Archie waited for her to elaborate, but she couldn’t think what to say. If Jim lied then nothing was certain. Her life was built on sand and she didn’t know how to cope.

She shook her head.

Archie went back to work, sewing up William’s chest, repairing the wound even though there was no need.

109

21

JENNY

Liam Hook was senior communications manager in the statistics department of the Scottish government, whatever that entailed. Orla had emailed Jenny a bunch of information about him, but the work stuff was written in management speak, impossible to penetrate.

Jenny sat in the body-collection van in a cobbled lane round the back of Commercial Street in Leith. She could see the main entrance of the government building on Victoria Quay, a giant office block that had kick-started Leith’s regeneration a while back. She was in a private permit space and looked around nervously. Tailing someone was hard. She’d parked outside Orla and Liam’s house in Craigleith this morning, but he left for work on foot then got a bus. You never saw that in American movies, someone trailing a bus in a body van. He’d gone to work as expected, so she didn’t know what to do then. She’d parked legitimately and walked to a café along the road, taken her laptop and gone over some of Orla’s information, but the price of parking was crazy and she had to return to the van to move it.

Liam didn’t emerge at lunchtime, at least not from the front entrance. There were other ways out of the building, he could head towards Ocean Terminal or the restaurants along the Water of Leith. So really, Jenny was on a hiding to nothing.

She drove around in the afternoon bored out of her skull then returned at half past four. Orla told her that he normally finished at five but was planning to work late. If he really was working late Jenny could sit here forever, but if he went somewhere else she might have a chance. Although he’d seen her at the funeral, she 110hoped he wouldn’t recognise her. In these circumstances, different clothes, her hair tucked into a beanie, she might get away with it. Of course he might’ve already left, in which case she’d wasted a day. Being a private investigator was so annoying.

At five, a rush of workers spilled from the building, heading to cars or the bus, a few stopping at the outside tables of bars, ready to drown their sorrows. The crowds petered out and Jenny looked along the road for a traffic warden or nosy local ready to give her grief for not having a permit.