Resurrection Men

17

Bernie Johns had been a brute of a man, controlling a large chunk of the Scottish drug trade by means of contacts and ruthlessness, disposing of any and all contenders for his crown along the way. People had turned up tortured, maimed or dead — sometimes all three. A lot of people had simply disappeared. There had been talk that such a lengthy and successful reign of terror could be achieved only with the help of the police. In other words, Bernie Johns had been a protected species. This had never been proven, though the “report,” such as it was, made mention of some possible suspects, all based in and around Glasgow, but none of them Francis Gray.

Johns had lived for a large part of his life in an unassuming public housing unit in one of the city’s toughest projects. He’d been “a man of the people,” gifting money to local charities and benefiting everything from toddlers’ playgrounds to old people’s shelters. But the giver was also a tyrant, his munificence tempered by the knowledge that he was paying for power and invulnerability. Anyone came within a hundred yards of him on his home turf, he got to know about it. Police surveillance activities were scuppered within ten minutes of their outset. White vans were rumbled: flats were located and attacked. Nobody was going to get near Bernie Johns. There were plenty of pictures of him in the folder. He was tall, broad at the shoulders, but not physically massive. He wore fashionable suits, his wavy blond hair always carefully groomed. Rebus could imagine him as a child, playing the Angel Gabriel in his school’s Christmas show. The eyes had hardened in the interim, as had the jaw, but Johns had been a handsome man, his face sporting none of the nicks and slashes associated with longevity in a gangster.

And then Operation Clean-Cut had come along, involving several forces in a long-term surveillance and intelligence operation which had ended with a haul of several thousand tabs of Ecstasy and amphetamines, four kilos of heroin, and about the same weight of cannabis. The operation had been branded a success, and Bernie Johns had been put on trial. It wasn’t the first time he’d appeared in a dock. Three previous charges, all dropped due to admin cock-ups or by dint of witnesses changing their minds.

The case against him wasn’t watertight this time either — the Procurator Fiscal’s office had admitted as much in a letter Rebus found in the folder. It could go either way, but they would give it their best shot. Any police officer even rumored to have had links to Johns and his gang was sidelined throughout the investigation and trial. The team kept working even through the duration of the trial, ensuring evidence wasn’t changed or witnesses lost. It was only after Johns’s conviction that he started complaining that he’d been shaken down and ripped off. He wasn’t naming any names, but the story seemed to be that he’d been told that certain pieces of evidence could be “contaminated.” There was a price to pay, of course, and he’d been willing to pay it. One of his men had been dispatched to fetch the money from a secret stash. (Police had found little at Johns’s actual home: around five thousand in cash and a couple of unlicensed pistols.) The underling didn’t come back, and when he was tracked down, he told a story that he had been followed to the site and attacked by three men — almost certainly the same people who had done the deal in the first place. They had then cleaned Johns out. Precisely how much was involved was left to the rumor mill. The best estimate of Johns’s accumulated wealth was around the three million mark.

Three million pounds . . .

“Give us some names and we might start to believe you,” Johns had been told by an investigating officer. But Johns had refused. That wasn’t the way he worked; never had been, never would be. The underling, meantime, was found stabbed to death near his home after a night out: the price he’d had to pay for failure. Johns was adamant that this man could not by himself have tricked him, stolen from him. The man had done a runner only because he’d been terrified of the ramifications of the theft. Three million was not the sort of figure Bernie Johns was likely to shrug off as human error.

The stabbing was proof of that.

No doubt he’d had similar fates in mind for the cops — it was assumed they were cops — who’d double-crossed him, but he never got time to put any plan into effect. He’d been stabbed in the neck with a homemade shiv — the painstakingly sharpened end of a soup spoon — by one of the inmates while queueing for breakfast. This inmate, Alfie Frazer, known to all and sundry as “Soft Alfie,” had been one of Francis Gray’s snitches — which gave the investigators their first inkling of who might have been involved in ripping off Bernie Johns.

Gray had been questioned, but had denied everything. It was never made clear precisely why Soft Alfie — known to be academically challenged and never the world’s most perfect physical specimen — would commit a murder. All the investigators knew was that Gray had fought hard to keep Alfie out of prison and that it was believed Alfie owed him as a result. But Alfie had been in on a three-year stretch: was it possible he would have committed himself to a far lengthier term by murdering Johns at Gray’s behest?

