We’ll see what they find in the bell tower first. Either way, we need to start looking for a connection between the dead woman and Oscar.” It was Corstorphine’s turn to frown. “Who was the suicide anyway, do you remember her name?”