‘Bollocks!’ he’d yelled from his window, giving each sheep-shagger and country bumpkin the finger as he got on the mobile, wanting to make sure Tony the photographer was primed for the cemetery shoot. He knew Tony had been out to Falls a couple of times to see Bev, or ‘the Potty Potter’ as Steve had come to call her. He thought Tony reckoned he was in there. His advice had been simple: ‘She’s a nutter, mate – you might get a shag, but two-to-one you wake up with your old wotsit sliced off and lying beside you in the bed.’ To which Tony had laughed and said he just wanted to persuade Bev into some ‘art poses’ for his ‘portfolio’. So when Steve got through to Tony this morning, his first words, as usual, were:

‘Got her on your potter’s wheel yet, mate?’

Then, also as usual, he started laughing at his own joke, which was what he was doing when he happened to glance in the rearview and caught the cop car up his bahooky, lights flashing. No idea how long it had been there.

‘Have to call you back, Tony,’ he said, braking and pulling on to the verge. ‘Just make sure you get to the church on time.’

‘Morning, officers,’ he said, stepping out of the car.

‘And a good morning to you, Mr Holly,’ one of the uniforms said.

Which was when Steve Holly remembered he wasn’t exactly flavour of the month with the Lothian and Borders Police.

Ten minutes later, he was back on the road, the cops tailing him to prevent, as they’d put it themselves, ‘further infractions’. When his mobile went, he thought about not answering, but it was Glasgow, so he mirror-signal-manoeuvred back on to the verge and took the call, watching the cops stop ten yards back.

‘Yes?’ he said.

‘Think you’re a clever little bastard, don’t you, Stevie Boy?’

His boss.

‘Not right this second, no,’ Steve Holly said.

‘Friend of mine plays golf in Gullane. It’s practically in Edinburgh, you turd. And the same goes for Falls. So any notion you had of turning that little trip round as expenses can now be stuck well and truly up your arse.’

‘No problem.’

‘Where are you anyway?’

Holly looked around at fields and dry-stane dykes. There was the distant drone of a tractor.

‘I’m scoping out the cemetery, waiting for Tony to turn up. I’ll head to Junipers in a couple of mins, follow them to the church.’

‘Oh aye? Care to confirm that?’

‘Confirm what?’

‘That outright fucking lie that just tripped off your tongue!’

Holly licked his lips. ‘I don’t follow.’ What was it, did the paper have a tracking device fixed to his car?

‘Tony phoned the picture editor not five minutes ago. The picture editor who happened to be standing next to my bloody desk. Guess where your missing photographer was calling from?’

Holly said nothing.