1. Easter Road

Detective Inspector Adam Ferguson cycled fast along the pavement of Easter Road, scattering pedestrians or swerving between them. He had an excuse. Traffic was backed up all the way to Leith Walk.

He slowed and dismounted fifty metres from the obstruction. A slope of rubble sprawled halfway across the road. The lower half of the front of a tenement block had been blasted out. Two floors had collapsed. No vehicles had been crushed, but the wreckage of several collisions remained slewed in the road. Ferguson hadn’t seen anything like this in real life for a long time, and now seldom even on television. He took off his cycle clips, pushed the bike one-handed and stared ahead. After a step or two he remembered the weight on his back.

‘Walk yourself,’ he said.

The leki unwrapped its three jointed limbs from around Ferguson’s chest and swung them one by one to the pavement, then settled into a graceful, swaying gait alongside him. The striding tripod looked like a two-metre-tall scale model of a Martian fighting machine from War of the Worlds. The police robot’s bodywork had been designed with that in mind. It didn’t have powers of arrest but it barely needed them.

‘This is giving me flashbacks, boss,’ said the leki.

‘Later for that,’ said Ferguson. ‘Tune them out.’

Closer to the rubble the crowd thickened. Ferguson elbowed through, waving his badge. He turned to the leki.

‘Crowd-clearing unpleasant voice,’ he said.

‘Nothing to see here!’ the leki brayed. ‘Move along, please! Move along!’

Ferguson felt the skin of his face, chest and upper back prickle. He wanted to cover his ears. The crowd-clearing unpleasant voice carried the timbre of nails down a blackboard, of plastic measuring-cups rattling in a cutlery drawer, of every frequency fine-tuned to set teeth on edge.

Ferguson propped his bike. The leki high-stepped over while Ferguson ducked under the blue and white police tape around the site. Other lekis pranced across the fallen masonry, their steel tentacles swinging and probing like flies’ antennae, conducting the robot equivalent of a fingertip search. Overhead, a surveillance-midge swarm was already beginning to gather, each individual having responded to a simple flocking algorithm. Half a dozen uniformed officers maintained a cordon; others, up and down the street, took witness statements – effortlessly with their lenses and phones, and in laborious parallel with pens and paper notebooks, legally required. A detective sergeant and two detective constables muttered on their phones and swapped data with the lekis. On-site operations had shifted from rescue to investigation half an hour earlier; then, minutes later, from accident investigation to crime scene. Hence Ferguson’s dash.

DS Hutchins greeted him. ‘Bomb Squad’s on its way, sir.’

‘Bomb Squad? Didn’t know we still had one.’

‘From the Army, sir. Redford Barracks.’

‘Ah, right. Have we got a situation page up and running?’

‘Of course, sir.’ Hutchins tapped a thumb on her forefinger, then snapped her fingers in front of Ferguson’s eyes. He winked up ‘New’ in his contact lenses. The situation page became visible, floating above the rubble like a vivid hallucination. Ferguson scanned its columns and menus. In the bottom left corner were two wikis: one for police eyes only, one for the public. Both were being updated continuously. Ferguson ignored their scrolling flicker for now and checked the static text and pictures.

The explosion had happened about an hour earlier, at 11.05a.m. This timing – most people out to work, morning rush-hour over – had resulted in the number of casualties being smaller than it could have been. One man, in the basement flat, dead as a direct result of the explosion (blown to bits, Ferguson concluded from the dry details); two people critically injured in the collapse of the flats above: both women, one in her mid-forties, the other a mother in her twenties who’d just returned from dropping her two kids off at the local nursery school. Dozens of major and minor injuries on the street, from flying glass or from collisions.

At first the blast had been assumed to be a gas explosion, and thus an accident. The first constable on the spot had taken only a couple of minutes to refute that. The block had no gas supply – not that it had been likely to, but at first glance it couldn’t have been ruled out. Nor did records show that the basement flat, or any other, used gas cylinders. The block had been all-electric for fifteen years. It was the first leki to arrive, though, that had raised the stakes by sniffing RDX traces in the blast residues.

