Four days ago, she chose a little black dress for the funeral. Then she died.

In the cemetery, misery shrouded the Gothic monuments to the dead, reminding those huddled by the grave that their turn to be forgotten would arrive sooner than they’d like. Now, as this indescribable day in January perished to night, black rooks cawed a final symphony for the departed soul.

Carter had endured more sorrow than most, but this interment nearly broke him. In the minus-freezing temperature around the open ditch with the shiny black coffin snuggled seven feet down, it took his all to stand up. He shuffled his feet to tempt blood into his toes, while beyond the chasm, sounds of weeping reminded him of his place. Excluded, he stared defiantly across at her family, while they ignored him and the riot of weeping angels he had for support.

But who would she choose to be beside her?

Not him. For him she chose life.

What about Daddy? Reading Carter’s thoughts, Judge James Paterson QC, esteemed member of the Establishment, lifted his head and met Carter’s glower. ‘This is all your doing,’ his cut-glass voice hissed across the societal divide. ‘If it wasn’t for you she’d still be here.’ Beside him, mother Judith soothed her husband’s ire, and within a moment duty’s mourning returned.

Bitterness raged in Carter’s reply, ‘And what would you know of it?’

He seethed; Paterson knew nothing of Lauren’s character. She hadn’t exactly rebelled, that wouldn’t do, but she’d never been her father’s daughter and marrying a copper asserted her independence just enough to forge a constitutional crisis in his narrow-minded mind.

The black-gowned minister mumbled the committal prayer then gasped a tedious ‘Amen,’ drawing the skirmish to a socially acceptable close. Turning away, the blood-line shunned the living and deserted the dead. Penance over, they streamed up the slope towards life, led by the great man himself.

Carter remained, his soul bound to the tomb of his lover. Like a refusenik holding back pain, he bit on frozen lips, silently willing the professional family to be gone so this defining moment with his wife would be as enduring as her gravestone. Finally, the dull orange glow of winter outside Old Calton Burial Ground claimed the last of the family.

From the texture of the underworld fossors emerged to claim her body, keen to be at this outlandish job to maximise their drinking time. The engine of the Manitou rumbled into life, and before Carter’s eyes, the digger prepared to entomb her corpse in cold clay till Judgement.

But still he wasn’t for moving, so the diesel stalled, its dying rattle ushering the ethereal silence back into the graveyard; a silence that gave licence to thoughts of present, past and future. What sin carried a tariff so high that the only reparation was every last bit of her? Anguish tore at his heart, slicing through the dormant scars with its razor claw. Like blood spilt on stone his grief overflowed.

‘I'm cursed!’ His knees met freezing soil.

Bending over the open ditch, his tears poured onto her casket as he sobbed for the one woman who’d truly known him. ‘Were we a mistake, Lauren? Were you just yet another wrong answer in my life?’

His grief gushed brightly and quickly, soaking into the earth, then he sat back on his heels, disregarding the coldness infusing his legs. His composure returned, and with it, acknowledgement of the turning point in their marriage.

He’d suppressed his instinct on her insistence. She’d smothered his concerns, would not trust him with her secret because she knew what he was capable of, so she soothed, placated and loved him. As resignedly as she loved Nathaniel, born only six weeks ago.

After the difficulties of his birth, she embraced death. Months ago, she’d tried to erase the “lost weekend”, assuming Carter’s unshakable love for her would prevail. But she’d underestimated his curiosity, his need to know, his distrust of a wife’s reasons to lie. He’d recovered the clothes she’d worn the day she arrived home. Bagged, tagged and stored them. Knowing the time would come when they would lead him to a hateful truth.

‘I’ll find out what happened, Lauren,’ he stood up and brushed himself down.

The diesel coughed its respect.

Burial time.

‘Goodbye Babes,’ he swore his last vow. ‘Someone will pay for this, trust me.’

Detective Sergeant Lachlan Carter nodded to the gravediggers, then turned on his heel. To begin the reckoning. To negotiate terms with his past and rebuild his future. Again.

Onwards and upwards towards the festering City of Edinburgh.