Where the Bodies are Buried by Christopher Brookmyre, Brookmyre

nobody took any notice,or they had their plate too full with prioritised duties to be able to give something so non-urgent their attention?
    ‘Why didn’t you come and look for me?’
    She couldn’t stand there crying, waiting for her mum to come back or for another grown-up to take her hand and sort it all
     out for her. She was an adult with a job to do. It was time to go to work.

Motives
    ‘All right, victim, James McDiarmid: how’s his background profile coming along?’ Catherine asked, by way of drawing the incident
     room to attention. She was on her fourth cup of coffee to get through this, having been on her feet for around fourteen hours.
     Just the kind of first day back that served to rapidly erase all memory of your holiday, not to mention much of the restorative
     benefit.
    She used to feel uncomfortably schoolmarmish when she was first in charge of these gatherings. This had been largely salved
     by reaching the understanding that the true value of such meetings wasn’t for the team to report their findings to her, but
     for her to assure herself that everybody knew what everybody knew. Assumed knowledge – and in particular the mutual assumption
     that the other person had passed something on – was a hazard that grew in direct proportion to the size of an investigation.
    ‘Well, they won’t be putting up any plaques in his memory,’ responded Anthony Thomson, who had been charged with this particular
     task. Beano, as he was known, was the baby of the bunch, an inexperienced but enthusiastic DC whose eager professionalism
     was borne out by the fact that he was sitting there with his leg in plaster from ankle to hip. He’d broken it in several places
     falling off a garage roof in pursuit of a suspect, but had insisted on showing up to work every day, taking on any station-bound
     task, however menial or tedious.
    ‘He was an eyewateringly vicious individual, even for Gallowhaugh,’ Beano went on. ‘Started off as a debt collector for Tam
     Beattie back in the early nineties, along with his pal Paddy Steel.’
    ‘Aye, that was the local equivalent of a YTS in those days,’ said Raeside.
    ‘Fond of his blades, liked to say he’d marked more men than a tattoo artist. Not just a slasher, though. Stabbed Arthur Lafferty
     to death inside the Caplet Arms pub in February 1996 in front of roughly thirty witnesses, none of whom saw a thing. The case
     remains officially open. The dogs in the street know who did it, but McDiarmid walked awayclean. Same deal again in July 2004, when he killed Paul McGroarty, reportedly over an unpaid drug debt. McDiarmid fronted
     a quantity of heroin to McGroarty on tick. Problem was, McGroarty got lifted and his stash pochled by the polis. McDiarmid
     discovered that the value of your investments can go down as well as up, and acted with a view to ensuring greater probity
     from any future venture-capital beneficiaries. He killed McGroarty in broad daylight: went up to him while his car was stopped
     on a red, reached through the open window and stabbed him through the throat. This time there were civilian witnesses, but
     by the time the case was due to reach court, none of them were prepared to give evidence.
    ‘These are just the greatest hits, and the ones we know about. He’s locally believed to have accounted for at least two more
     murders, as well as having a noted predilection for abduction and torture if he felt he needed to make a lasting impression
     on somebody but still wanted them alive. It’s actually a bugger he’s dead, because my sister and her husband were looking
     for a babysitter.’
    ‘What about Lafferty and McGroarty?’ Catherine asked. ‘Any family or friends possibly been biding their time?’
    ‘Lafferty was a thirty-five-year-old father of three with no criminal connections, just a guy in the wrong pub at the wrong
     time who didn’t know who he was up against when he got into a drunken argument. McGroarty, though, had a