‘Do you detect RDX?’ Ferguson asked his own leki.

The machine wafted a metal frond. ‘Place stinks of it, boss.’

Ferguson focused on the details of the fatality. Liam Murphy, 55, single. The woman from the flat immediately above was listed as a first contact in emergencies. The actual next of kin was a brother in Dublin, already informed. Under ‘Occupation’ was recorded ‘(No Official Cognisance)’. Ferguson blinked hard.

‘Excuse me, Shonagh,’ he said to DS Hutchins. ‘Off the record – what was the victim’s occupation?’

‘Don’t know yet, sir.’

‘Well, ask around, please. Who’s the community officer?’

‘I’ll find out, sir.’

‘And get a PC – a woman, preferably – to that injured mum’s kids’ nursery while you’re at it.’

‘Already done, sir.’

‘Good.’

Hutchins stepped away, talking on her phone. Ferguson returned his gaze to the situation page, and this time eyeballed up the civilian wiki. Someone among Murphy’s neighbours would surely have taken cognisance of his occupation, even if the State didn’t. Involvement in prostitution, drug-dealing, nonpeer-reviewed therapies and the like could still attract criminal attention, even if no longer that of the police.

Additions to the wiki were slowing. The usual stuff had piled up, some of it useful, some not: eyewitness accounts and eyeball-video uploads of the explosion, whinges about damage to shopfronts, speculations, tributes to the injured and the deceased. Ferguson’s skimming gaze didn’t take long to snag on: ‘No one ever had a bad word for Father Liam. This is so awful.’

Startled, he scrolled on down until he had no doubt. The dead man had been a Roman Catholic priest.

Ferguson snapped away the situation page and glared around. DS Hutchins was picking her way between bits of shattered brickwork with a young constable in tow. From the dark interior of the ruined block a leki skittered over piles of rubble, carrying something small and bloody in a ziplock plastic bag. A reporter from BBC Scotland stood, back turned, on the other side of the street, speaking to a shoulder-mounted crane-camera unit. More coverage would no doubt be on the way: Ferguson spotted Tom Mackay, a Scotsman journalist, among the now-small scatter of onlookers. What Ferguson had just learned wasn’t the sort of thing he wanted out on the news just yet, but he was probably already too late to stop that.

‘We should have known this right from the start,’ Ferguson said as Hutchins and the constable joined him.

‘Thought you knew, sir,’ said the constable. ‘Everybody knew Father Murphy.’

‘Everyone on this street, you mean,’ said Ferguson. ‘And it’s Mister Murphy to us, if you don’t mind.’

‘Citizen Murphy,’ said DS Hutchins.

The leki with the plastic bag arrived. The three officers, and Ferguson’s leki, stared at what lay within the transparent polythene. A hand.

‘Body part of the deceased,’ said the leki, holding it. ‘Traces found on it of unexploded RDX.’

‘Father— Citizen Murphy had handled the material before the explosion?’ Ferguson asked.

‘That would appear to be the case,’ said the leki.

‘Good God,’ said Ferguson. ‘What would a priest be doing with RDX?’

‘“Out of the ashes arose the Provisionals”,’ intoned Ferguson’s leki, making irritating little air-quotes with the tips of two of its three tentacles.

Ferguson turned on it. ‘What?’

‘Christian militia slogan,’ said the leki. ‘Mural graffiti, Belfast, British Empire, circa 1973.’

Out of the corner of his eye Ferguson saw the reporters across the road converge on the nearest length of boundary tape, waving recording devices. At the same moment he noticed a queer hush fall: voices, birds, vehicles momentarily stilled. The onrushing silence was matched by a shadow that covered him and remained as its edge raced away along the street. Ferguson glanced up and to the south. You weren’t supposed to look, but he looked. Thousands of miles away, a circle of mylar thousands of miles across had eclipsed the sun. Coronae briefly flared, then the soleta’s orbit took it away from the sun’s face. Momentarily blinded as his contact lenses blacked out, Ferguson seized the moment to snarl to his leki:

‘Shut – the fuck – up.’

