He did love the watch. They’d had a curry delivered, split a bottle of wine and had sex; great sex. Hurried, lustful, oh-Jesus-it’s-been-ages sex, then slow, tender, delicate and ever-so-slightly fetishistic sex. Drew was dopily happy, while Catherine felt the most precarious relief at her narrow escape. She vowed privately she wouldn’t get so caught up in herself any more, and that it wouldn’t take a special occasion for her to buy him a wee present or even just to say sod it, let’s have takeaway, wine and a shag on a school night.

Promises, promises.

It didn’t take much to clear the punters from the shops; as soon as they saw the mass movement outside the windows, most of them came pouring forth to find out whether whatever was going on was about to bugger up their journey. The staff were the ones who required more of a strong hand and a stern tone, particularly with regard to communicating that no, they didn’t have time to secure displays of merchandise, retrieve the keys, set their store alarms, lock the doors or roll down their overnight shutters.

The assurance that there was going to be nobody free to roam the station other than cops didn’t prove universally mollifying. By the time the last of the shop staff had been herded out of the main exit on to Gordon Street, Catherine had agreed that they would be corralled separately and be the first allowed back into the station, in order that none of the local neds could rapidly improvise a large-scale freebie pick-and-mix.

They set up cordons either end of Gordon Street, clearing all civilians back on to the pavements of Union Street and Hope Street. This left Gordon Street itself as a staging area for police vehicles, the latest of which to arrive was the sniffer-dog unit. The van was waved through to the taxi rank, sheltered beneath the glass canopy abutting the first floor of the Central Hotel, where Cairns was waiting, his phone to his ear.

‘EOD are on their way,’ he told Catherine, meaning the Army Explosive Ordnance Department. ‘I’m gaunny look like such a dick if this turns out to be nothing. Paranoid side of me cannae help but wonder if this is all my tout’s way of burying me.’

‘You’re a bit long in the tooth for stage fright, Bob,’ she told him, gentle chiding as a form of moral support. He did seem very nervous, though, which told Catherine she ought to be too.

Cairns briefed the officer in charge of the dog handlers, telling him to task one dog to sniff for drugs, the other for explosives. The dogs were trained for both, but they needed to know as soon as possible which substance they were dealing with.