repulsive film that reminded him of bath scum. For that reason, when circumstances required him to pour his longed-for afternoon cuppa from a dented Thermos resurrected from a cobwebbed corner of the Strathclyde CID office, he gagged down only a mouthful before dumping the rest out onto the meagre strip of tarmac that comprised the local airfield. Grimacing, wiping his mouth on the back of his gloved hand, he beat his arms to improve his circulation. Unlike yesterday, the sun was out, glittering like a false promise of spring against the plump drifts of snow, but still the temperature was well below freezing. And the thick bank of clouds riding down from the north promised another storm. If the party from Scotland Yard was to put in an appearance, they had better be fl aming quick about it, Lonan thought morosely.
As if in response, the steady throb of rotor blades cut through the air from the east. A moment later, a Royal Scottish Police helicopter came into view. It circled Ardmucknish Bay in a tentative survey of what the ground afforded as a landing site, then slowly touched down on a square in the tarmac that a wheezing snowplough had cleared for it thirty minutes earlier. Its rotor blades kept spinning, sending up minor snow flurries from the drifts that bordered the airfield. The noise was teeth-jarring.
The helicopter's passenger door was shoved open by a short, plump fi gure, muffl ed like a mummy from head to toe in what looked like someone's old brown carpeting. Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers, Lonan decided. She threw down the steps the way one would fl ing a rope ladder over the side of a tree house, pitched out three pieces of luggage, which hit the ground with a thud, and plopped herself after them. A man followed her. He was very tall, very blond, his head bare to the cold, a well-cut cashmere overcoat, a muffl er, and gloves his only capitulation to the subfreezing temperature. He would be Inspector Lynley, Lonan thought, the object of Strathclyde CID's particular interest at the moment, considering how his arrival had been manipulated by London from beginning to end. Lonan watched him exchanging a few words with the other officer. She gestured towards the van, and Lonan expected them at that point to join him. Instead, however, they both turned to the helicopter's steps where a third person was slowly negotiating his descent, one made awkward and diffi cult by the heavy brace he wore upon his left leg. Like the blond, he also had no hat, and his black hair-curly, far too long, and wildly ungovernable-blew about his pale face. His features were sharp, excessively angular. He had the look of a man who never missed a detail.
At this unexpected arrival, Constable Lonan mouthed unspoken words of awe and wondered if Detective Inspector Macaskin had been given the news. London was sending in the heavy artillery: forensic scientist Simon Allcourt-St. James. The constable pushed himself off the side of the van and marched eagerly to the helicopter, where the arrivals were folding the steps back inside and gathering their belongings.
"Have you ever given thought to the fact that there might be something breakable in my suitcase, Havers?" Lynley was asking.
"Packing on-the-job drinks?" was her tart reply. "If you've brought your own whisky, more the fool you. That's a bit like taking coals to Newcastle, wouldn't you say?"
"That has the sound of a line you've been waiting to use for months." Lynley gave a wave and a nod of thanks to the helicopter's pilot as Lonan joined them.
When the introductions were made, Lonan blurted out, "I heard you speak once in Glasgow," as he shook St. James' hand. Even inside the glove, Lonan could sense how thin it was, yet it gripped his own with surprising strength. "It was the lecture on the Cradley murders."
"Ah, yes. Putting a man behind bars on the strength of his pubic hair," Sergeant Havers murmured.
"Which is, if nothing else, metaphorically unsound," Lynley added.
It was obvious that St. James was accustomed to the verbal sparring of his two companions, for he merely smiled and said, "We were lucky to have it. God knows we had nothing else but a set of teeth prints gone bad on the corpse."
Lonan itched to discuss all the quixotic convolutions of that case with the man who four years ago had unravelled them before an astounded jury. However, as he was winding himself up to hurl