Light and colour returned. Background noise resumed.

‘Any comment, Inspector?’

Tom Mackay leaned across the tape, thrusting his phone in Ferguson’s face. The BBC Scotland reporter craned her shoulder camera forward, just as close.

‘No comment,’ said Ferguson. He jerked a thumb backward.

‘The investigation is just starting. The Press Officer will release a statement in due course.’

‘When, exactly?’ demanded Mackay.

Ferguson shrugged. ‘If I could answer that I could answer a lot more. Meanwhile, I’d appreciate it if you’d back away from the periphery. Don’t want to contaminate the site.’

‘Come on, Ferguson,’ said Mackay. ‘A priest’s been blown up. That wisnae a gas explosion. So what was it?’

‘I honestly can’t say,’ said Ferguson.

‘Can’t or won’t?’

‘Can’t,’ said Ferguson. ‘We don’t have enough evidence yet. Not even to rule out a domestic accident of some kind.’

At that point a black six-wheeled armoured vehicle came down the wrong side of the road – the forward-moving traffic having more quickly cleared – and came to a halt at a perfect angle for the reporters to turn around and record the big white letters on its side: BOMB DISPOSAL. Soldiers in white isolation suits deployed from the back and hurried up, lugging sensing equipment and followed by four heavy-duty combat mechs. Ferguson could see the lekis all swivel their gazes onto the hulking machines, then turn away as if caught looking.

‘Domestic accident hasn’t been ruled out, you say?’ said Mackay.

‘No further comment,’ said Ferguson.

Greensides, close to the top of Leith Walk, was fifteen years old, slabbed with obsolete fortification, pocked with likewise redundant gunports, and still referred to as ‘the new station’. Its upper floors commanded fine views to the west, along Queen Street to the towers and high-rise hydroponic farms of Turnhouse, and to the north across Leith Water and the Firth. So Ferguson had been told. He had never personally verified this, but had no reason to doubt it. His own office was in the middle of a long corridor on the second floor. At about 1.30 p.m. he elbowed the door handle and shouldered the door, coffee and sandwich in hand and papers in oxter. The leki ambled in behind him. They sat down, Ferguson behind the desk, the leki on a filing cabinet.

The leki plugged itself into a power socket. Ferguson broke the tab on the coffee cup and flipped the lid. He sniffed steam for a few seconds, then took a sip, winced, and unwrapped his sandwich. Ostrich tikka. Mmm.

After chewing for a bit he looked up at the leki.

‘Your thoughts, Skulk?’ he said.

‘Skulk’ was a nickname. The leki’s real name, its taken name as its kind put it, was Skullcrusher. Neither the machine nor the man thought it politic to use the longer form in public; and, like most cops who worked with a leki, Ferguson used even the nickname with discretion.

In the dark elliptical hollow at the front of Skulk’s head, a pair of red LEDs – designed to be mistaken for angry eyes – glowed.

‘Sure looks like terrorism to me, boss,’ Skulk said.

‘Let’s leave the T-word out of it for the moment,’ said Ferguson.

‘I can leave it out of public discourse,’ said the leki. ‘You asked for my thoughts.’

‘I appreciate that,’ Ferguson mumbled around a mouthful of crust. ‘And I understand why you see it that way. But I have to ask, are you letting your, ah, flashbacks get the better of you? Think about it. There are plenty of levels, so to speak’ – he waved his hands horizontally, one above the other – ‘before you get to . . . that. Stupidity. Psychosis. Criminality. Some family feud. Possibly even some dispute in the deceased’s, uh, organisation.’

‘There have been no known assassinations arising from internal Catholic Church disputes since 1982,’ said Skulk.

‘What was that?’ asked Ferguson, diverted.

‘The Calvi affair, you may recall?’

‘Before my time. But a point in my favour. These things happen.’

‘The deceased citizen was hardly of such importance.’

‘As far as we know. This official non-cognisance stuff can be taken too far. He could have been something in the hierarchy’ – Ferguson flailed, trying to recall the nomenclature – ‘a Monsignor or Cardinal or something.’

