Shadow Man

Book 0: DI Lukas Mahler

by Margaret Kirk

Genres: Mystery; Police Procedurals

Synopsis

A gripping Scottish crime thriller from the winner of the Good Housekeeping Novel Writing competition 2016.

Two brutal killings rock Inverness, and bring ex-Met Detective Inspector Lukas Mahler the biggest challenge of his career...

The body of the queen of daytime TV, Morven Murray is discovered by her sister, Anna, on the morning of her wedding day. But does Anna know more about the murder than she's letting on?

Police informant Kevin Ramsay's murder looks like a gangland-style execution. But what could he have stumbled into that was dangerous enough to get him violently killed?

Mahler has only a couple of weeks to solve both cases while dealing with his mother's fragile mental health. But caught in a deadly game of cat and mouse, is ex-Met DI Lukas Mahler hunting one killer, or two?

Release date: September 11, 2018

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group

Print pages: 352

Sample

 

1994

By midnight, there are bodies everywhere. Her tiny flat is crammed to bursting, but people are still stumbling through the door, waving packs of Stella or Strongbow and wrapping her in cheerful beery hugs.

She doesn’t remember inviting them all – doesn’t recognise half of them, when she stops to think about it – but so what? For the last four years, she’s been juggling coursework with her shifts at the all-night garage, slogging away at her degree while it felt like the rest of the world was out getting laid, or legless. Or both.

Doing it her way, she’d told her parents. Standing on her own two feet, and they couldn’t argue with that, could they? Even if Mum had thrown a massive wobbly at the thought of her baby girl rejecting St Andrews and choosing to study at Glasgow.

But with her finals out of the way, she’s officially an ex-student. So tonight, it’s party time – shedloads of booze, the flat decked out with tea lights and a joke seventies glitter-ball, and all her mates from uni, ready to make a night of it.

Not all of them, though, a snide little voice reminds her. Things didn’t exactly go to plan there, did they? She shakes her head, swallowing the tightness in her throat . . . and suddenly he’s there, watching her from the doorway.

The room’s too dark, too smoky for her to see more than his outline, but she knows it’s him. Who else could it be? She starts to wave him over, and he steps into the light . . . and it isn’t him after all, just some boy she vaguely knows from class.

She drags her hand down, but he’s already seen her. He breaks into a grin and starts to push his way towards her – Christ, surely he can’t think she’d been waiting for him? She spots some girls she knows over to his right and heads straight for them, as though that’s what she’d been going to do all along. When she looks back over her shoulder, he’s gone.

She squeezes past a nest of couples snogging by the kitchen door and grabs a random can from the table. Gary, that was his name, she remembers. He’d given her and Morven a lift to uni when the buses were on strike, walked to the library with them a couple of times – God, but he was a twat. Still, she’s ashamed of blanking him like that. But seeing him standing there, just for a moment she’d thought . . .

Someone’s messing with the music. Morrissey’s cut off, dispatched by the Proclaimers, and then everyone’s joining in, even the close-to-comatose, doing the whole 500-mile-walking, arm-swinging thing until she feels the floor bouncing under her feet.

She shoulders her way through the sweating, heat-sticky bodies until she reaches the balcony and pulls the curtains closed, muting the sounds from inside.

Movement behind her. The curtains lifted by the breeze, she thinks at first, their extravagant lengths belling out and pooling at her feet. But no, it’s more than that . . . the curtains parting and the music blaring briefly as someone slips through to stand behind her, just beyond the edges of her vision. Calling her name, but quietly, so that she has to strain to hear them.

She spins round, and her heel catches in the curtains. Her right foot slips and she stumbles sideways. Her arms flail, reaching out for something to hold on to, but the curtain is wrapping itself around her, covering her eyes and the railing is right behind her, she can feel it cold against her back – Jesus, if she falls, if she goes over . . .

Arms round her waist, peeling away the curtain, scooping her up and out of danger. Holding her gently, as though she’s made of glass.

She looks up at her rescuer, and her eyes widen. Of all the people . . . she starts to ask him what the hell he’s doing there, but he puts his finger to her lips, smiling as though he knows a really cool joke, one he can’t wait to share with her.

He raises her higher, holding her away from his body. She shakes her head and starts to struggle – why’s he mucking about like this? Can’t he see how dangerous this is, how close they are to the edge . . .

