‘He was taking medication in the toilet,’ Tony explained. ‘I think he’s sick and looking to protect his legacy.’

‘And what if the truth comes out and he doesn’t like what he hears?’

‘Which truth?’ Tony asked. ‘Whose version of it?’

‘Any of them. All of them.’

Tony shrugged. ‘You know him as well as I do,’ he said. ‘Is he the type who’d look to make amends now?’

‘Hugh’s a wounded dog,’ Karen said, looking in through the window at where he and Barr sat. ‘He’s spent his life running around looking to bite someone for his pain.’

‘We were no different.’

‘Then,’ Karen agreed. ‘But we moved on. Hugh didn’t. He’s as angry now as the first time I met him, after my daddy was shot.’

Chapter Nineteen

‘My daddy was shot,’ Karen said.

They lay together in her bed, both still wearing underwear for she’d insisted, as he started to unclasp her bra, that she wasn’t ready to have sex. Instead they’d touched each other, become comfortable with each other’s bodies, then lay curled together, legs entwined as they kissed. She had her head on his chest and was playing with his chest hair, twiddling several strands in his fingers, twisting them, teasing them gently, the pain at once sharp and sensual.

It was their third date following their bringing the car back from Paisley to Glasgow. He’d not seen Duggan since. He’d tried Liverpool Betty’s a few times, but there was no sign of the man; nor Martin Kelly either. But he had seen Karen; they’d gone to the cinema on their second date. The Living Daylights was still playing on the multiplex in town and they’d gone to it. There’d been a handful of couples in the cinema and they’d had the whole back row to themselves. It was there that they’d kissed properly for the first time.

After that, they’d gone for dinner again, this time without having it arranged for them. The conversation had been easy; Karen had picked an Italian she’d wanted to try. They’d sat at a small table with a candle guttering in a wax-encrusted wine bottle and talked about home. Afterwards, she’d invited him in for a cup of coffee and they’d kissed again on the sofa, before she announced she had work the next day and needed to get to bed.

The third date, she’d suggested she would cook for him. She’d made lasagne with a salad. He’d brought a bottle of white wine in the off licence near her flat and they’d drunk it between them before finding themselves tumbling into her bed together.

As he’d undone the clasp of her bra, he’d felt her stiffen, felt her arms close against her side, preventing him from removing it completely. ‘I’m not ready to have sex with you,’ she’d said.

‘That’s OK,’ he said. ‘I understand.’

She’d looked up at him, her eyes wide and guileless. ‘I’m not… I don’t want to yet.’

‘That’s OK,’ he repeated.

They’d kissed again, slower, more tenderly now, the passion spent a little by her interruption. Then she’d lain against him, running her hand down his chest, across his boxers, over the length of him. He’d held her against him. Her room smelt of potpourri to disguise the faint mouldy smell of the apartment block. Outside, the noises of the street drifted through the thin curtains she’d already pulled. He looked now at the picture on the bedside cabinet he had seen before. It was her, younger, with a man.