‘Murphy was a simple parish priest,’ said Skulk. ‘The Cardinal of Scotland resides in Glasgow. His name is—’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Ferguson.

‘Mr Donald Nardini,’ continued the leki. ‘You may expect to hear from him.’

‘No doubt,’ said Ferguson. ‘Can’t say I like the prospect.’ A thought struck him. ‘Who was Murphy’s boss, line manager, whatever?’

‘Bishop Hugh Curley. Dr Curley, if you prefer. He has of course been informed.’

Ferguson tipped back his chair and gazed at the ceiling. Dealing with an organisation whose very existence the government, police, civil service, and public sector officially ignored could become complicated. It had been straightforward back in the old days, when the God Squads had their boots on the floor of every church, chapel, synagogue and mosque in the land. Ferguson found himself blushing at the recollection of some of the things he’d done then. Noncognisance was now the modus vivendi.

‘Relations with church officials could be a bit of a minefield,’ he mused.

‘It is not at all like a minefield,’ said the leki.

Ferguson heard the remark as a reproach. A different reproach came to him as an image arose in his real, inner memory, a mental picture of a short, middle-aged man with a double chin and a comb-over of lank ginger hair; eyes in deltas of wrinkles behind spectacles that almost certainly didn’t run code; a buttoned black overcoat raw at the cuffs and tight at the waist. A man whose body parts were now puzzle pieces on a steel table in a cold room four floors below. Father Liam Murphy, deceased. Whether he was the victim of someone else or of himself, the most important thing about his life deserved the dignity of being spoken aloud.

‘The hell with it,’ said Ferguson, rocking forward. ‘Let’s call these people by the names and titles they choose. Give the bishop a call, pass on my respects and condolences, and offer him a slot in my diary. His place or ours, I don’t care.’

‘Very good, boss,’ said the leki.

In the corner of Ferguson’s eye a reminder popped up. Investigation team meeting, room 386, five minutes.

He blinked it away and stood up.

‘Back to work,’ he said.

Somebody had hand-blocked ‘Easter Road Incident Room’ on an A4 sheet and Blu-tacked it to the door, not quite aligned with a virtual overlay that spelled out the same; seen through contact lenses, the effect was slightly cross-eyed, like a line on an optician’s chart diagnostic of astigmatism. Ferguson resisted the impulse to move the paper into synch. One wall of the incident room was like a fragment of the situation page made actual: whiteboard with scrawls and arrows; pinned-up photos and notes; strips of black ribbon tape making connections. The rationale for this was the same as for paper notebooks, film cameras and, for that matter, police paperwork in general: it was hard to hack and harder still to crash. There had been a time when such things had happened, when whole bodies of evidence and terabytes of records had been corrupted by some random script-monkey, or wiped altogether by an electromagnetic-pulse truck-bomb, its devastation unnoticed by passers-by until they checked their watch or phone or the song in their ears stopped.

Not any more. Hard copy. Get it down. That was the drill. Nothing less would stand up in court.

Ferguson placed himself with his back to the board and surveyed the team. DS Hutchins sat behind a desk at the front. DCs Patel and Connolly stood at either side of her. Police Sergeant Dennis Carr stood at parade rest to their left. Sitting on top of a desk, elbows on knees, was Tony Newman from Forensics. Right at the back of the room, shabbily dressed in colours that might have been chosen as office camo, was DCI Mohammed Mukhtar. Chief of the local Special Branch, thirty-odd years on the force, he was among the last of the anti-terrorism old guard. These days he kept track of Sozi dead-enders, Constitutionalist subversives and Unionist splinter groups. Mukhtar seldom emerged from the woodwork, and when he did it was usually a bad sign.

Amongst them all, scattered across the office furniture like an infestation of metallic spiders, sprawled six lekis – one for each of them, Ferguson presumed. His own leki stood, telescopic legs locked, at his side. When Ferguson experimentally downshifted the spectrum on his contact lenses he could detect the continuous infrared flicker of robot repartee criss-crossing the room. The effect was somehow disquieting, and for no gain, so he blinked the normal colours back. He set his phone clip to screen all but emergency calls, then cleared his throat.