The only other valuable piece of the jigsaw had come when it was discovered that on the day Johns’s hapless henchman had been sent to fetch the cash, three officers — Gray, McCullough and Ward — had headed out in Gray’s car. Their excuse when asked about it later: they’d gone out to celebrate the end of the investigation. They named pubs they’d been in, a restaurant where they’d eaten.

This was as much as the High Hiedyins had on the three men. They hadn’t proved profligate spenders, and didn’t appear to have money salted away in hidden bank accounts. The last page of the report detailed Francis Gray’s disciplinary record. The sheet was handwritten and unsigned. Rebus got the feeling it came from Gray’s own chief constable. Reading between the lines, the personal bitterness was all too evident: “this man has been a disgrace . . .”; “verbal abuse of senior officers . . .”; “drunken antics at a social occasion . . .” It was Gray they really wanted. Whatever Rebus’s own reputation, Gray had raised the crossbar. It struck Rebus that they could have turfed Gray out at any time, so why hadn’t they? His reasoning: they were hanging on to Gray, waiting for an opportunity to nail him for Bernie Johns. But with retirement in the offing, they were growing desperate. In their eyes, it was time for payback . . . at any price.

Rebus dried himself off and padded through to the living room. The Blue Nile on the hi-fi, and him on his chair. Stone-cold sober and thinking hard. The file was all conjecture, rumor, stories told by old lags. All the High Hiedyins had to go on was the coincidence of the trio’s day trip taking place on the same day as the supposed money pickup; that and the death of Johns at the hands of one of Gray’s snitches. All the same . . . three million . . . he could see why they wouldn’t want Gray and Co. getting away with it. A cool million apiece. Rebus had to admit, they didn’t look like millionaires, didn’t act like them either. Why not just resign and head off to spend the loot?

Because it would have been proof of a sort, and might have helped launch a full-scale inquiry. Soft Alfie had been questioned half a dozen times in the intervening years, but hadn’t said anything worthwhile. Maybe he wasn’t so soft after all . . .

Again, Rebus wondered if the whole thing was part of some elaborate setup, meant to distract him, maybe leading him to incriminate himself in the Rico Lomax case. He concentrated on the music, but the Blue Nile weren’t about to help him. They were too busy singing beautiful songs about Glasgow.

Glasgow: tomorrow’s destination.

He tapped his fingers in time to the music, tapped them on the cover of the folder Strathern had given him . . .

When he woke up, the CD had finished and his neck felt stiff. He’d been dreaming that he was in a restaurant with Jean. Some posh hotel somewhere, but he was wearing clothes he’d been given by Rhona during their marriage. And he had no money on him to pay for the expensive meal. He’d felt so guilty . . . guilty of betraying Rhona and Jean . . . guilty about everything. Someone else had been in the dream, someone who had money enough to pay for it all, and Rebus had ended up following him through the maze of the hotel, everywhere from its penthouse to the cellars. Had he been going to ask for a loan? Was the figure someone he knew? Had he been going to take the money by force or duplicity from a total stranger? Rebus didn’t know. He pulled himself to his feet and stretched tiredly. Couldn’t have been asleep more than twenty minutes. Then he remembered that he had to be in Tulliallan by morning.

“No time like the present,” he told himself, snatching up his car keys.

Ponytailed Ricky was back on the door of the Sauna Paradiso.

“Christ, not you again,” he muttered as Siobhan walked in.

She looked around. The place was dead. One of the girls was lying along a sofa, reading a magazine. There was baseball on the TV monitor, the sound turned off.

“You like baseball?” Siobhan asked. Ricky didn’t look in the mood for conversation. “I watch it sometimes,” she went on, “if I’m awake through the night. Couldn’t tell you the rules or half of what the commentators are talking about, but I watch it anyway.” She looked around. “Laura in tonight?”

He thought about lying, but knew she’d spot it. “She’s with someone,” he said.

“Mind if I wait?”

“Take your coat off, make yourself at home.” He waved his arm in an exaggerated greeting. “If a punter comes in and wants to take you downstairs, don’t go blaming me.”

“I won’t,” Siobhan said, but she kept her coat on, and was glad she was wearing trousers and boots. The woman on the sofa, now that Siobhan studied her, was ten years older than she’d originally thought. Makeup, hair and clothes: they could put years on you, or take them off. She remembered when she’d been thirteen, knowing she could pass for sixteen or older. Another of the women had appeared from the curtained doorway. She gave Siobhan a look of curiosity as she moved behind Ricky’s desk. There was an alcove there with a kettle. She made herself a mug of coffee and reappeared, stopping in front of Siobhan.

