‘It could’ve been Peter Longhorn.’

‘But it might not have been,’ Hannah said, pacing the room.

‘If you bring the receipt in, I’ll send an officer there to ask.’

Hannah thought about that. The police hadn’t even asked for Mel’s stuff from Xander’s place. She could deal with this quicker, she was a private investigator after all.

‘Hannah?’ Thomas said. ‘Are you still there?’

‘Yes,’ she said, putting the receipt into her pocket. ‘I’ll bring it round to the station.’

She hung up, threw on Mel’s jacket and headed out the door to Leith.

285

55

JENNY

She looked round The Pear Tree beer garden and tried not to feel sick. It was partly down to the gin, partly guilt about Liam. He seemed like one of the good guys and she’d destroyed his marriage. Then there was her dad’s death, the loss but also the revelations. Standing in a grave that she and her mum had dug out together, the shame of that. And Mel, with more men than sense and pregnant too, all of it making a mess of Jenny’s head and heart.

And there was Craig too, sitting across from her with the smile she knew so well. Yet he’d betrayed her too. And now he’d betrayed his wife. Jenny felt guilty about that, and guilty for calling him when she left The King’s Wark, crying on the phone, feeling embarrassed and stupid but she didn’t care, and when Craig offered to meet her, part of her was mortified but another part wanted to feel that old familiarity and said yes.

‘You’re too hard on yourself,’ Craig said, resting his hand on hers. God, she still missed that touch.

It was dark in the beer garden, fairy lights along the wall making everything fuzzy round the edges, or maybe that was the gin. A group of freezing Italians sat at the next table, scarves and winter jackets despite the evening warmth. Their own table was wet from the sweat of their glasses, a flyer there for a student club night on Cowgate. She remembered clubbing in Sneaky’s, then that dreadful place on King Stables Road, then Studio 24 down from The Venue, and she wondered if any of these places were still there, if kids still drank snakebite and took speed, if they stayed up all night smoking weed to come down and yammering about nothing and everything, instead of helping their mums dig graves and ruining marriages.286

‘Maybe I need someone to be hard on me,’ she said.