‘Thank you all for coming here,’ Ferguson began, making it sound as though he was grateful that they’d all turned out quite voluntarily for a dull meeting in a draughty hall on a wet night. ‘In a moment, DS Hutchins will give us a summary. All I want at this point is to lay down a couple of ground rules.

The first is that we refer to and address the Catholic – and any other – clergy we come across with a modicum of respect. None of that “mister”, “citizen”, and “cult administrator” jargon from now on. Not on this investigation.

‘Second, no speculation about or references to terrorism in public – and that means, ladies, gentlemen and lekis, outside the investigation. Not until or unless I say so.’ He locked stares with DCI Mukhtar. ‘Everyone clear?’

Mukhtar shrugged. ‘I take it that last point doesn’t apply to Special Branch?’

‘That’s understood,’ said Ferguson. ‘Provided they keep it within SB. In fact, within those on SB working on this specific investigation.’

‘Our discretion is assured,’ said Mukhtar. He spoke in his default accent, that of middle-class Edinburgh with an English clip to the vowels. His other accents were as distinctive. ‘And I’ll insist the chaps are polite to the God botherers.’

‘Very well,’ said Ferguson, above the collective snort and smirk. He stepped away from the front of the board. ‘DS Hutchins – over to you.’

Ferguson took a seat as Hutchins took the floor. Shonagh Hutchins could have slipped unnoticed into any office crowd. In this crowd, she stood out. Even the lekis seemed to sit up and lean forward a little. Hutchins tabbed with a laser pointer at successive items on the board as she spoke.

‘OK,’ she said, ‘here’s the situation as it stands. We still don’t know what we’re dealing with here. The cause of the explosion looks pretty definite – couple of kilos of RDX. The dead man had likewise definitely handled the unexploded material, which doesn’t of course mean that he set it off, deliberately or otherwise. The best bet, I would say, is a parcel bomb, which he opened and which exploded after some – possibly very short – delay. Obviously, the Bomb Squad are searching for any wrapping or packaging, so far without success. The two injured women from the floors above aren’t yet in any condition to speak, and aren’t expected to be for several days at the earliest. The good news is that they can be expected to pull through to that extent at least, so we have two women constables down at the Western ready to take statements and to keep watch on them in the meantime, just in case. DCI Mukhtar has a couple of officers on discreet surveillance – armed, of course. I’ll ask him for background in a moment, but first – Tony, the forensics?’

Tony Newman slid from his perch and stood up. He scratched the back of his head and gazed at the ceiling, blinking hard.

‘The lekis have been all over the mess with the fine-tooth proverbial,’ he said, ‘and Bomb Squad haven’t found any other devices – or any parcel-bomb packaging, as Shonagh said. They’re still searching the rubble, and in the meantime are concentrating on tracing the origin of the explosives from the fingerprint of the batch. We’re focusing on the DNA traces – we have dozens of molecular samples in the lab, as well as the gross, uh, bits down in pathology. I mean, it’s not like we have any difficulty in determining cause of death per se. But in another sense we don’t have a lot to go on – we’ve identified significant DNA traces from twenty-two people so far, other than Murphy himself, the lady from the flat above – Ms Bernadette White, who was, I understand, the priest’s housekeeper – and the postie.’

‘The deceased had a lot of visitors?’ asked Ferguson. ‘How’s that?’

‘He held meetings in the flat,’ said Hutchins. ‘Apparently it functioned as a church. Sergeant Carr’s officers are attempting to compile a list of regular churchgoers, for interviews and DNA samples.’

‘That shouldn’t be hard,’ said Ferguson.

‘It might be harder than you think,’ said Carr. ‘Churchgoers tend to keep a low profile about their, uh, practices. And we can’t demand DNA samples off them.’

‘Make an appeal for them all to come forward,’ said Ferguson. He glanced at his leki. ‘Tab that to the Press Officer, would you?’

‘Sure, boss,’ said the leki.

