‘So was it just a decoy left by Tommy Miller to clear the station for the robbery?’

‘I don’t think so. Cairns would have cut his balls off, and Miller would have known that. Miller believed he was giving Cairns good intel.’

‘But then if no heroin shipment went missing, what were Callahan and Fleeting doing cutting lumps out of Tommy Miller?’

‘I don’t know. Like I said, something here is not what it seems. Add to that what you know about Paddy Steel, who by your account was out jogging with a bulletproof vest on earlier this week. At a stretch, I can maybe see him sanctioning a revenge hit on Fleeting, but taking out someone as prominent as Frankie Callahan as well? Why would he want to escalate things to that level? I think there’s something else going on here, something we’re not aware of.’

There was also, Catherine was sure, something he wasn’t saying either. He had this torn look, like he was unsure whether to give anything away. Abercorn was normally more poker-faced, but lately the game was threatening to get out of his control.

‘What else do you have?’ she demanded. ‘Come on, you’re standing there like a wean that’s shat his nappy.’

He gave an uncertain sigh, biting his lip for a moment.

‘Okay,’ he conceded. ‘I know you think that we’re always cadging information without giving anything back. I wasn’t withholding this, I just wasn’t sure it was relevant; I’m still not. Could be unrelated, though working here, you stop believing in coincidences.’

Christ, enough preamble. He really grudged giving you anything.

‘Spit it out,’ she said.

‘Does the name Glen Fallan mean anything to you?’

She let it ring around her head but it shook loose only the merest fragment.

‘I vaguely remember hearing the name Iain Fallan from older colleagues. Wasn’t he murdered?’

‘Iain Fallan worked CID over in Gallowhaugh back in the seventies and eighties. He was found dead in his car one night, killed by a single stab wound to the back of the head. The killer was never caught. There was no indication of forced entry, so it was assumed that he was killed by somebody he trusted enough to have them sitting in his back seat.’

‘Another cop?’

‘Fallan was notoriously corrupt. He had allies and enemies on both sides of the law. His son, though, only followed in one set of his father’s footsteps. He was a debt collector, enforcer and hit man, initially for Tony McGill, but later for Stevie Fullerton, after Tony went inside. You won’t find much of a file on him. He wasn’t your normal Glasgow gangland bam. He was as stealthy as he was discreet, and he understood enough about the police to avoid ever being caught. He seldom left a body, just made people disappear. Made a lot of people disappear.’