“OK, thanks everyone. So this is where we are. The minister is suspected of abusing Oscar as a young child, and both he and Oscar are known to have visited the orphanage on a regular basis. We can assume the same killer, or killers, were involved at each scene.”

He used a laser pointer to indicate names on the board. “In terms of suspects, we have Oscar’s girlfriend, Margo McDonald – not a likely suspect in my view; the gamekeeper John Ackerman – no connection as yet to the minister; and William Booth – he had a connection to Oscar and the orphanage but nothing tying him to the minister yet. He also has ready access to animal bones. We haven’t had any DNA evidence returned from the two murder sites that offers any additional evidence, so this is going to have to be done by good, steady police work. I know you’re all tired. It’s been a busy day. Make sure you all get a good rest because tomorrow we have to make some headway in case this lunatic decides to target someone else.”

XVII WEDNESDAY 09:36

XVII
WEDNESDAY 09:36

Margo scanned the track as her taxi made slow and bouncy progress towards the main road, anxious that the laird’s Land Rover might make an appearance. He hadn’t come back to the cottage yesterday, so chances were that he’d want to have another search for something – and that something, she was fairly certain, was what she had hidden in the bag on her lap.

“I’m going to have to charge you extra for my bloody suspension.” The driver swerved to avoid another pothole, cursing the state of the track for the umpteenth time.

“You’re getting paid cash, take it or leave it.” Margo replied. “Plenty of other taxi drivers out there.”

He exchanged an unfriendly look with her, then realised that she could mark him down on the app. “OK, OK, keep… I’ll keep to the track.”

It was a clumsy attempt to correct what she knew he was about to say. Being Oscar’s girlfriend had its upsides and downsides. The upside was that nobody would dare touch her, not unless they reckoned they could take him on. The downside was that now he was dead, her reputation marked her out as little better than a whore. All the more reason to leave this god-forsaken town and start afresh somewhere else, but first she needed more money.

The car dropped her outside the supermarket, leaving her standing on the pavement with a shopping bag, as if she was about to do a weekly shop. She didn’t disabuse the taxi driver of this notion, preferring to keep her Courier visits as private as possible. If she had picked up the newspaper before entering their offices she might have had second thoughts; the orphanage child abuse scandal took up the entire front page – and was attributed to her by name.