“Ricky says you’re looking for some action.” She was in her mid-twenties with a pretty, rounded face and long brown hair. Her legs were bare, with black bra and panties visible beneath a knee-length negligee.

“Ricky’s having you on,” Siobhan informed her. The woman looked in the direction of the desk and stuck her tongue out, displaying a silver stud. Then she dropped into the chair next to Siobhan’s.

“Careful, Suzy, you might catch something.” This from the woman on the sofa, who was still flicking through her magazine.

Suzy looked at Siobhan. “She means I’m a cop,” Siobhan said.

“And is she right? Am I going to catch something?”

Siobhan shrugged. “I’ve been told I’ve got an infectious laugh.”

Suzy smiled. Siobhan noticed that she had a bruise on one shoulder which the negligee was failing to conceal. “Quiet tonight,” Siobhan commented.

“There’s always a bit of a rush after the pubs close, then it calms down again. You here to see one of the girls?”

“Laura.”

“She’s got a punter with her.”

Siobhan nodded. “How come you’re talking to me?” she asked.

“Way I see it, you’ve got your job to do, same as I have.” Suzy held the chipped mug to her lips. “No sense getting worked up about it. You here to arrest Laura?”

“No.”

“Asking her questions then?”

“Something like that.”

“Your accent’s not Scottish . . .”

“I was brought up in England.”

Suzy was studying her. “I had a friend sounded a bit like you.”

“Past tense?”

“This was at college. I did a year at Napier. I can’t remember where she was from . . . somewhere in the Midlands.”

“That could be about right.”

“That where you’re from?” Suzy was wearing frayed moccasin-style slippers. She had crossed one leg over the other and was letting one moccasin dangle from her painted toes.

“Around there,” Siobhan said. “Do you know Laura?”

“We’ve worked some of the same shifts.”

“She been here long?”

Suzy stared at Siobhan, but didn’t answer.

“All right then,” Siobhan said, “what about you?”

“Nearly a year. That’s me just about ready to quit. Said I’d do it for a year and no longer. I’ve got enough saved now to go back to college.”

The woman on the sofa snorted.

Suzy ignored her. “You make good money in the police?”

“Not bad.”

“What . . . fifteen, twenty thousand?”

“A bit more actually.”

Suzy shook her head. “That’s nothing to what you can make in a place like this.”

“I don’t think I could do it, though.”

“That’s what I thought. But when college fell through . . .” She got a faraway look. The woman on the sofa was rolling her eyes. Siobhan didn’t know how much of it to believe. Suzy had had nearly a year to fashion her story. Maybe it was her way of coping with the Sauna Paradiso . . .

A man suddenly came out from behind the curtain. He looked around the room, surprised to find no other men there except Ricky. Siobhan recognized him: the less drunk businessman from her previous visit, the one who’d mentioned Laura by name. With head down, he walked briskly to the front door and made his exit.

“Has he got a tab or something?” Siobhan asked.

Suzy shook her head. “They pay us, then we settle with Ricky later.”

Siobhan looked across the desk, where Ricky was standing watching her. “Going to let Mr. Cafferty know I’m here?” she called.

“You still on about him?” Ricky grinned. “I keep telling you, I own this place.”

“Sure you do,” Siobhan said, winking at Suzy.

“Another month tops, that’s me out of here,” Suzy was saying, to herself more than anyone, as Siobhan got up and made for the curtained doorway.

Only one cabin had its door closed. She knocked and opened it. She could hear a shower running. It was behind a frosted glass door. The room had a wide bench topped with a mattress, a spa bath in one corner, and not much else. Siobhan was trying not to breathe in the fetid air.

“Laura?” she called.

“Who’s that?”

“It’s Siobhan Clarke. All right if I wait for you outside?”

“Give me two minutes, will you?”

“No problem.”

Siobhan climbed back up the stairs. The place was still dead. “Tell Laura I’m right outside,” she ordered Ricky. Her car was actually across the road. She sat in it, the radio playing softly, window rolled down. A few cars and taxis rumbled past. Not too far away, she knew the streetwalkers were plying their trade: a trade less safe than that enacted in places like the Paradiso. Men would pay for sex: it was a fact of life. And as long as the demand was there, there’d be no shortage of suppliers. It struck Siobhan that what troubled her most about the business was that it was run by men for men, with the women themselves reduced to merchandise. Okay, so they’d maybe made the choice themselves, but for what reasons? Because there was nothing else, at least in their eyes? From desperation, or coercion? Her stomach felt tight, as though some cramp was coming on. It was a feeling she was getting more frequently these days, as though she might be about to seize up completely. She saw herself frozen like a statue, while Cafferty, Ricky and all the others got on about their business.

