THE KILLING FLOOR

A motorist's accident uncovers a corpse in the shrubbery outside an unoccupied house in suburban Glasgow—a corpse without head or hands, dead at least six months. A cold trail, then? Not for Sgt. Ray Sussock and his indefatigable colleagues of P Division (Long Day Monday, 1993, etc.), who waste no time in identifying the dead woman as dislikable social worker Pam McArthur, a born stirrer of hornets' nests, missing since last June 7. ``Annoying but not dangerous,'' Thomasina McArthur offers for her sister's eulogy—a description that seems all too accurate when the P Division uncovers a fatal meeting on June 6 between the inquisitive Pam McArthur and the men who made an appointment with her shortly after she got onto the trail of an unspecified 30-year-old scandal. One of those three men is improbably eager to talk, but the second man he identifies is found dead hours later at the hands of someone who fits the description of the third man. With so much corroboration, the case seems open and shut, but knowing isn't proving, especially under the Scottish law requiring corroborative evidence, and Turnbull keeps the tension ratcheted up until the end. Rock-solid procedural work by all hands, enlivened by Turnbull's usual trenchant snapshots of every hand but the corpse's.