“I’m glad you’ve straightened out. Good for you, mate, it’s not easy.”

“Everything’s easy when you know why you’re here. I never knew why I was put on this earth until the day I got that community service. Boom! It was like that. Boom! I’m here to look after your loved ones. Life’s easy now I know. Clean, too. Not touched drugs since, unless you call a wee nip ‘drugs,’ which I suppose it is. Rawlins, Rawlins . . . Here you go. Harold Rawlins. One of two.”

The headstone was ornately carved and rather grand compared to those around it. The inscription read: MAY 12, 1941–AUGUST 12, 1984. ALWAYS LOVED, IN DEATH AS IN LIFE.

“Is he the one? There’s another round the back. Weird. Funny what you can tell about a person from their grave. Tall, nice headstone, pride of place. This guy was loved. The other ‘Harry’ . . . not so much.”

The second grave was marked with a small stone wedge and a brass plaque simply engraved with Rawlins’s name and his years of birth and death; no months, no message. But this was where Rawlins actually lay.

“Thank you,” Jack said.

The Glaswegian nodded and backed off respectfully. Jack turned his phone torch on again. There really was nothing to see at this sad little graveside. Then . . .

“Excuse me!” Jack called.

Next to this small, untended grave was another small stone wedge bearing the inscription: DOROTHY RAWLINS. MARCH 1941–AUGUST 1995. This grave had had a recent visitor, because fresh flowers lay on the grass.

“Do you know who visits Dolly Rawlins?”

“A wee girl. Only seen her a couple times. Young. Petite.” The Glaswegian shrugged. “I stay out the way when people come visiting. Sorry.”

“No, you’ve been really helpful. Thank you.” As the Glaswegian walked away for the last time, Jack added, “Look after yourself.”

The flowers on Dolly’s grave were no more than a couple days old and had been taken out of their wrapping, so Jack wouldn’t be able to trace where they were bought. He’d have to dig into Dolly’s family history—but “young and petite” definitely didn’t describe either Connie or Ester. Maybe the flowers weren’t relevant at all.

Jack made his way back round to the first grave of “Harry Rawlins”—the one with the ornate headstone. This was the grave that held the most interest for him, because someone else was down there: someone who had been buried in Rawlins’s place; someone who had been blown to smithereens in the botched Strand underpass robbery and misidentified. Someone wearing Harry’s gold watch. And Jack was going to find out who that was.

Chapter 15

“You want to what?” Maggie asked.

They were standing in the middle of the spare bedroom, which now looked like a full-blown evidence room, with photos, notes, names and places all linked together with bits of different colored string. She wore one towel round her body, one round her head and held two glasses of red wine.