‘Shit–you getting at me?’ he said. ‘I admit I’m a sinner, Brodie. I haven’t found God, and I have killed a man.’

‘Or two,’ I said.

‘I’m not proud of it. I did what I had to…to survive.’

I laid my hand on his heart. It was beating strong and steady. ‘When you were ten, I seem to recall you had a habit of saving people, rescuing damsels you thought were in distress.’ He smiled, recalling how we had first met. Some boys from the Protestant primary school had picked on me for being a Catholic and Joe had jumped in.

‘You could have taken them yourself…you were a feisty, bad-tempered little madam,’ he said. I nodded. ‘I can guess the punch line,’ I told him, smiling before getting back to business. ‘Renee Smith was Kevin’s stooge…I don’t believe she touched that child, look at how she was. It was all him.’ Leaning against the glass was giving me a pain in my neck. I shifted round to look into Joe’s face. ‘You know what my mother Mary McLennan always used to say…’ He interrupted me. He had heard her say it time and again, usually when she was trying to stop me hanging out with him. ‘You fly with the crows, you get shot with the crows.’

He smiled at me and it melted every bit of ice I had put in place of emotions. ‘I don’t do so good flying solo, Brodie.’

The taxi had pulled up outside the house in Cumberland Street. Joe leaned forward to pay the driver. It was obvious that he had no intention of going back to his flat. The Georgian panelled front door was in need of a fresh coat of black paint, the large brass knocker was a lion like the one Scrooge saw in A Christmas Carol. I stared into its face, half expecting it to morph into the head of Mary McLennan warning me to start living my life, time was passing by. In spite of Joe’s bad-boy traits, she had seen the good in him.

For once the house was tidy. The long corridor had been cleaned by my flatmate and trainee Louisa, and I hadn’t been home to untidy it. It was late but she was still up, the kitchen light was on and the house smelled of roast chicken. Louisa must have been entertaining one of her men friends. I said a silent prayer that he was not a big eater and that there was some left for me.