The door of the sauna opened and Laura stepped out. She was dressed in a tight black miniskirt and matching sleeveless top, with knee-length black leather boots. No coat or jacket, so she was intending going back to work afterwards.

“Laura!” Siobhan called. Laura crossed the road and got into the passenger side, rubbing her arms.

“Not warm tonight,” she commented.

“Have you heard from Donny?” Siobhan asked without preamble.

Laura looked at her and shook her head.

“We took him in for questioning earlier today.” Siobhan made sure she had eye contact. “He did a runner.”

Laura’s eyes went vacant.

“He knows about your . . . arrangement,” Siobhan said quietly.

“What arrangement?”

“You and Edward Marber.”

“Oh . . .”

“Will he come after you?”

“I don’t know.”

“What about Alexander?”

Laura’s eyes widened. “He wouldn’t hurt Alexander!”

“But might he try to snatch him?”

“Not if he knows what’s good for him!”

“Maybe we could have some officers watch your home . . .”

Laura was shaking her head. “I don’t want that. Donny won’t hurt me or Alexander . . .”

“You could always ask Mr. Cafferty for help,” Siobhan stated nonchalantly.

“Cafferty? I already told you . . .”

“Donny worked for Cafferty, did you know that? Maybe you could ask Cafferty to keep Donny away from you.”

“I don’t know anyone called Cafferty!”

Siobhan stayed silent.

“I don’t,” Laura persisted.

“Well then, you’ve nothing to worry about, have you? Maybe I wasted my time coming out here this time of night to warn you . . .”

Laura looked at her. “I’m sorry,” she said. Then: “And thank you.” She reached over and laid her hand on Siobhan’s. “I appreciate it.”

Siobhan nodded slowly. “Did Suzy ever go to college?” she asked.

Laura seemed taken aback by the question. “Suzy? I think she thought about going . . . maybe six or seven years ago.”

“Is that how long she’s worked in saunas?”

“At a rough guess.”

They heard the door to the Paradiso opening. A man, his back to them, face in shadow as he disappeared inside.

“I better get going,” Laura said. “Could be one of mine.”

“You have a lot of regulars, don’t you?”

“A fair few.”

“Means you must be good.”

“Or they must be desperate.”

“Was Edward Marber desperate?”

Laura looked slighted. “I wouldn’t have said so.”

“What about the punter who was leaving as I came in? He’s a regular, too, isn’t he?”

“Maybe.” Becoming defensive now, opening the car door and stepping out. “Thanks again.”

She started to cross the road. The sauna’s door was opening, throwing light onto the street. The same man emerging, only now with his front to them rather than his back.

Donny Dow.

“Laura!” Siobhan called. “Get back in the car!” At the same time she was struggling to find the door handle, which seemed to have moved a few inches from where she normally found it. Pushed open the door and started to get out.

“Laura!” Siobhan calling out her name almost at the same time he did, their voices clashing in the air above their heads.

“Come here, you whore!”

Donny Dow rushing at Laura. Laura screaming. And in the background, a sound Siobhan would hear for the rest of the night — the sound of the lock clicking shut on the inside of the door to the Sauna Paradiso.

Dow had Laura, grabbing her shoulders, shoving her backwards against the car. Then his arm went up and Siobhan knew, though she couldn’t see it, that there was a weapon there, a blade of some sort. She launched herself across the hood, one hand propelling her across it so that she flew feet first, catching him low down on one side. It wasn’t enough to deflect him. The knife sliced into Laura’s flesh, making a soft sound almost like a mild reproach. Tsssk! Siobhan grabbed for the knife arm, trying to lock it behind him, while listening to an elongated gasp from Laura, the air escaping from her as blood leaked from the puncture. Dow flung his head sideways, catching Siobhan on the bridge of her nose. Tears welled in her eyes, and she momentarily lost strength.

Tsssk!

The knife again finding its target. Siobhan let go of his arm and aimed her knee into his groin, connecting with all the force she could muster. Dow staggered backwards, his voice a rising complaint of pain. Siobhan watched Laura sag visibly. She was hanging on to the car’s door handle, knees buckling. There were rivulets of blood.

Got to end this now!

Siobhan aimed another kick at Dow, but he dodged it, turning full circle. The knife — it was one of those builder’s blades, the kind you bought in a DIY store — was still gripped in his right hand. Siobhan filled her lungs and let out a scream, making sure he took the full force of it.

