When The Devil Drives by Christopher Brookmyre

obsessed with the brutal and the disgusting. Something in them sought out the horrible, no matter how much you tried to guide them otherwise. They really were made of frogs and snails and puppy-dog tails, and Catherine worried constantly about what was in their heads, and about what might
get
in their heads.
    ‘I agree partly. I just don’t feel so strongly about it. It clearly means more to you that the boys shouldn’t play certain games than it does to me, so I’m happy to go along with that. It’s no biggy.’
    ‘But I don’t want you just to go along with it. I want you to see what I see here. I want you to understand what’s wrong with the idea of our children learning to kill via a simulator.’
    Drew reeled a little at this, and she thought for a moment she had really struck a telling blow, one that truly altered his perspective. He took a moment then sighed again, which informed her that this was not in fact the case.
    ‘With respect, Cath,’ he began, then paused, considering and perhaps carefully revising what he was going to say. ‘You’re a long way off your patch here. I don’t want to fight about this, but what I will say is that, in my experience, people who disapprove of violent video games have usually never played one.’
    Catherine felt the surge of quite disproportionate anger that came whenever she sensed somebody was trying to put her in her place. So when her mobile rang, interrupting a post-prandial conversation for the several hundredth time in their marriage, it was probably a mercy upon both of them.
    ‘I have to take this,’ she said, given the name that was flashing on her screen.
    Drew gave a resigned and slightly huffy shrug.
    He was generally very tolerant and understanding of these interruptions, acknowledging that he had long since accepted they were part of the package that came with Catherine, but on occasion the timing could test his patience to the limit. This was one of those times, largely because she could tell he was already a little pissed off at her for the evening not going how he’d hoped.
    Catherine, for her part, was usually just as frustrated and resentful when the calls came out of hours, but in this instance some spiteful part of her welcomed it, perhaps because she didn’t have a come-back for Drew’s last gambit.
    It was Sunderland, the Almighty: calling when she was, nominally at least, off duty. This usually meant he was handing her a whole bundle of grief, the true extent and ungodly nature of which would only reveal itself over time.
    ‘There’s been a shooting in Cragruthes, up near Alnabruich,’ Sunderland told her, his voice weary with portent. She could tell there was a fire starting to catch and he wanted her to douse it before somebody got very badly burned. ‘I need you up there first thing in the morning to take charge.’
    Alnabruich, though: that was up in the Highlands, so she didn’t get the angle. Was it related to something else she was working on?
    ‘And DI McSheepshagger of Highland can’t deal with this because …?’ she inquired.
    ‘Because it’s not on his manor. Alnabruich is a long way from Govan, but it’s still Strathclyde’s patch. It’s Argyllshire.’
    Bugger, she thought.
    ‘What’s the script?’ she asked. ‘Murder?’
    ‘Fatal shooting is the line at this stage. Took half his face off. Possibility that it was accidental still to be ruled out.’
    This wasn’t exactly blowing her skirt up so far. A shooting in the back of beyond that might not even be a murder wasn’t the kind of thing you gave to a copper of her rank, especially not when she was off duty.
    ‘Okay, all very unfortunate, but you want to tell me why you’re punting it to me?’
    ‘Because the shooting took place in the grounds of Cragruthes Castle, and the vic was standing two feet from Sir Angus McCready, the laird of Ruthes, when it happened.’
    ‘Ah,’ she replied as all became clear. Everyone was equal in the eyes of the law, and