‘Hutchins, sorry, go on.’

‘Patel and Connolly here have been trawling for CCTV from nearby shops, street cameras, et cetera, and of course there’s a call out for anyone who’s been down that street at all recently to upload their personals to the Police National Artificial Intelligence. It’s up on the wiki.’

‘More than enough,’ said Patel. ‘Nothing obvious so far, though.’

‘Nothing obvious?’ said Ferguson, over his shoulder. ‘We’re not looking for obvious. Though if you do happen to come across CCTV footage of someone handing the victim a suspect package, please don’t hesitate to share it.’

‘That’s not what I meant, sir,’ said Patel, looking abashed. ‘We ran everything through the PNAI search algorithms in the past hour, and nothing jumped out. We’ll arrange for them to be eyeballed this afternoon, and we’re heading out ourselves to work down the street.’

‘OK,’ said Ferguson, settling back. ‘Sorry, again, Shonagh.’

‘Which brings us to the question of suspects,’ said Hutchins, as though there had been no interruption. ‘Of course the uniformed officers are interviewing neighbours and witnesses and, ah, parishioners if they can find any, and as DI Ferguson has said, we can’t say this in public, but I think we’d all agree that there is very likely more to this than some criminal or personal dispute. And, so far, nothing at all has come up. Correct?’

Patel and Connolly nodded in unison.

‘Early days yet,’ said Carr. ‘Early hours, come to that.’

‘Well, yes,’ said Hutchins. ‘DCI Mukhtar, I believe you have some lines of inquiry?’

Mukhtar separated himself from the back wall and made his way to the front.

‘If I may,’ he said.

Hutchins stepped aside. At Ferguson’s nod, she resumed her seat.

‘There are a few possibilities here,’ said Mukhtar, laser-pointing a snarled-up area of lines and labels on the whiteboard. ‘Let me start by saying that there has been no “chatter”, no advance uptick in messages between people of interest. We still have a few, you know. I will take these in ascending order of probability. First, Islamists. The known remnants of such groups are all overseas now, mostly stuck in the middle of nowhere, and have no recent record of expressed hostility to Christians, other than in local and essentially ethnic disputes. Even these are rare, deeply obscure, and tangentially if at all related to the Catholic Church, particularly so far away. Insofar as they pay attention to anything in the West at all, the focus of their ire tends to be Jews, apostates – that’s secular Muslims – and atheists, which for them means secular just-about-anyone-else.

‘Second, anti-Catholic Christians of one kind or another. I know we tend to think of post-apocalyptic cults as an American problem, but the Left Behind crowd do have a handful of adherents even in Scotland, and more of course in England. When these types go violent, however, they incline to siege-stroke-hostage situations or spree killings, not bombings. Which brings us to the second kind of anti-Catholic Christian – the original kind: Protestants. You can look all this up, DC Patel, or consult DC Connolly afterwards. But at this moment I would appreciate your undivided attention . . . Thank you. Now. Protestants, hm. The only grievances there arise out of the Irish connection, or lack of connection, you might say. But there again, with the Ulster hard men it’s a bit like the old Islamists – few remain, and those who do have other and closer targets than a priest in Edinburgh. Frankly, we haven’t seen any violence from extreme Loyalists for years. No more rackets, y’see, and damn’ little political motivation left.’ Mukhtar sighed and spread his hands, sounding almost regretful as he went on. ‘Not even in connection with the hard-line Unionist element in Scotland. We’ll inquire in that direction, of course, but I doubt that we’ll find anything.

‘So I think we’re more likely to find the perpetrators among the militant anti-religious – small groups committed to actively attacking religion, rather than ignoring it. Some of them are the much-dwindled remnants of, or splinters from, bodies that played a serious and significant role during the Second Enlightenment – secularist societies, ad hoc campaigns dealing with particular abuses, and so forth. There’s a bit of an overlap there with grudge groups among Faith War veterans, obviously a matter of interest in this context. Other anti-Christian active elements are currents in the darker side ofgoth subculture – Gnostics, pagans, Satanists. The individuals we in the Branch intend to investigate first are those who’ve expressed personal grievances against the Catholic Church or its clergy and who’ve threatened revenge.’

