He stared at the holdall and all the life seemed to go out of him. He looked at the house, no sign of Emilia, then he looked at the phone in his hand.

‘I’m going to destroy your family, like you’ve destroyed mine,’ he said eventually, but it sounded weak, a comeback delivered too late.

Jenny almost felt sorry for him in that moment, but then she remembered Mel’s body down at the city mortuary.

‘You’ll get what you deserve,’ she said.

He shook his head, picked up the holdall and shouldered it. Took a last look at the house then pushed past Jenny and down the street.

As she watched him go, her phone rang. She pulled it out. Orla.

‘He just called me,’ Orla said. She sounded hyped. ‘Says he has to do a training thing, he’ll be home really late. I think this is something.’

Jenny was still pumped with adrenaline.

‘I told you,’ she said. ‘I don’t think—’190

‘And I told you I don’t believe he’s fucking Picasso or whatever. Just find out what the hell my husband is up to.’

Jenny hung up. She had a flash of memory, looking at a coffin last night, thinking about climbing in. Standing in the low sunshine with Craig, the smell of him and the fuzz of booze taking her back twenty-five years. Feeling alive again, something that didn’t happen often. And she thought about Liam throwing paint onto a canvas, making something out of nothing, and wondered if that’s how he felt when he did it, if he felt alive.

She drove the van through rush hour, took ages to get across to Leith, managed to find a parking space on Constitution Street and walked along Bernard Street. She checked The King’s Wark first, no sign, then doubled back. The streets were full of office workers walking home, another day nearer the grave for every one of them. But they were smiling in the sunshine, wearing shades like it was Paris or Milan, the terror of a Scottish winter banished from their minds.

She walked up Maritime Street and into the vennel, didn’t stop, just pushed at the door to the studios. Security for this place was woeful. She crept to Liam’s studio and stood outside breathing. The door had been patched together at the lock where she’d booted it in. She cocked her head and listened. A shuffle of feet inside, then a few moments later she heard him clear his throat.