He turns, still holding her, leans over the railing.

And lets her go.

 

1

TUESDAY, 27 MAY 2014

Gatwick North Terminal

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

 

Detective Inspector Lukas Mahler looks down at the object battering his left shin.

A chunky boy with a brutal haircut and the hint of a brow-ridge smirks up at him from astride a yellow and black striped suitcase with stubby feeler-like handles projecting from its front and stuck-on features. Some kids’ TV character, Mahler thinks, that’s what it’s supposed to be. Only the eyes are peeling off and half its mouth is missing, giving the face a lopsided look that’s either sad or psychopathic, depending on your point of view. Today, Mahler inclines towards the latter.

The boy is reversing, gearing up for another assault. Before he reaches ramming speed, Mahler swings his cabin bag across and dodges to the right, as far as the taped barrier will allow. He glances at the child’s mother, but her eyes are glued to her mobile, pudgy thumbs flying as she carries on a life-or-death discussion by text. Consulting a child-rearing expert, he decides, fielding a further assault. That, or a pest control service.

Boarding for the Inverness flight is only thirty minutes late, but the queue has been funnelled into a narrow, glass-walled walkway and left to swelter in the midday sun like ants under a magnifying glass. Sweating gently in his dark suit, Mahler tries to ignore the twist of pain circling the base of his neck. And wonders why Dante had imagined there were only nine circles of Hell.

By the time boarding finally starts, he’s wielded the cabin bag three times and his shirt is sticking to him. As soon as he’s seated, he strips off his jacket and loosens his tie. He takes out his book, lets it fall open at one of his favourite passages, but the migraine is settling in now, a steady, white-hot pulse that had stalked him through the service and its aftermath. He dry-swallows a pill and leans back, waiting for the plane door to close.

Only it isn’t happening. The buzz of chatter rises and falls, punctuated by the inevitable wailing baby, as the minutes pass. Then, as the flight attendant starts a rambling explanation, a woman appears in the doorway.

Head lowered, she hurries along the aisle. She isn’t limping, not exactly, but there’s a stiffness to her walk that marks her out as different. Mahler, who knows all about different, watches her progress.

She reaches the row opposite his and slides over to the window. He glimpses pale, sharp features, catches a muttered curse as her hands fumble with the seat belt . . . thin, jittery hands, making a pig’s ear of the simple task. A nervous flyer, apparently. Perfect.

Mahler sighs, more audibly than he’d intended, and the woman turns to glare at him. At which point he abandons the book and reaches for another painkiller. He weighs the consequences of taking it now or later. He looks back at the woman and goes with now.

When the engines start up, he glances at her again. Pre-take-off weeper or belligerent, in-flight screamer? After the look she’d given him, Mahler can’t quite see her as a weeper. But not a vomiter, please God, he thinks. Not today.

He wills the meds to do their stuff and closes his eyes. When he opens them again, the plane is taxiing down Inverness Airport’s one and only runway. Mahler straightens his tie and watches as the passengers begin their restless, end-of-flight manoeuvring. As usual, those in the aisle seats hold all the cards – they’re up and in position within seconds of the ‘fasten seatbelt’ signs going off, building little fortresses of luggage to guard their place in the queue. The window-seat baggers and the mid-rowers are trapped, unable to see over the wall of bodies, but tensed, like runners on starting blocks, ready to surge forward the moment the doors are open. All except the woman.

He’d expected her to scramble to her feet, ready to bolt with the herd, but she hasn’t moved. Even when the exodus begins, the woman stays in her seat, pale hands clenched on her thighs, her jawline . . . oh, that jawline has nothing to do with nerves, he’s suddenly sure of it. There’s something driven in the sharp, travel-weary features and cool grey eyes, something that catches him in spite of himself.

He leans forward to take a closer look, and an expanse of sweatshirt-clad belly rears up in front of him, blocking his vision. By the time the man has wrestled a padded jacket the size of a small duvet from the locker above Mahler’s head, the woman’s seat is empty.

Mahler hoists his bag onto his shoulder and leaves by the rear steps, joining the crocodile of passengers filing into the tiny terminal. The woman is a little way in front, heading for the airport’s only baggage-reclaim carousel. An ordinary woman, he decides, that’s all. No reason to keep her in his eyeline. No reason her thin, pale face shouldn’t blend into the sea of unmemorable others . . . no reason until the conveyor belt shudders into life, and she darts in to pick up a bag. And backs away from the exit that leads to the main concourse.

