Two days was a long time to spend trapped in a septic tank, especially when the shakes started to set in. Coming down from a heroin buzz to the depths of cold turkey – making him sweat and shiver, even though the liquid waste was just warm enough to steam. To start with he’d held Josie close, like a child would its teddy bear, but then she started to smell worse than the sewage and he’d been forced to push her to the far side of the tank. Wedging her under the inlet valve so she stayed beneath the surface.

Now it was just smells and darkness. He knew it was two days because the watch he’d taken from Josie’s dead wrist glowed in the dark. Two days shivering and sweating. Feeling terrible. Scratching at the holes in his arms, unable to stop, even though he knew they’d get infected. Didn’t matter now anyway. He was dead.

He’d spent hours trying to get the tank’s thick concrete lid to move, but it was too heavy and too high above his head. He was well and truly trapped.

Two days without a hit and the hallucinations were in full swing, following him in and out of consciousness as he floated on the surface with the frothy scum. Where it was warmest. Trying to stay beneath the ventilation pipe, hoping enough air would be drawn down by the internal/external temperature difference to keep him from suffocation as he slowly died of dehydration.

Drifting on a sea of warm shite and cold turkey …

Within eighteen months of meeting Duncan ‘Manky’ Milne Josie has gone from a plump happy teenager to a straggly scarecrow with sunken eyes and track marks down both arms. Red and angry like hornet stings around the crook of her elbow.

And Duncan hasn’t fared much better – his boyish good looks are gone, now he’s just skin and bone with a drug habit. And it’s all about where the next fix is coming from. Which is why they’re standing at the bar of the Dunstane Arms on George Street, trying to scrape together enough change for two pints of cider. An aperitif before they head down the docks to see if anyone wants to rent Josie for a quick blowjob.

Of course, in the old days they both tried it, but no one wants to screw Manky Milne for cash any more. So these days he’s her Pimp Daddy. Even if he can only come up with enough cash for a pint and a half. Being a gentleman, Milne lets her take the pint – after all, she’ll be the one doing all the work tonight – and they settle back into a booth, out of sight of the barman who’s been giving them the evil eye since they slouched in five minutes ago, looking like shite.

And that’s when they hear about Neil McRitchie.