Jasmine was still shaking as Fallan led her into the map shop, though she was unsure whether it was a good or a bad thing that she felt she was recovering quicker than when she’d been shot at three days ago. She didn’t feel like she was going to vomit, albeit she hadn’t been spun around in a Land Rover on this occasion, on top of dodging the hot lead. Maybe it was indeed true of this as it was of everything: there’s nothing like the first time.

She exited the shop before him, stopping around the corner to examine the bullet holes while he paid for the maps and the magnifiers. They’d been lucky the Corsa wasn’t alarmed, as it had lost its windscreen as well as both driver’s-side windows.

She put a finger to the tenement wall, feeling the need to prove to herself that it had been real, the events of only a few minutes ago already threatening to fade into unreality via some self-defence mechanism in her subconscious. She felt the edges of the holes, disappearing deep into stone that had weathered more than a century of Glasgow winters, shuddering a little as she thought of where else the bullets might have ended up embedded.

‘What kind of gun did he have?’ she asked as Fallan came back around the corner, a cardboard cylinder under his arm. ‘It sounded weird, quieter than before but as if the sound was right above my head.’

‘I didn’t get a long enough look to ID the piece, but he was using a suppressor.’

‘Is that the same thing as a silencer? What were the noises I heard then?’

‘Sonic boom: bullets breaking the sound barrier. Chose a quiet spot for the hit, put a muffler on the automatic, but he didn’t know to use subsonic ammunition. Knew his limitations, though; or at least knew enough about me not to fancy his chances if I was returning fire.’

‘He knew how to drive better than you, I’ll give him that.’

‘That didn’t escape my notice,’ Fallan said, gazing back thoughtfully towards the tyre marks the Vectra had left during its handbrake one-eighty.

‘So,’ she ventured, ‘given that you don’t have to explain away having a gun, can we call the police this time?’

‘Are you kidding?’ he replied. ‘I thought you said you noticed how he drove.’

‘What’s that got to do with it?’

‘That was the police.’

That Golden Rule

‘I owe you an apology,’ Fallan told her, as Jasmine brought the Civic to a halt, having reversed into a neat little space just outside her tenement with practised expertise and not a little relish. It was a small comfort, the reassurance of something familiar, and she’d take her re-assurance wherever she could get it right now.