The inside of the van had been stifling, smells of sweat and aftershave battling it out with piss and blood. When Wullie stepped out on to the gravel and weeds, the horseshoe of the quarry walls like an amphitheatre around him, he had expected to feel the welcome relief of a freshening breeze, but the temperature drop was negligible. Only the smells changed. There was a sweetness in the air, scents from the trees you never smelled in the cold and rain, mixed with the charcoal and cooked meat of a thousand barbecues wafting from the city below, warm smoke, warm smells borne on warm air.

No, it really didn’t seem like Glasgow at all. Apart from the guy lying on the deck in the advanced stages of a severe kicking. That was as authentically local as haggis suppers and lung cancer.

Jai didn’t struggle as they hauled him out of the van. All the fight had been booted out of him long before that point. He half-lay and half-sat on the ground in a disjointed and blood-soaked heap, like a big pile of washing. He was shaking with shock and fear, making it look incongruously like he was shivering. If anybody could be cold right then, it would be him: cold in his fear, cold in his isolation: the loneliest man in Glasgow. He knew he had nobody, and making it worse, he knew what to be afraid of, because he had been among those dishing it out plenty of times in the past.

Nobody thinks it’ll ever come to them, especially once they’ve found themselves with a bit of clout. Money in their pocket, fancy motor, smart threads, folk fearfully averting their eyes when they walk past, others kissing their arses any chance they get. Dodge a couple of prosecutions because nobody will talk, or somebody down the food chain takes the fall, all of a sudden they think they’re invincible, and that’s when they get greedy, that’s when they get careless. They think they can take on the bigger guys, think that just being young and hungry gives them some kind of edge, forgetting that a lot of folk have been young and hungry at some point; forgetting that the guys at the top are where they are – and have stayed where they are – for a reason.

Jai made no attempt to get up, most likely in case it was interpreted as flight or resistance, but just as possibly because he couldn’t. He kept his eyes down, but they were still scanning back and forth, checking the positions of his captors. They stood in a triangle around him, Big Fall just climbing out from the front cab to make it a square.