Slack Water

A hard frost, a dark quay, and a good man at the foot of the steps.

Davie Buthlay went from the boats to the Fishermen's Mission, and for thirty years he has been the man the Broch's crews go to when the money runs out or the marriage does. When he is found crushed below the quay steps on a November morning, Fraserburgh mourns and agrees: black ice, an old back, a slip in the dark.

Detective Inspector Cormac Buchan is in town for his wife's winter concert when the call comes. He is half deaf in one ear, entirely patient, and he has a habit of standing about on cold ground looking at things nobody thinks worth looking at. The frost. The tide. A spring line that has been tied twice. Because a town can agree on a story, and a quay can still keep a different set of books.

The second of the DI Cormac Buchan Investigations: a Scottish police procedural about trust, a harbour that knows everything, and the most respected man in the Broch.