right in it. And our fingerprints are all over it."
He'd been right, Alex thought. There was no love lost between the Laddies fi' Kirkcaldy and the two Englishmen who shared their sixroom campus house. There was no way Henry would see the funny side of Weird helping himself to the Land Rover. Henry didn't see the funny side of much that his housemates did. So, Ziggy wouldn't tell. That was for sure.
But Mondo just might. Alex hoped Ziggy's warning had penetrated Mondo's self-absorption enough for him to think through the consequences. Telling the cops about Weird helping himself to someone else's car wouldn't get Mondo off the hook. It would only put all four of them firmly on it. Besides, he'd been driving it himself, taking that lassie home to Guardbridge. For once in your life, think it through, Mondo.
Now, if it was a thinker you wanted, Ziggy was your man. Behind the apparent openness, the easy charm and the quick intellect, there was a lot more going on than anyone knew. Alex had been pals with Ziggy for nine and a half years, and he felt as though he'd only scratched the surface. Ziggy was the one who would surprise you with an insight, knock you off balance with a question, make you look at something through fresh eyes because he'd twisted the world like a Rubik's Cube and seen it differently. Alex knew one or two things about Ziggy that he felt pretty sure were still hidden from Mondo and Weird. That was because Ziggy had wanted him to know, and because Ziggy knew his secrets would always be safe with Alex.
He imagined how Ziggy would be with his interrogators. He'd seem relaxed, calm, at ease with himself. If anyone could persuade the cops that their involvement with the body on Hallow Hill was entirely innocent, it was Ziggy.
Detective Inspector Barney Maclennan threw his damp coat over the nearest chair in CID office. It was about the size of a primary school classroom, bigger than they normally needed. St. Andrews wasn't high on Fife Constabulary's list of crime hotspots, and that was reflected in their staffing levels. Maclennan was head of CID out at the edge of the empire not because he lacked ambition but because he was a fully paid-up member of the awkward squad, the sort of bolshie copper senior officers liked best at a distance. Normally, he chafed at the lack of anything interesting to keep him occupied, but that didn't mean he welcomed the murder of a young lassie on his patch.
They'd got an ID right away. The pub Rosie Duff worked in was an occasional drop-in for some of the uniformed boys, and PC Jimmy Lawson, the first man at the locus, had recognized her immediately. Like most of the men at the scene, he'd looked shell-shocked and nauseous. Maclennan couldn't remember the last time they'd had a murder on his patch that hadn't been a straightforward domestic; these lads hadn't seen enough to harden them to the sight they'd come upon on the snowy hilltop. Come to that, he'd only seen a couple of murder victims himself, and never anything quite as pathetic as the abused body of Rosie Duff.
According to the police surgeon, it looked as if she'd been raped and stabbed in the lower abdomen. A single, vicious blow carving its lethal track upward through her gut. And it had probably taken her quite a while to die. Just thinking about it made Maclennan want to lay hands on the man responsible and beat the crap out of him. At times like this, the law felt more like a hindrance than a help when it came to achieving justice.
Maclennan sighed and lit a cigarette. He sat down at his desk and made notes of what little information he'd learned so far. Rosemary Duff. Nineteen years old. Worked in the Lammas Bar. Lived in Strathkinness with her parents and two older brothers. The brothers worked in the paper mill out at Guardbridge, her father was a grounds-man up at Craigtoun Park. Maclennan didn't envy Detective Constable Iain Shaw and the WPC he'd sent up to the village to break the news. He'd have to talk to the family himself in due course, he knew that. But he was better employed trying to get this investigation moving. It wasn't as if they were swarming with detectives who had a clue about running a major inquiry. If they were going to avoid being