“Help, somebody! Help us here! She’s dying! Donny Dow’s murdered her!”

At the sound of his name, he paused. Or maybe it was the word murdered. He stared unblinking at Laura. Siobhan made a move towards him, but he backed away. Three, four, five steps.

“You bastard!” she shouted at him. Then she gave another scream, searing the inside of her throat. Lights were coming on in the tenement windows above the sauna. “Nine-nine-nine . . . ambulance and police!” Faces at the windows, curtains pushed aside. Dow was still walking backwards. She had to follow him. But what about Laura? Siobhan glanced back, and as she broke eye contact Dow took his chance, jogging and swaying his way back into darkness.

Siobhan crouched beside Laura, whose lips looked almost black in the streetlight, maybe because her face was so white. Going into shock. Siobhan sought the wounds. There’d be two . . . had to get pressure on them. The sauna’s door stayed resolutely closed.

“Bastard,” Siobhan hissed. She couldn’t see Dow anymore. There was warm blood oozing from between her fingers. “Hang on, Laura, ambulance is coming.” Her mobile was in her pocket, but she didn’t have any free hands.

Shit, shit, shit!

Then one of the neighbors was standing beside her. He seemed to be asking if everything was all right.

“Put some pressure here,” she said, showing him where. Then she fumbled for her phone, as it slid away from her bloodied grasp. The man was looking horror-struck. He was in his late fifties, thin hair flapping down over his forehead. She couldn’t push the numbers; her hands were shaking too much. She ran across to the sauna, gave the door a kick, then rammed it with her shoulder. Ricky opened up. He was shaking too.

“Christ . . . is she . . . ?”

“Did you call nine-nine-nine?” Siobhan asked.

He nodded. “Ambulance and. . .” He swallowed. “Just ambulance,” he corrected.

She thought she could hear a siren in the distance, hoped it was coming this way. “Did you tell him she was out here?” Siobhan spat.

Ricky shook his head. “Guy looked in a rage . . . I said she wasn’t on shift . . .” He swallowed again. “I thought he was going to do me.”

“Well, aren’t you the lucky one?” Siobhan ran past the woman from the sofa, who was now standing, arms folded protectively in front of her, and found the pile of towels and robes. She could hear sobbing from the actual sauna; didn’t have time to look, but knew it was Suzy, probably cowering in fear for herself. Siobhan dashed outside again, pushing towels hard against the wounds. “Lots of pressure,” she told the man. He was sweating, looked scared, but he nodded anyway and she patted his shoulder. Laura was sitting on the ground, legs folded beneath her. Her fingers clung resolutely to the door handle. Maybe she was remembering Siobhan’s instruction: Get back in the car! Mere centimeters from safety . . .

“Don’t die on me,” Siobhan commanded, running a hand through Laura’s hair. Laura’s eyelids were open a fraction, but the eyes themselves were glassy, like the marbles boys used to play with. She was breathing through her mouth, little gasps of pain. The siren was a lot closer now, and then it was rounding the corner from Commercial Street, sending sweeps of blue light across the buildings.

“They’re here, Laura,” Siobhan cooed. “You’re going to be fine.”

“Just hang in there,” the man said, looking to Siobhan for reassurance that he’d said the right thing. Too many episodes of Casualty and Holby City, Siobhan thought.

You’re going to be fine . . . The lie that brings no peace. The lie that exists only because the speaker needs to hear it.

Just hang in there . . .

Four in the morning.

She wished Rebus were there. He would make some joke about the song of the same name. He’d done it before when they’d been on hospital vigils, villain stakeouts. He’d sing half a misremembered verse of some country-and-western song. She couldn’t remember the name of the original singer, but Rebus would know it. Farnon? Farley? Somebody Farnon . . .

These games Rebus played to take their minds off the situation. She’d thought of phoning him, but had reconsidered. This was something she had to get through on her own. She was crossing a line . . . could feel it. She wasn’t at the hospital; they hadn’t wanted her there. A quick shower and change of clothes at home, the patrol car waiting to take her back to St. Leonard’s. The Leith police would take the investigation: it was their patch. But they wanted her at St. Leonard’s for debriefing.

“At least you got him a good kick in the charlies,” her uniformed driver had said. “Should slow him down a bit . . .”

