This morning you dealt with: two shoplifting call-outs, getting your team to chase up a bunch of littering offences, a couple of community liaison visits, and you’re due down the station in two hours to record your testimony for the plead-by-email hearing on a serial B#amp#E case you’ve been working on. You’re also baby-sitting Bob—probationary constable Robert Lockhart—who is ever so slightly fresh out of police college and about as probationary as a very probationary thing indeed. So it’s not like you’re not busy or anything, but at least it’s low-stress stuff for the most part.

When Mac IMs you, you’ve just spent half an hour catching up on your paperwork in the Starbucks on Corstorphine High Street, with the aid of a tall latte and a furtive ring Danish. Mary’s been nagging you about your heart ever since that stupid DNA check you both took last year (“so the wee wun kens his maws ur both gawn tae be aboot fer a whiule”), and the way she goes on, you’d think refined sugar was laced with prussic acid. But you can’t afford to be twitchy from low blood sugar if you get a call, and besides, the bloody things taste so much better when they’re not allowed. So you’re stuffing your cheeks like a demented hamster and scribbling in the air with the tip of a sticky finger when a window pops open in front of the espresso machine.

SUE. MAC HERE.

He’s using an evidence-logged CopSpace channel, which means it’s business. Blow me, you think, as you save the incident form you’re halfway through filling in and swap windows.

SUE HERE. GO AHEAD.

With a sinking feeling, you look at your half-finished latte, then glance sideways at Bob. Bob raises an eyebrow at you.

GOT A 4 4U. SMELLS FUNNY. CHECK SOONEST.

You swallow convulsively and take a swig of too-hot coffee, burning the roof of your mouth. It stings like crazy, and you just know the skin’s going to be peeling by evening when you rub it with your tongue.