And there it is. Copper’s gut, Raj used to call the odd, half-formed imperative he’s following, and Mahler supposes it’s as good a name as any. Not a thing that will let itself be named, this raw, unfocused thing, not yet. But a discoverable thing, Mahler thinks. A thing to be probed. To be known.

He watches her tie up her hair and stuff it under a sludge-coloured baseball cap. She’s deliberately standing to one side, letting the other passengers flow towards their waiting friends and family. And then she’s moving, merging with a group of earnest German tourists as they head out into the concourse.

Looking for someone? No, Mahler thinks, she’s hiding. Hiding in plain sight. But why? And who from?

He ducks past the queue for the parking machines . . . and collides with Suitcase Boy’s mother, who’s lumbering across the concourse like a juggernaut in flowered leggings to embrace an older woman. A relative, he assumes, judging by their shared fashion sense.

By the time he’s extricated himself, the woman has gone. He body-swerves Suitcase Boy, who looks to be planning another ram raid, and runs to the exit. Just in time to see the airport shuttle disappearing through the car park barrier.

‘No need to rush, boss – I’ve got ten minutes left on the ticket.’

The words are punctuated by a crunching sound. Mahler turns to see Detective Sergeant Iain ‘Fergie’ Ferguson ambling towards him, clutching a family-sized bag of crisps.

‘What are you doing here? I thought you were jetting off to the flesh-pots of Marbella on Tuesday?’

‘Me too.’ Fergie upends the bag and funnels the last pieces into his mouth. ‘But Zofia and me had a wee domestic at the weekend, and there was bugger all point going on my own, so I turned in for a few extra shifts. And got told to go and get you as soon as you’d landed. Didn’t you check your phone?’

‘Not yet. There was a woman on the flight—’

‘Oh, aye?’ Fergie manages to wink and grin at the same time, giving him the look of a leering potato. ‘Fit, was she?’

Mahler rolls his eyes. ‘Could you get your mind out of your boxers for one second? She was . . .’

He glances at Fergie and shakes his head. Trying to avoid someone? Behaving strangely in a public place? Undoubtedly. But half the travelling public could probably put their hands up to that one. And on the spectrum of measurable oddness, Mahler knows perfectly well where most of his colleagues would place him. So he’s got nothing he can offer Fergie, no rationale for her continuing presence in the forefront of his brain, unless he holds his hands up to a hunch. And he doesn’t do hunches.

Oh, Raj would have gone for it, no doubt about that. Raj had believed in the whole copper’s intuition, weird-feeling-in-my-water thing – he’d clung to it like an access-all-areas pass, no matter what. And look where that had got him.

‘Forget it.’ He switches on his mobile and scrolls through the alerts. No surprise about the first three. But the fourth? ‘Any idea why I’m being summoned?’

Fergie shrugs. ‘Braveheart wants you in asap, that’s all I know. I was at a house-breaking in Ardersier when I got told to play taxi driver. But if you wanted to drop in on your mam first—’

Mahler shakes his head. His mother has only called three times, which means she’s basically okay and her support worker has his number if anything changes. And for DCI June Wallace to call him in fresh from the airport . . . well, whatever’s up, it can’t be good.

‘I’ll look in on her after I’ve been to Burnett Road. Better not keep the DCI waiting.’

Fergie’s ancient Audi is parked between two sleek black 4×4s, looking more like a dustbin on wheels than ever.

‘Hold on a minute.’ Fergie heaves open the passenger door and slides a slag heap of fast-food debris off the seat and into the footwell. ‘There you go. What?’

‘Nothing.’ Mahler sits down, trying to ignore the sludge-like stickiness under his left thigh. He takes a couple of shallow breaths, inhaling the fags and fish supper fug that constitutes the Audi’s atmosphere. And something else, something eye-wateringly ammoniac . . .

‘What is making that godawful smell?’

‘Weird, isn’t it?’ Fergie fishes out a Homer Simpson air-freshener and hangs it from the mirror. ‘There, that’ll sort it till I’ve time for a wee tidy-up.’ A sideways glance at Mahler. ‘Boss, I meant to say . . . I’m sorry about your pal. That was an awful thing. Awful.’

‘Yes. Thank you.’