She stood in her shower and wished it had a bit more pressure. The water dripped onto her. She wanted sharp needles, a pummeling, a torrent. She held her hands over her face, eyes screwed shut. She leaned against the tiled wall, then slid down it until she was crouching again, the way she’d crouched over Laura Stafford.

Who’s going to tell Alexander? Mummy’s dead . . . Daddy did it. It would be Grandma’s job, in between the tears . . .

Who would break the news to Grandma? Someone would already be on their way out there. The body needed to be ID’d.

Her machine was flashing to let her know she had phone messages. They could wait. There were dishes in the sink needed washing. She was drying her hair with a towel as she moved through the flat. Her nose was red, and she kept needing to blow it. Her eyes were bloodshot, pink-rimmed and puffy.

The towel she dried her hair with was dark blue. No more white towels for me . . .

DCS Templer was waiting for her at the station. The first question was an easy one: “Are you all right?”

Siobhan made all the right noises, but then Templer said: “Donny Dow’s an animal, works for Big Ger Cafferty.”

Siobhan wondered who’d been talking. Rebus? But then Templer explained all: “Claverhouse told me. You know Claverhouse?” To which Siobhan nodded. “SDEA have had their eye on Cafferty for a while,” Templer went on. “Not getting very far, if their track record’s anything to go by.”

All of which was just by way of filler, working up to the real story. “You know she’s dead?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Christ, Siobhan, no need for the formal stuff. It’s Gill here, remember?”

“Yes . . . Gill.”

Templer nodded. “You did what you could.”

“It wasn’t enough.”

“What were you supposed to do? Set up a blood transfusion on the pavement?” Templer sighed. “Sorry . . . that’s the middle of the night talking, not me.” She ran her hands through her hair. “Speaking of which, what were you doing down there?”

“I’d gone to warn her.”

“At that time of night?”

“Best time to find her at work, I thought.” Siobhan was answering the questions, but her mind was elsewhere. She was still on that street. The click of the lock on the sauna parlor door . . . the hand gripping her car for dear life.

Tsssk!

“Leith are handling it,” Templer said, unnecessarily. “They’ll want to talk to you.”

Siobhan nodded.

“Phyllida Hawes has gone to break the news.”

She nodded again. She was wondering if Donny Dow had bought the blade that same afternoon. There was a DIY store practically next door to St. Leonard’s . . .

“It was premeditated,” Siobhan stated. “I’ll say so in my report. No way that bastard’s getting off with manslaughter . . .”

Templer’s turn to nod. Siobhan knew what she was thinking: good lawyer behind him, Dow would push for manslaughter . . . a moment of madness . . . diminished responsibility. My client, Your Honor, had only just learned that his ex-wife, the woman charged with the care of his son, was not only a prostitute but that she was living in accommodation provided for her and the child by one of her clients. Faced with this revelation — a revelation made by police officers, no less — Mr. Dow fled from a police station and was allowed to roam free, the balance of his mind affected . . .

Dow would be lucky to serve six years.

“It was horrible,” she said, voice reduced to a whisper.

“Of course it was.” Templer reached out and took her hand, reminding Siobhan of Laura . . . Laura so alive, reaching out to touch her hand in the car . . .

A blunt knock at the door, and not even a wait to be asked to enter. Siobhan could see Templer readying to tear a strip off the intruder. It was Davie Hynds. He glanced at Siobhan, then fixed his eyes on Templer.

“Got him” was all he said.

Dow’s story was that he had given himself up, but the arresting officers were saying he’d resisted. Siobhan had said she wanted to see him. He was in one of the cells downstairs. They were waiting for him to be transferred to Leith, where the cells were ancient and the approximate temperature of a deep freeze all the year round. He’d been found at Tollcross. Looked like he was heading for the Morningside road: maybe planning to hike south out of the city. But then Siobhan remembered that Cafferty’s lettings agency was on that same stretch of road . . .

There was a knot of officers outside his cell door. They were laughing. Derek Linford was one of them. Linford was rubbing his knuckles as Siobhan approached. One of the uniforms unlocked the cell. She stood in the doorway. Dow sat on the concrete bed with head sunk into his chest. When he lifted it, she saw the bruising. Both eyes were almost closed.

“Looks like you did more than kick him in the nuts, Shiv,” Linford said, provoking more laughter. She turned to him.

“Don’t pretend you did this for me,” she said. The laughter ceased, the smiles evaporating. “At best, I was the excuse. . .” Then she turned to face Dow. “But I hope it hurts. I hope it keeps on hurting. I hope you get cancer, you repellent little shit.”

The smiles were back in place, but she just walked past them . . .