I can see from here that his throat’s been cut. Death would have been near instantaneous. Dr Cadwallader will be able to give you more details...

When the first squad car arrived five minutes later, McLean was sitting on the stone steps outside, breathing the fresh city air and trying not to think about what he had seen. He set the two PCs to secure the area, knowing full well that the back door was locked, and carried on waiting for the police doctor to arrive.

Meanwhile the SOC van rumbled up the street and half a dozen officers piled out.

He was surprised to find himself pleased at seeing the smiling face of “Miss-not-Ms” Emma Baird, her digital camera already out of its case and slung around her neck. Then he remembered what she’d be photographing.

“You’ve got another dead body for us, inspector. This is becoming something of a habit, isn’t it?”

McLean let out a half-hearted laugh by way of reply, watching the SOC team clamber into their white paper overalls and grab their cases from the back of the van.

“What’ve you touched?” the senior technician asked, passing a set of overalls to McLean.

“The front door, the inner door and the back door. I had to use the phone, too. To call it in.”

“Don’t they give inspectors mobiles anymore?” “Battery’s dead.”

McLean lifted the offending article out of his pocket, waved it in front of the technician and put it back again, then started to pull on the overalls.

The body

As they were getting ready, a battered old VW Golf rattled up, parked itself in the middle of the street and disgorged an enormous man in an ill-fitting suit. He pulled a medical bag from the passenger seat and waddled over.

Dr Buckley was an amiable fellow, as long as you didn’t ask him stupid questions.

“Where’s the body then?”

“You’ll need to suit up, doc,” McLean said, knowing it would get him a scowl and not being disappointed.

There was a scramble to find a pair of overalls that would fit, but finally they were able to re-enter the house.

He led them straight to the study.

If anything the smell was worse. Lazy houseflies buzzed around the body.

“He’s dead,” Dr Buckley said, without even entering the room. He turned to leave.

“Is that it? You’re not going to examine him?” McLean asked.

“Not my job, and you know it, inspector. I can see from here that his throat’s been cut. Death would have been near instantaneous. Dr Cadwallader will be able to give you more details when he gets here. Good day.”

McLean watched the fat man waddle out of the house, then turned back to the SOC team.

“OK, I guess you can start on the room, but don’t touch the body until the pathologist gets here.”

They moved in like a small but efficient swarm of ants.

The flash on Emma’s camera popped away as McLean finally entered the room.

The first thing he noticed was the pile of clothes, neatly draped over the back of a leather armchair in the corner. Shirt, jacket, tie.

He looked back at the body and realised it was undressed from the waist up.

Moving behind the desk, he winced as he saw the mess of entrails spilling into the lawyer’s lap, draping to the polished wooden floorboards.

His chair had been pushed back from the desk a small distance, and he sat upright, almost posed, with his hands dropping to either side.

Blood had trickled down his bare arms, dripping from the ends of his fingers to form twin pools beneath.

A short-bladed Japanese kitchen knife lay on the desk in front of him, smeared in blood and gore.

Copycat

“Good God, Tony. What the hell’s been going on here?” McLean looked round to see Angus Cadwallader standing in the doorway. He had already pulled on a paper overall, and Dr Sharp stood nervously behind him.

“Does any of this look familiar to you, Angus?” McLean stepped aside to let the pathologist get a closer look.

“Superficially, yes. It’s obviously a copy of the Smythe and Stewart killings.”

Cadwallader bent down close to the body, prodding the gash in Carstairs’ neck with his gloved fingers.

“But I can’t say here what came first, the throat cut or the evisceration. Hard to see if anything’s missing, either. Ah, what’s this?” He stood, leaning over the corpse and prising open its mouth.

“Bag please, Tracy, and a pair of forceps.” Cadwallader took the instrument and started to fish around.

“You wouldn’t have thought it would all fit in there. Ah, no, it’s been cut in half. That would explain it.”

“Explain what, Angus?” McLean stifled a belch. Christ but it’d be embarrassing to throw up. It wasn’t as if he was some fresh-faced PC seeing his first corpse.

“But then he’d come here to have supper with Carstairs.

“This, inspector, is what we doctors call the liver.” Cadwallader lifted up a long, slimy purple-brown strip of material, pincered in his forceps, then dropped it into the waiting bag.

“Your killer’s cut a strip of it and shoved it in his victim’s mouth.

“I can’t tell from here whether it’s his or not, but I can’t think of any other reason for tearing him up like that.”

He pointed at the mess that had once been Carstairs’ stomach and chest.

“Let’s get him back to the mortuary, shall we. See what secrets he has to reveal.”

Boss

“I’m sorry, Tony, but I’m going to have to give the investigation to Chief Inspector Duguid.”

McLean stood in front of Chief Superintendent McIntyre’s desk, not quite at attention, but neither relaxed.

She’d summoned him the moment he’d arrived at the station that morning, bright and early after a night of fitful sleep and horrible nightmares. He clenched his teeth against the retort he wanted to make, willed himself to relax.

Losing his temper with the boss was never going to help.

“Why?” he asked, finally.

“Because you’re too close to Carstairs.”

More tomorrow.

Natural Causes by Fife farmer-turned-author James Oswald is the first in the Inspector McLean series. It is published by Penguin, rrp, £7.99. Bury Them Deep, the latest in the series, is published by Headline in February, rrp £14.99.