‘Aye.’ Fergie clears his throat. ‘Aye, well. Better no’ keep herself waiting, eh?’ He does something unspeakable to the Audi’s gears and the car lurches towards the exit.

Mahler grits his teeth as a series of clunking noises chart their progress over the speed bumps. ‘Not a good idea, no. But let’s see if we can make it back without being pulled over by our friends in traffic this time, shall we? And for pity’s sake keep that window open.’

 

2

It’s only eight miles from Inverness Airport to the city centre – eight deceptively rural-seeming miles, past sheep-dotted fields and dense dark woodland, thick with birch and fir. But the good weather has brought out the tourists and the A96 is at its snarled-up, caravan-congested worst. By the time Fergie pulls in to Burnett Road, it’s after 3.30 p.m. and traffic is piling onto the Harbour Road roundabout, the main entrance and exit to the city.

Mahler leaves Fergie mucking out the Audi and goes upstairs to find June Wallace. By rights, of course, she shouldn’t still be based here. In the dying days of Northern Constabulary, before the unveiling of Police Scotland, Mahler had assumed, along with everyone else, that she would join the exodus to Perth Road’s divisional HQ.

But June had never been one for living up to other people’s expectations. While half the former CID were wandering round with boxes under their arms and bemused expressions, waiting to be called to the promised land, she’d quietly set up camp at Burnett Road. And made it perfectly clear she’d no intention of going anywhere.

‘I like to know what’s going on,’ she’d told Mahler once. ‘See the good folk of Inverness going about their business. And keep an eye on the others – the rapists, the wife-beaters, all the wee chancers that think they’re too smart to get lifted by us, until they find out different. How could I do that stuck in an office next to bloody Tesco?’

Though a police station next to a patch of waste ground and a grey sixties college building is hardly in the thick of things, Mahler reflects. Inverness is growing away from its beginnings by the Ness, the fledgling city spreading out towards Culloden and the new university and creeping up towards the hills. Still, he knows what she means.

And even if the place sometimes reminds him of a low-rent office block, all blond sandstone and tinted glass, Burnett Road is home to the MIT, the Major Incident Team. His MIT, for better or worse. For now.

 

June is in her office. She looks up from her mobile and waves him in, but carries on talking.

‘For Christ’s sake, Pat, it’s not rocket science. Bring the little toerag in and – what? Aye, all right. Fine.’ She ends the call and screws up the note she’d been scribbling. ‘Bloody waste of space.’ She looks him up and down. ‘Fergie got you back in one piece, then. What was the road like?’

‘The usual.’

‘Uh-huh.’ She pushes her hair off her forehead, flashes of grey visible here and there through the faded blonde. ‘Kevin Ramsay. Ring any bells?’

Mahler sorts through his mental rogues’ gallery. Kevin Ramsay. Five foot nothing of attitude and breath that could fell a charging rhino. Lifted regularly for petty pilfering, drunk and disorderly and the odd common assault. So what’s he done to get June’s attention?

‘Pretty minor league, surely? Unless he’s gone upmarket.’

‘Not exactly.’ June opens her desk drawer, stares down at an unopened packet of Lambert & Butler, and closes it with a sigh. ‘You know Andy Black used him from time to time?’

‘As a CHIS?’ Mahler tries and fails to imagine Kevin Ramsay as a covert human intelligence source. ‘Interesting choice. Is he any good?’

‘He was absolute rubbish. But on Sunday night, wee Kevin was out drinking with his pals at the Fluke. He left around eleven, saying he had run out of money, and was last seen near Fraser Park by a mannie out walking his dog.’

Mahler mentally retraces the route. ‘Bit of a detour if he was going back into town, surely?’

June shrugs. ‘His girlfriend lives in Hilton, so he may have been heading up to see her. Only he never got there. A lassie out for a run found him on the corner of Damfield Road around six o’clock yesterday morning. What was left of him, anyway.’

‘Hit-and-run?’

‘With half a dozen tyre tracks on his bum?’ June shakes her head. ‘He wasn’t just hit once, Lukas – whoever did it went back and reversed over him. It was a bloody execution! And I want you to get the bastard responsible.’

‘Me? Surely Andy Black—’

‘Andy Black’s off sick after doing his back in at a ceilidh.’

‘An unwise “Strip the Willow”?’

