‘You should be aware,’ he said quietly, regretfully, ‘that I was once kinda Luke Skywalker to Tony McGill’s Emperor Palpatine. Difference was, I did take my father’s place at McGill’s right hand, a few years after my father was dead. That’s how I know about this, although it’s never easy to sort the fact from the fiction. Among criminals, folk are tight-lipped about the big truths and garrulous with bullshit. Tony didn’t like talking to me about my father, but he let slip a few things, and there were stories I’d hear from folk who never knew my dad had been in the polis, far less who he was.

‘A recurring rumour was that the polis had got rid of people. Both sides of the law were aware of these stories, and actually some reckoned it was the polis who started them. If the cops were trying to put the wind up some wee shaver, they’d allude to this, make him think he had worse things to worry about than a night in the cells, and all of a sudden they got a lot more cooperation. Similarly it served Tony well to let his enemies believe that he had polis in his pocket who could make you disappear if you became a problem. Like I said, it’s hard to sift the truth from the bullshit, and I’m not sure I believed any of it back then, but here’s the thing.’

Fallan gave a burdened sigh and glanced again at the heat-loss photographs, his eyes focused near the top of the sheet.

‘Polis and crooks alike – and your uncle Jim would have known this – when they alluded to this rumour, they always couched it in the same terms: “a one-way trip to the Campsies”. Now, for two points and a Blue Peter badge, which range of hills would you have to drive along the foot of to get from the Campsieview Hotel in Lennoxtown to Stephen and Eilidh Ramsay’s house in Bishopbriggs?’

Quiet Little Voices

‘Is he still asleep?’ Stephen asked his wife.

He had rolled the window down, since the Audi’s fan was doing nothing but circulate warm air. The air outside was no cooler, but it just felt less stuffy inside, and on such a full stomach he’d been wary of feeling sleepy. The problem was, as he knew from experience, opening the front windows mostly blasted air into the back seat, and he didn’t want Charlie caught in his own private wind tunnel.

Eilidh leaned around to check, one knee on the passenger seat, her shoulder bumping his on her way past.

‘He’s sound,’ she reported.

‘Just worried about the draught.’

‘It’s mostly above him. Plus the hood of the carrycot is deflecting it.’

‘Noisy, though.’

‘You know Charlie. He could sleep through anything.’