‘Of course, this was when I was too young to know any better. Too young to realise that for all he could talk tough, he was a shitebag who turned a blind eye to what was going on in our house because otherwise he’d have had to stand up to my dad.’

‘Stand up to him over what?’ asked Laura, whose urgency betrayed her suspicions.

‘Exactly what you think,’ replied Fallan, looking her in the eye and holding her gaze for an uncomfortable few moments.

Catherine couldn’t say what he saw in there, but some kind of understanding definitely passed between them.

‘I take it he’s still around, then,’ Fallan said to Catherine, ‘still peddling his salt-of-the-earth old-school Glesca polis shtick. Or is he retired?’

‘CID retire at fifty-five,’ Abercorn said. ‘He’s almost there. Can you think why he’d want you dead?’

‘If it’s him, then I know why he wants me dead. But as far as I can see,’ Fallan said, turning back to face Catherine, ‘you still haven’t shown me yours.’

Catherine paused for a moment, then gave him a solemn nod, her way of conveying that she wasn’t playing any games.

‘Okay, here’s the Cliff’s Notes,’ she began. ‘Last Thursday morning, Bob Cairns asked me to come and meet him because he had information regarding the murder of a mid-level drug dealer named James McDiarmid. While Laura and I were with him, he got a call, ostensibly from a source named Tommy Miller, regarding a potential bomb threat that resulted in the evacuation of Central station. No bomb was found. Instead, we recovered what appeared to be a very large consignment of heroin intended for Frankie Callahan. At the same time, Liam Whitaker, a thief and friend of Tommy Miller, took advantage of the evacuation to steal a hundred and fifty grand’s worth of watches from the Coruscate jewellery shop inside the station.

‘We subsequently discovered that the “heroin” was worthless dust, but Whitaker witnessed two other cops enter the station first, and leave with a rucksack that we now believe to have contained the drugs Frankie Callahan was waiting for. By the end of that day, Callahan, his fixer Gary Fleeting and the source Tommy Miller were all dead, the scene set up to look like the two drug dealers had been gunned down while torturing the source. Miller wasn’t the source, though: the call came from someone else, whom we can reasonably assume to be one of the police officers Whitaker saw removing the real heroin.’

‘What was the information?’ Fallan asked. ‘The reason Cairns needed you to meet him?’

‘He’d heard that Paddy Steel’s people were out looking for a black Transit van in connection with Jai McDiarmid’s death. He also said he had another source who reckoned the van was dark blue.’