‘Shall I?’ he asked.

‘Please.’

Ingrams answered. She heard a few neutral ‘okays’ and ‘sures’, then, more curiously, he told the caller: ‘Well, Jim is actually out of the country at the moment. Yes, unexpectedly. But he mentioned this to me before he left, so I’ll be over first thing tomorrow. Maxwell Road, isn’t it? Okay, see you then.’

‘Who are we seeing on Maxwell Road?’ Jasmine asked.

‘Scottish Gas. Industrial and Commercial department. Guy was trying one more time before he left for the night. He was calling to inform Jim that the heat-loss images he enquired about are ready for him to pick up.’

‘What are heat-loss images?’

‘I don’t know, but the ones Jim requested are twenty-seven years old. I don’t think he was buying a new boiler, do you?’

Fire-Damaged

‘How do you like your drug dealer?’asked Cal O’Shea. ‘Rare? Medium?’

‘À point,’ Catherine replied.

‘You’re in luck, then.’

Everything was soaking. Catherine stood in a puddle an inch deep stretching all the way across the floor of the Top Table depot. It was a single-storey but high-ceilinged industrial unit on the outskirts of Hamilton, close to the East Kilbride expressway. The tableware side of Frankie Callahan’s catering supply company used it as a central distribution point: tablecloths and napkins were brought here after being laundered, then racked up in hoppers ready for resupply.

It was a testament to the quality of Top Table’s linen that it had proven sufficiently fire-retardant as to have played its part in preventing the place burning to the ground, despite petrol having been liberally doused about the premises. According to one of the firemen, the collapse of several hoppers and subsequent spillage of hundreds of yards of cloth had smothered a significant proportion of the flames and prevented serious structural damage to the building.

Clearly they were going to have to ditch most of this stock due to fire and smoke damage, but Frankie wouldn’t be losing any sleep over it. What with being dead and all.

There were three corpses inside the building; the firemen had discovered two of them partially buried under piles of linen. They were all charred and wet, but Cal declared the burns largely superficial. ‘Which will be a big comfort to them,’ he added.

The two partially buried bodies belonged to Frankie Callahan and Gary Fleeting. They were discovered face down, each having been shot several times.

The third body sat upright, tied to a chair with bungee cord. He looked like some macabre king of fire, surveying the scene before him from his metal throne.