He slept for an hour—deep rest, deep contentment—and on waking (the chess players both gone) he went down the last flight of stairs and out into the day just as the cathedral bells were sounding midday. Already he felt a familiarity with the town, or at least with the streets and buildings between the inn and the hospital. That shop, that stall, that nailed door, that beggar. The Ship Bank was on the Trongate. He had spotted it the previous afternoon, though it had already closed for the day. Now its doors stood open and a man in livery tipped his hat as Lacroix passed inside. It was, after the hospital, a reassuring place to be. Mirrors, marble heads, large, polished tables. It smelled, he thought, of the slight bitterness of ink, but there was nothing in the air to remind him of bodies and the troubles of bodies. Ahead of him, behind a high counter, sat a row of clerks, their faces seen through wooden rails. Shorter men, approaching the counter, made use of one of the scuffed wooden boxes provided for the purpose. Lacroix did not need a box, but only just. He stretched up; the clerk heard him out, answered, saw his answer went unheard and pointed to the stairs. “Drummond!” he said. “Mr. Drummond . . . ”

Upstairs had its own atmosphere. Less polish, less show, fewer people. All along the corridor shelves ran floor to ceiling. A boy on a ladder was handing down papers to two others, documents that might be older than the boys themselves.

“Mr. Drummond?”

“In there, sir,” said the boy up the ladder.

The door was open. Lacroix tapped and went in. Drummond was eating something. Seeing he had a visitor he opened a drawer in his desk and placed the food inside. He listened to Lacroix, tapped the tips of his fingers together.

“Lacroix, you say?”

“That’s right,” said Lacroix, who had been within a heartbeat of naming himself as Lovall.

A book was consulted. Lists of names, some with figures against them, others without.

“No,” said Drummond. “Nothing. Not today.”

“I’ll come tomorrow then,” said Lacroix.

“Aye,” said Drummond. He closed the ledger. Lacroix could see now what he had put in the drawer. A slab of cheese with the ragged half-moon indent of a man’s bite.

He walked back to the hospital, half his thoughts on Emily, half on the need for ready cash. If it came to it, he could pawn the few clothes he had brought with him. Pawn the bag itself, why not? But would it raise much? He had no idea. He had never been inside a pawnshop, though he had seen their signs in several of the streets he had walked through in Glasgow and knew some of the men in the regiment resorted to them when they had need.