His car was still on the jetty where he’d left it after driving down to meet his boss. He switched on the engine and the clock on the dashboard lit up. It wasn’t midday yet. It always amazed Sandy how much Perez could pack into a small space of time. If you met him you’d think the inspector was kind of slow. It was his way of thinking before he spoke so you knew that when the words came out they were just the ones he’d intended. But Perez wasn’t slow at all. There was a sort of magic in his asking the right questions the first time, picking up the clues in a situation, knowing when it was time to move on.

As he drove past the Pier House Hotel on his way back to Utra he saw that Ronald’s car was parked outside. Sandy jammed on the brakes, felt the car slide on the greasy road then pulled in too. Getting pissed at lunchtime wasn’t going to help the man. Sandy thought he might not have Perez’s brains but he knew that much.

The woman in the pink overall had finished cleaning the bar but the place still had that smell of last night’s beer mixed with furniture polish, the smell of bars everywhere before customers arrive and start drinking. Cedric Irvine stood polishing glasses. He’d owned the Pier House for all the time Sandy could remember. He’d served the boy his first under-age pint, winking as he slid it over to him. There’d never been a Mrs Irvine, just a series of live-in barmaids and housekeepers who, it was rumoured, satisfied all his needs. The skinny Glaswegian was the most recent. Nobody was ever quite sure what the relationship was between Cedric and these women. When one of the regulars got sufficiently drunk to ask, Cedric would only shake his head and say that gentlemen never spoke of these things. ‘And neither will you if you hope to set foot in this establishment again.’ That was how he spoke. Sandy thought there was something of the preacher about him.

Now Cedric looked up from his work and gave Sandy a smile of welcome that was more than professional. He nodded to the corner of the room, where Ronald sat in front of a pock-marked copper table. The man had finished his pint and was halfway through his whisky chaser.

‘He needs a friend,’ Cedric said. ‘It’s never a good thing drinking on your own. Not like that. Just drinking to get drunk.’

‘He feels dreadful.’

‘So he should. Mima was a good woman.’