June shakes her head. ‘Argument with the fiddle player. His pal took offence and clouted Andy with his accordion – you’d think he’d have more sense, a man his age. Anyway, it’ll only be for a few weeks. You can handle that, can’t you?’

On top of the Black Isle stabbing and the half-dozen other cases she’s breathing down his neck about? ‘Of course. But I’ll need a DS, and Fergie’s pretty stretched already.’

‘Karen Gilchrist’s already on the case.’ She gives him the kind of guileless smile Hannibal Lecter probably liked to practise in the mirror. Only with June, he suspects it comes naturally. ‘Not going to have any . . . fallout . . . there, am I? After last summer?’

‘Of course not, ma’am.’

‘Well, then. All she needs is a good SIO to keep on top of things until Andy’s back – and you’re the best I have, Lukas.’

And the big boys are landing on you from a great height, he thinks. Quarterly figures due soon, big partnership meetings . . . and until Andy gets back, I’m all you have.

‘If that’s everything, ma’am?’

‘Enough to be going on with, I’d have said.’ Her smile fades. ‘Look, I’m sorry about hauling you in straight after . . . how did it go, anyway? He was a good pal, wasn’t he?’

The squat, utilitarian lines of the crematorium. The brass, conspicuous by their absence. And Claire shrunk to nothing, as though something was consuming her from within. Raj was my age, he thinks. With a two-year-old. Take a bloody guess.

‘Fine,’ Mahler tells her. ‘It went fine.’

 

3

4.45 P.M.

Bunchrew House Hotel, near Inverness

‘Ms Murray?’

Anna opens an eye. The barman – bar boy, she amends, considering he looks about twelve – is hovering by her elbow with a bowl of soup and plate of oatcakes. She doesn’t remember ordering anything apart from a glass of wine, but now that it’s in front of her she realises she hasn’t eaten since leaving San Diego. She sits up straighter in the high-backed leather armchair, hopes to God she hasn’t actually been drooling, and finds a smile from somewhere. ‘Thanks.’

He blushes, turns away, and turns back. ‘I was wondering . . . you’re Morven Murray’s sister, right?’

She manages to hold the smile. Just. ‘If it’s an autograph you’re after—’

The blush spreads. He stammers through an explanation about how much his mother loved Morven, how meeting her idol would really make her day. Anna keeps the smile in place as she scribbles down his contact details and promises to see what she can do.

She’s given up trying to warn people that what they see on screen isn’t quite the real Morven. The blonde earth-goddess persona her sister has created is just too convincing for that to be believable. Before they meet her, at least.

As if on cue, her phone vibrates – Morven, checking to see she hasn’t fled the country, no doubt, after their not-so-fond reunion at their parents’ house. Anna switches it to silent, but it’s still vibrating, so she stuffs it into her holdall. And, not for the first time, wonders what on earth she’s doing here.

Going back for Morven’s wedding, she’d told her friends, as though it was no big deal. As though she hadn’t invested years in keeping her past and present five thousand miles apart. And it had worked, hadn’t it? She’s proud of the career she’s built in UCSD’s European history department, proud of the way she’s adapted to the city’s easy-going, small-town lifestyle. After ten years, she can’t imagine living anywhere else.

She sticks the spoon into her soup and swirls it round a couple of times. Leek and potato, she decides, examining the floating lumps . . . Christ, she must be jet-lagged. She pushes it away untouched and angles her chair round to look out of the window.

The weather is doing its usual Highland trick of changing two or three times in the course of a few hours. The sun has disappeared now and grey rain-clouds are scudding across the darkening sky. But she certainly can’t fault the choice of venue. Bunchrew House is small but startlingly pretty, like a French chateau in miniature, right on the southern shore of the Beauly Firth. Perfect for the wedding pictures, that view. Whoever Morven’s sold them to.

She thinks about another glass of wine – after this morning’s slanging match with Morven, more wine sounds like an excellent way to pass the time until her hotel room’s ready – but lack of food and sleep are starting to catch up with her and there’s a man standing on the terrace, looking out at the firth. His collar is turned up against the wind and she can’t see his face clearly, but he looks a hell of a lot like Morven’s tame journo, the one she’d evaded at the airport.

She pushes back her chair and stands up, as the man turns to come inside. And his mouth falls in a wide, cartoonish ‘O’.

‘Anna?’ The look of shock morphing into a disbelieving grin as he walks towards her. ‘My God, is that you?’

