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the wall.
    ‘Where’s the photographer? Can you get him back in here a minute.’
    Bob turned away, shouted something McLean couldn’t quite make out. Then a moment later a short man stuck his face into the room. McLean didn’t recognise him; another new recruit to the SOC team.
    ‘Hi there. You photo the body?’
    ‘Aye.’ Glasgow accent, slightly clipped and impatient. Fair enough, he didn’t much want to be here either.
    ‘Did you take any of the markings on the floor here?’ He pointed to the nearest one, but the photographer’s puzzled expression answered his question.
    ‘Here, look.’ He beckoned the man into the room and pointed to the floor with his torch. For a fleeting instant he saw something, but then it was gone.
    ‘Cannae see a thing.’ The young man squatted down to look. A heavy odour of soap rose off him, and McLean realised it was the first thing he had smelled since entering the room.
    ‘Well, can you photograph the floor anyway? All theway around the body. About this far in from the wall. Close-up.’
    The photographer nodded, glancing nervously at the silent figure in the centre of the room, then set about his task. The flash gun on his camera popped and whined between each recharge, little explosions of lightning spearing the room. McLean straightened up, focusing his attention on the wall now. Start from the body and work your way out. He felt the cold plaster through the thin protection of his latex gloves, then turned his hand around and rapped his knuckle on the surface. It sounded flat and solid, like stone. Moving round a bit, he rapped again. Still solid. Glancing over his shoulder, he moved around until he was in line with the dead girl’s head. This time his knuckle produced a hollow clunk.
    He knocked it again, and in the confused light of the flashgun and shadows thrown by the arc lamps, it looked like the wall bowed in under the pressure. Turning his hand once more, he pushed gently, feeling the wall give way under his fingers. Then with a crack of brittle bones, a panel about a foot wide and half as tall again split from the wall and fell to the floor. It had concealed a small alcove, and something glinted wetly from within.
    McLean pulled out his torch again, twisted it on and directed the beam into the alcove. A slim silver ring lay on a folded piece of parchment, and behind it, preserved in a glass jar like a specimen in a biology classroom, was a human heart.

5
    ‘Is this the best we can do?’
    Grumpy Bob paced around the walls of the broom cupboard that was all they could muster for an incident room, complaining all the while. McLean stood silent in the middle. At least there was a window, though it looked out onto the backs of other parts of the building. Across from it, a whiteboard still bore the scribblings of a previous investigation, long-forgotten names circled and then crossed out. Whoever had written them had taken the marker pens away with him, along with the wiper. There were two small tables, one shoved under the window, the other sitting in the middle of the room, but all the chairs had long since departed.
    ‘I quite like it.’ McLean scuffed his shoe on the stained carpet tiles and leant against the single radiator. It was belting out heat even though outside the sun was baking the streets. He reached down to twist the thermostat to zero, but the flimsy plastic casing broke off in his hand. ‘Might have to do something about the facilities, though.’
    A knock at the door distracted them. McLean opened it to reveal a young man balancing a couple of boxes on one knee as he tried to reach for the door handle. He wore a brand new suit, and his shoes were polished to shiny mirrors. His freshly shaved face was a pink full moon, close-cropped pale ginger hair frizzing his scalp like a teenager’s five o’clock shadow.
    ‘Inspector McLean? Sir?’
    McLean nodded, reaching out to take the top box before it spilled its contents all over the