‘Aye, and you just said I’m too young to be who you’re looking for, so why are you patting more names at me? Who gave you this address?’

Jasmine was collapsing so completely inside that she feared for a moment she was about to just burst into tears. She had to hold it together. She thought of her back-up story and grabbed on to it like it was a branch in the rapids.

‘Well, you see, I’ve moved into this new flat and the girl there split up with her boyfriend, and there was mail for him and she doesn’t want to see him so she asked me to track him down to wherever he’s moved, and see, it’s his name that’s Peter Harper, so …’

‘You’re looking for your flatmate’s ex-boyfriend as well as your dad’s old shipmate?’

Jasmine felt her eyes widen involuntarily, perhaps to take in the full scale of the catastrophe that was unfolding before them.

‘Yes, but I got mixed up, and the first one, Hayley Williams …’

‘You mean William Hayley,’ he said, almost helpfully.

‘William Hayley, yes, I shouldn’t have been asking about him here, because he lives in Hyndland and that’s where I’m going next.’

‘After you’ve tracked down your flatmate’s boyfriend.’

Jasmine’s throat went so dry, she couldn’t even mumble a mortified ‘yes’. It must have been the fierce heat radiating from her cheeks that parched her.

‘Peter Harper, you said his name was?’

She nodded meekly.

‘Never heard of him,’ Harper said, then slammed the door.

Jasmine pulled over into a permit-holders-only space, figuring that a parking ticket constituted a low level of collateral damage compared to her track record.

‘Delta Seven. Subject just walked past as I was getting out of my car and gave me a definite funny.’

‘Are you burned?’

‘Just a bit warm. I avoided eye contact, but I’ll need to hang well back. Need you to get eyeball ASAP. Subject is walking still walking along Ruthven Lane in the direction of Great George Street.’

‘Copy that.’

‘You mean yes yes.’

‘Sorry sorry,’ she offered.

Jasmine felt her legs become heavier as she spoke, precipitately burdened by so much responsibility. The subject had looked at Jim, given him a ‘funny’, and they could not afford to let this guy know he was under surveillance. It was all on her now. Jim wasn’t burned – the subject hadn’t sussed that he was being tailed – but he would have to keep sufficient distance now that this was effectively a one-woman follow.

‘It was a partial establish,’ Jim had assured her on Monday as she blubbed in the passenger seat of his Peugeot, parked around the corner from the Partick tenement where she had so comprehensively failed to get Peter Harper to acknowledge his own name, while all but spelling out to him that he was under surveillance.