A tall man, powerfully built but not in-your-face musclebound. Dark hair curling over his collar, and a slightly crooked nose – an old break, maybe? Something familiar about him, definitely.

She’s still trying to place him when the espresso machine behind her gives a sudden hiss. He half-turns at the unexpected noise. And she can’t believe she didn’t recognise him at once.

‘Jamie?’ He’s lost weight since their time at university, at least a couple of stones, and ditched the heavy glasses that made him look like a fifties newsreader. But it is him, she’s sure of it. ‘Jamie Gordon! What are you doing here?’

‘Same as you, guest at the wedding of the year.’ He produces an envelope from his pocket. ‘Came to drop this off for Morven, but looks like she’s not around.’

‘I didn’t know you’d kept in touch.’

He shakes his head. ‘I hadn’t. When she emailed out of the blue, I was in two minds at first. But I was going to be up here anyway, so I thought, why not? Wasn’t expecting you to come over, though.’

‘She’s my sister.’ Ice touching her spine and sharpening her voice. She picks up the wine she’d ordered earlier and drains it.

‘I know. It’s just . . . you weren’t exactly close at uni, were you?’

‘Uni was ages ago, Jamie. All water under the bridge.’

‘If you say so.’ He flicks through the drinks menu. ‘Anyone else from back in the day get an invite, do you think?’

‘Only the “A” list ones, like you.’

He rolls his eyes. ‘A couple of moderately successful historical novels doth not a celeb make. Have you seen Morven yet?’

‘We spoke at Mam and Dad’s. Briefly.’

Dad a little thinner, a little frailer than before. Mam fussing with the tea things, casting brief bitter glances at Anna’s now-ringless left hand – it’s over a year since the break-up, but her mother’s still mourning the charismatic, successful son-in-law she’d so nearly acquired. Then there was Morven, spilling out of an airport minicab, wearing her Homicidal Barbie look.

‘Though she’d ditched the stylist and photographer by then, thank God. I sneaked out the back and legged it into town.’

Jamie raises an eyebrow. ‘That good, huh? You could just have stayed away, you know.’

‘Not that simple. I don’t come back often enough as it is. And when I do—’

Her holdall is buzzing like an angry wasp. She pulls out her phone and glances at the text.

‘I’m guessing that was her?’

‘On her way over.’ Anna covers it with her napkin. ‘You think I’ve got time to make it back to the airport, if I leave now?’

‘I’ve got a better idea. How about we go AWOL and buy you some breathing space, before the Queen of Daytime TV gets here and sets her pet paparazzo on us?’

‘Tempting. But I suppose I should try and straighten things out with her, for Mam and Dad’s sake. The wedding’s only two days away, and it’ll take her at least twenty-four hours to calm down.’

Jamie pulls a face. ‘It’ll keep, surely? Why don’t we head into town and check out the Gellions, see if it’s as disreputable as ever . . . unless you’re too jet-lagged?’

Half an hour ago, she’d have said yes, she really was. The sensible thing would be to go back to her room and grab an hour’s sleep before Morven appears for round two. But running into Jamie like this . . . she’d despised most of Morven’s university friends, hated the way they’d looked at her – looked through her, most of the time, taking their lead from Morven.

But Jamie had been different. He’d made her feel she was bright and funny and interesting, not just Morven’s geeky little sister, and she’d missed him when he’d moved away. She shakes her head.

‘Too jet-lagged for the Gellions, I think. But I could probably cope with the Heathmount?’

‘Good enough. But you need to switch that’ – he gestures towards her phone – ‘to silent, or she’ll be hassling you all evening.’

‘No, she won’t.’ Anna powers off her mobile and drops it in her bag. ‘I’ll deal with her tomorrow, once my brain decides what time zone it belongs in. Tonight . . . tonight Morven can go to hell.’

 

4

Mahler’s new team are on the first floor, in one of the old admin offices. He watches them through the window for a moment, assessing. A table of uniformed PCs are on phone duty, their expressions ranging from weary to get-me-out-of-here as they wade through the lists of checks and counter-checks. Donna’s sucking on a can of Irn-Bru, shaking her head at ‘Skivey Pete’, whose IT skills are matched only by his near-legendary ability to avoid hard work. Donna looks mildly amused, so Mahler assumes he’s not telling her one of his jokes.

And at the far end of the room, a tall woman in an electric blue jacket is. . .