Free Quite Ugly One Morning by Christopher Brookmyre

told me the second.’
    Parlabane put his own finished mug down and took a deep breath.
    ‘Can I trust you?’ he asked quietly.
    ‘I have absolutely no idea,’ she said. ‘That’s your call.’
    ‘All right, scratch that. I’m going to trust you. I saw the place downstairs, before the police had cleared up. I saw the wreckage. I saw the body.’
    He swallowed, nervously. He was about to turn her world upside down, black into white, light into dark, and she had no idea what was coming. He knew it was not entirely fair to share out such a burden without really waiting to be asked, but he needed her help and the best way to get it was to make her need his.
    ‘I believe your ex-husband was murdered.’
    She closed her eyes for half a second, then opened them to reveal a bemused stare.
    ‘I don’t want to injure your professional pride here,’ she said, ‘but I don’t think you’re going to be able to claim thatas an exclusive. I think maybe even the Lothian and Borders have scooped you on this one.’
    Fuck.
    Sometimes he wished a sub-editor could give his speech a once-over before it was issued.
    ‘I’m not finished,’ he said, trying to dig himself out. ‘I mean I have reason to think he, specifically Jeremy Ponsonby, was murdered because someone wanted him dead.’
    Sarah’s eyes remained fixed, cold, on his own. She hadn’t run out screaming and she wasn’t looking at him like he was nuts. This was both a good sign and a bad sign. Good because it meant she thought he might be right. Bad for exactly the same reason.
    ‘Keep talking,’ she said.
    ‘I don’t know how much you’ve been told about how he was murdered and I don’t know how much you want to hear.’
    ‘Trust me, I’m not easily shocked.’
    ‘Fine. All right, he was badly bruised and had had his nose and both index fingers bitten off. Messy, gory, horrible and weird as fuck. But he was killed by having his throat cut. Plain and simple. Now nobody has found the murder weapon, and I doubt anyone ever will, but they’re certainly not going to turn up some kitchen knife missing from your ex-husband’s flat. I’ve had the misfortune of seeing more than one cut throat, and this one was done by someone who took pride in their work, wielding an implement designed with just such a purpose in mind. It was a clean, deep, practised cut with an extremely sharp and probably pretty large blade. No hacking, no slashing.
    ‘Whoever killed your ex-husband has killed plenty of people before, and although the recession has hit us all, I find it hard to believe someone of his skills is having to supplement his income with burglary.’
    Sarah squinted as if at too-bright light, too much information coming in at once.
    A question came along to buy her time to assimilate.
    ‘But if he’s so efficient, what about the mess, what about the fight?’ she asked.
    ‘I said he was efficient at cutting throats. Getting hold of Dr Ponsonby’s must have proven more difficult than he anticipated.’
    ‘And where did you see all these cut throats?’

    ‘A live-action version of the Journal of Wound Care. AKA Los Angeles. I worked there as a reporter for the best part of two years.’
    ‘But why didn’t the police notice this? Why only you, or are you just Mr Hot-shot.’
    ‘The police saw a burglary. They saw a chaotic mess. They saw a giant turd on the mantelpiece. Whether they also saw what I saw . . . they still have to pursue the more obvious line of investigation. That’s incumbent upon them. I mean, yes, there is a possibility that the killer was a burglar who got very lucky with a kitchen knife. I can afford to look into the other possibility and be wrong. They can’t. I’ve got a contact on their side. I’ll tell her what I think. She can then tell McGregor if she buys it. From there it’s his call.
    ‘One of them saw it though, I’m sure,’ Parlabane said. ‘The contact, DC Jenny Dalziel. She wasn’t buying the burglary story, anyway. She