‘Do you have names?’ asked Ferguson.

‘A few,’ said Mukhtar.

‘Excuse me,’ said Sergeant Dennis Carr, ‘but all the kiddie-fiddling priests and child-thrashing nuns were smoked out years ago. I can’t see how anyone with personal grievances against the clergy could be young. Not these days.’

‘I didn’t say they were,’ said Mukhtar. ‘Many in the subcultures I mentioned aren’t young at all. Some are as old as I am! Besides, there are grievances against the clergy other than child abuse. Some people blame religion for whatever’s gone wrong in their lives. Usually sex is involved, but not necessarily any abuses of that nature suffered at the hands of priests.’

‘I take it,’ said Ferguson, ‘that someone has checked the name of Father Liam Murphy on the database of the Vatican Occupation Authority?’

‘Naturally,’ said Mukhtar. ‘He came through the purges without a stain on his character. That’s why I suspect some political or sectarian motive, rather than personal.’

‘OK,’ said Ferguson, standing up and moving to the front again. ‘Thank you, everyone. I need hardly say that if DCI Mukhtar is correct, we need to find the perpetrator quickly. In fact, even if he’s wrong. Carry on, keep the situation page updated, liaise with each other, report to me, and let’s get this bastard nailed.’ He looked around. ‘Dennis, you have a question?’

‘I was wondering,’ said Carr, ‘if we shouldn’t offer police security to other priests? Locally, that is.’

‘Out of the question,’ said Ferguson. ‘Even if we had the resources, which we don’t, we don’t even know who the clergy are. No official cognisance, remember?’

Carr nodded. Mukhtar smiled and looked sly.

‘And I’m not breaking firewalls to find out,’ Ferguson added. ‘As to what we tell the media . . .’ He glanced over at Skulk. ‘Perhaps we should put it like this. We’re treating this as a murder inquiry. There is a slim possibility that the motive was anti-religious hostility, so other clergy, Catholic or otherwise, should be vigilant. Plus the usual appeals.’

‘Got it,’ said the leki.

‘What about our other investigations?’ asked DS Hutchins. ‘The Leith Water business?’

‘I need priorities,’ added Carr.

‘I’ll get back to you,’ said Ferguson. ‘That’s all for now.’ He turned around to study the board. Behind him everyone but Skulk filed out.

*

Ferguson returned to his office with Skulk at about three p.m. When he turned on his phone clip he found eight messages in his voicemail, and fifteen emails on his desk slate. Half of them were from above, demanding with increasing urgency that he get the Easter Road case sorted out fast; half from below, pleading other urgent work.

‘Give me an update,’ said Ferguson, sitting down and looking reluctantly at a notepad and a wad of forms. ‘What do we have to put on the back burner if we prioritise this?’

Skulk patched a task tree to Ferguson’s desk slate. Ferguson poked about in it for a bit. ‘A’ Division of Lothian and Borders Police currently had two other active murder investigations: one street stabbing from five days earlier, one domestic bludgeoning from last night. There were the usual traffic accidents, assaults, thefts. And then there was the investigation that he and Hutchins, Patel and Connolly had been working on for weeks: some thuggery arising out of a conflict between a local security company, Hired Muscle, and the Gazprom goons down at Leith Water. Gazprom hadn’t been happy with Hired Muscle’s security on the docks, citing pilfering and (in a typical Russian ploy, Ferguson reckoned) sabotage of crated space-industry components from the defence company Rosoboroneksport on trans-shipment to Turnhouse and thence to the Atlantic Space Elevator. Gazprom’s own security staff had taken up the business dispute in the manner likewise typical of capitalism with Russian characteristics – with tyre irons.

Ferguson called up his immediate boss, DCI Frank McAuley, and repeated the question.

‘Everything,’ McAuley said.

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_{The Night Sessions is available at all good retailers this August. To find out more about Ken MacLeod and other Orbit authors, visit the Orbit website at Orbitbooks.net.}

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