Jasmine looked at the strips of landscape mapped out on the table and wondered how many little white lines on subsequent surveys were down to the man at her table. Then she feared she might well up with tears as she remembered about the littlest white line of all: tiny, lifeless but still glowing somewhere on those photographs. A four-week old baby, incapable of witnessing anything and incapable of ever telling anybody.

That was when she saw it: a woman in theatre blues, a laminated badge clipped on to her chest.

‘Bain’s other half,’ she said.

‘The nurse? What about her?’

‘She’s not a nurse. She’s a midwife.’

‘What difference does that make?’

‘You said it right outside their house: if your father was looking for a stooge, he could have come up with plenty of better candidates. So what got Bain the gig?’

‘His missus worked in a maternity ward,’ Fallan said, getting it.

‘Bain’s number appears on both the outgoing and incoming lists. It’s not a mobile: it’s the phone in his house. So what if the incoming call wasn’t Bain phoning Jim: what if it was her?’

Locust in Flight

Abercorn’s black Mondeo took a left on Albion Street and turned on to the Trongate. Catherine was two cars back, further concealed, she hoped, by the disguise of being in Drew’s car rather than her own, though she didn’t know whether Abercorn was aware of what she drove privately.

He certainly wasn’t aware of her presence, but that was the beauty of it: as a police officer, you’re the last person to suspect that you’re being followed.

It was a simple left turn, but one that Catherine always felt as a bit of a jolt, as though too much had changed from one street to the next for them to meet on the perpendicular. You went from the Merchant City with its upmarket urban digs, trendy pubs and chic eateries, the aspirational Glasgow of tourist brochures and lifestyle supplements, straight to this neglected-looking stretch of bargain shops, grotty boozers and greasy spoons, Glasgow’s own portrait of Dorian Gray. It had been like this for as long as she could remember: like a withered appendage at the end of Argyle Street, where the chain stores and logos gave way to hand-written posters full of stray apostrophes.

That was Glasgow, though. It scrubbed up well, it knew how to put its face on, but there was always a more gritty reality just a street away. It wasn’t hidden, but most people could simply choose not to see it.

It was coming up for two. She had been following him for around five hours, but she was good at this: the waiting part. It wasn’t an easy skill to develop, but once you had it, it never left you. It was a state of mind, a mindfulness of being.