Relations between the Drug Squad and Locust were as strained as they were complex. Cairns and Fletch were enjoying an Indian summer to their long careers – Starsky and Hutch meets Jack and Victor, as Raeside put it – and earning plenty of plaudits from their peers. But their boss, Gerry Milligan, was almost as adept at posturing and politicking as Abercorn, so they were getting free rein while it suited him. The head of the Drug Squad knew that having them bring in bodies and make seizures was making his outfit look as good as Abercorn’s long game was making Locust look bad, but that didn’t mean he was kidding himself that it was effective or sustainable. There was a lot of strategy in play, and Catherine wasn’t passing either side a chip unless she knew precisely how it would affect the game.

‘He give you the mosquito speech?’

‘No. I’m starting to feel left out.’

‘Or maybe he thinks you’re twenty-first-century enough to understand. His kind of polis.’

He had a devilish glint in his eye, which gave away that he was trying to wind her up. She fixed him with a stare that warned him he’d have to try harder than that.

‘I believe you thought you might have something for me?’ she suggested, albeit doubting he’d hand it over quite yet.

He glanced at his phone again and surprised her with a widening of his eyes and a slightly distracted preface of ‘A-a-a-y-y-ye’, drawn out to last several syllables. It was as though he was so intent on whatever he was waiting for that he’d forgotten to dangle her on the hook for the usual duration.

‘I gather you’ve not had a stirring public response to your appeal for witnesses regarding the late Mr McDiarmid?’

‘You’ve got to buy a ticket,’ she said, by way of acknowledging that her expectations had been low. ‘What can you do? It’s Gallowhaugh. Somebody can get slashed in broad daylight in front of thirty folk but no bugger saw a bloody thing.’

‘Witnesses do talk to some people, though,’ he replied enticingly. ‘I’ve got a source – a good source – who tells me that Paddy Steel’s people are out shaking the trees. Seems someone came forward to tell Paddy they saw a black van emerging from the Langton Drive end of the wee lane parallel to the Shawburn Road on Sunday night at around the time McDiarmid’s body was dumped.’

‘This’ll be the Paddy Steel who made out to me that he and McDiarmid were barely nodding acquaintances and he had no idea what the murder was about.’

‘Aye. And I heard he was wearing a bulletproof vest at the time.’

‘A black van,’ she said. ‘Anything more? A guess on make or model?’

‘Ford Transit.’

‘Of course,’ said Laura. ‘Had to be the vanilla of vans. At least it wasnae white, eh?’