She pulled at the material, ripping staples out of the wood, tearing the sheer fabric until she had the underneath exposed. She recognised the yellowing lined paper as she lifted it out and unfolded it.

Ailsa Montgomery, buried in Piershill Cemetery.

The date on the piece of paper was the day after Barbara Worth’s funeral.

261

50

HANNAH

Xander’s flat was on Clerk Street above an old man’s pub called The Grapes which everyone called The Sour Grapes due to the faces of the regulars smoking outside. The street was a main route south, maroon buses queuing up at the stops, the pavements cluttered with a mix of students, locals and tourists who’d lost their way.

The guys from The Grapes eyeballed Hannah as she pressed the buzzer for Shaw, one of four surnames on their panel.

A voice came on the intercom. ‘Yeah.’

‘It’s Hannah.’

The door clicked and she went up the dark stairwell, posties’ elastic bands piled at the bottom of the spiral stairs, two clarty bikes chained to the banister.

She knocked on the door and waited. She was about to knock again when Xander opened the door looking blurry. He’d sounded hungover on the phone and he confirmed that with bleary eyes and the smell of stale booze.

‘Can I come in?’

‘No.’

Hannah looked past him and he tightened the space between his body and the door.

‘Got another girlfriend already?’

‘What kind of person do you think I am?’

‘I don’t know, that’s why I’m here.’

Xander looked at her with loathing. ‘You don’t have a monopoly on grief. Or anger.’

‘I never said I did.’262

‘Well, you’re fucking acting like it.’

‘I just want to find out what happened.’

‘Join the queue.’

Hannah put her hands out in appeasement. ‘Look, can I come in so we can talk?’

‘Say what you have to say here.’

‘You’re acting very uncooperatively for someone who wants to know what happened.’

That made him straighten up. ‘Fuck off, Hannah. The police interviewed me at the station and took a DNA sample. I had to get a solicitor. Then I find out Mel was sleeping with Longhorn. Then I find out she was pregnant, it wasn’t Longhorn’s and it wasn’t mine either.’

‘It wasn’t?’

‘So you don’t know everything.’

‘The baby wasn’t yours?’

Xander slumped and breathed out like a deflating balloon. ‘Which means she was sleeping with someone else.’

‘A third guy.’

‘A third guy,’ Xander said, like a zombie. ‘A third guy who probably killed her. And she was my girlfriend. So stop acting like an avenging angel out for the truth, like you’re something special, when we all want to know, we all want to get the cunt who did this.’