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announced.
    Reynolds frowned.
    ‘St Andrews happens to be in Scotland,’ he said.
    Someone whistled the opening bars of ‘Flower of Scotland’ and Gilchrist decided to draw the conference to a close.
    ‘One last question.’
    He turned his body to shield his face from the cameraman by his side and nodded to a grey-haired man in a dark blue suit, white shirt and bold red tie.
    ‘Can you confirm the rumour that the Stabber is a young man, perhaps even a student?’
    ‘Who told you that?’
    ‘Do you deny it?’
    ‘No comment.’
    ‘From that response, can we assume the rumour is true?’
    ‘No comment.’
    McKinnon’s gravelly laugh rasped.
    ‘No further questions,’ said Gilchrist, and stalked from the podium, ignoring the cries that erupted in his wake.
    He slammed the door behind him.
    How the hell could he control his murder investigation when one of his own team was talking to the press?

CHAPTER 5
     
    My father hit my mother.
    I was five years old when I first saw him hit her, too young to understand why she was lying on the kitchen floor, crying and screaming with her legs curled up into her stomach, arm flailing while my father pounded away at her with his black boots, white spittle drooling from his bristled chin, eyes red and wild and crazed as a raging bull.
    I now recognize that single point in time as the moment when the hatred first began, like some cancer seed that floats in on a cold wind and settles deep in the soul to germinate into something foul and evil.
    Nothing ever seemed the same after that. My father never lifted me and spun me around any more. I never saw my mother smile again. And my brother, Timmy, developed a stutter that stayed with him the remainder of his short life. As for me, I started punching and kicking Sandy, my one-eyed teddy that had been passed down from Timmy.
    When Sandy stared at me dead-eyed, the way my mother did, I battered him the way my father battered her. When Sandy stared back at me still, I took a kitchen knife and stabbed out his other eye. I cried when Sandy had no eyes. Until I realized that, without eyes, Sandy could not watch my hatred grow, or see the pain spread like a fungus over my mother’s wrecked face.
    Poor old blind old Sandy.
    Three weeks later, I stabbed out his brains.
     
    Gilchrist burst into the main office and stomped to his desk.
    He faced his team.
    ‘Everybody,’ he shouted.
    He waited until the group formed a loose scrum in front of him, then stared at each of them in turn. Young eyes gleamed back at him. ‘Someone’s been talking to the press,’ he said, ‘and I don’t like it.’
    Eyes shimmied to the side. Someone coughed.
    ‘Let me make this crystal clear. No one is to discuss this case with anyone outside this room. And that includes all senior officers, no matter who.’ He caught DS Nancy Wilson frowning. ‘Got a problem with that, Nance?’
    ‘Does that include DCI Patterson?’
    ‘You’re not listening.’
    Nance looked to her shoes. Someone chuckled – Baxter, perhaps. Stan almost smiled. Sa raised an eyebrow.
    ‘Every single scrap of information that leaves this office will leave this office through me,’ Gilchrist said. ‘Even if the ACC himself asks you about the case, you will direct him to me. You are following orders. Plain and simple. Is that clear?’
    The group gave a collective mumble of confused consent. His orders violated police protocol, but he had made his point. Any more leaks and he would go nuclear.
    ‘All right,’ said Gilchrist, ‘let’s move on.’ He turned to Baxter. ‘Has Traffic done its bit?’
    ‘North Street’s blocked off from Deans Court to College Street, sir. And all side streets and lanes in between.’
    ‘Each point manned?’
    ‘Closed to the public.’
    ‘Nance?’
    ‘Sir?’
    ‘Warrants?’
    ‘All in order,’ she said. ‘Eighty-two in total.’
    ‘Good. Stan?’
    ‘Boss?’
    ‘See to it that our media friends out the back are kept from the area.’
    ‘Got