‘It’s not mine,’ Jimmy immediately said. ‘I don’t smoke and the cooker and fire are electric.’ He stared at McNab, wide-eyed. ‘You lot were looking for a lighter out there, weren’t you? D’you think that’s it?’

A couple of thoughts ran through McNab’s head, one of which was that Jimmy had had the lighter from the beginning. The second was that he’d picked it up off the street as a way of enticing the police to visit again.

Looking at the old man’s apologetic face, he tried not to show his suspicions.

‘Don’t clean under your bed very often, Jimmy?’

‘Once a month, Sergeant, without fail. Wish I’d done it sooner though, if it’s any help to you.’

‘Right. I’ll take this in and have forensic take a look. Did you handle it yourself?’

‘No, sir. I swept the stuff out with the floor brush. Lucifer was fair spitting at me for doing that. I already had on my Marigolds. I don’t like touching the dead stuff he brings in.’

‘The cat could have picked it up out front on the road.’

‘Maybe, but unlikely. Lucifer’s patch is the close and the back court, including the bins. He doesn’t like the cars on the road and the main door’s mostly closed anyway. He tried out front once when he was younger and got stuck there. You should have heard the racket he made. Would have wakened the dead. That’s why I ended up calling him Lucifer.’

‘Thanks, Jimmy.’

‘Nae bother, son, hope it’s what you think and you get the bastard that burned the lassie.’

McNab could have told him there and then that they believed they already had the killer, but thought he would save it for another day. If the lighter did turn out to be evidence in the case, that would be a better story for Jimmy to tell.

‘Maybe you’d come back and let me know if it’s useful, son?’ Jimmy said as he let McNab out.

Getting back in the car, McNab spotted Jimmy’s face at the window, watching him leave. Thinking on the lonely old man inside, and how he might end up like that one day, prompted McNab to finally make the long-postponed call.

When Ellie answered, he realized how sweet it was to hear her voice.

He explained about Friday in a tentative manner. ‘We’re meeting at the jazz club around seven and getting a joint taxi from there. If you still fancy coming,’ he added.

There was a short pause, which worried him, before she said, ‘Great. See you then.’

85

Cross-border turf wars weren’t uncommon. The lawyers and the cops could insist, or resist, all they liked. At the end of the day, it was the prosecuting authorities who decided, DI Wilson told his assembled team.