Jasmine knew so little about hers, only that he was dead. Her mum wouldn’t talk about him, and steadfastly discouraged the subject. The most she would say when asked was that she had made some big mistakes from which she was lucky to escape, and that having Jasmine had been her salvation. ‘My gift from God,’ Mum always called her, even though she wasn’t religious.

Jasmine had tried to piece together a picture from sparse and sketchy clues: overheard remarks among relatives, unguarded things her mum had said either in distracted moments or later, when the drugs were taking hold, though in those instances, disinhibition had to be balanced against unreliability. All she knew was that her mum had grown up in a bad area of Glasgow and allowed herself to become involved with some dangerous people on the rationale that if she was in their camp, they would protect her from other dangerous people. She had relocated to Edinburgh while pregnant with Jasmine, in order to make a fresh start. Like Jasmine, she had trained to be an actress, but had settled for the role of drama teacher and, of course, mother.

‘I trust him,’ said Catherine. ‘He can’t contain this, but if he wants some control over when it breaks, and the chance to sit down with his son in the meantime, then he’ll cooperate.’

Catherine was trying to look reassuring, but Jasmine felt instinctively wary. The policewoman had always been civil enough towards her, but this constant sense of latent hostility emanating from her towards Fallan all but crackled like ozone in the air, and Jasmine couldn’t help feeling some of that was coming her way by association.

‘Cooperate is pushing it,’ said Abercorn. ‘He’ll comply, but he won’t do anything to assist us unless it helps keep him in the clear.’

‘No doubt,’ Catherine agreed. ‘But at least he’ll be neutral. The one good thing about him being a material witness is that at least it won’t be him defending the bastards when we get them to court.’

‘We’re a long way from that yet,’ Abercorn cautioned. He turned towards Jasmine. ‘What were you going to tell us about Fletcher?’ he asked.

‘He came to the office last Tuesday,’ she replied, ‘saying he had heard about my missing-person report, and he was looking into it because he knew Jim from the job. The thing is, now that I remember, he seemed to get a bit of a fright when he first entered, like he was surprised to find me there.’

‘He was coming to tan the place,’ Fallan opined. ‘Clear out the files connecting Jim to the Ramsays. He – or one of them anyway – came back and finished the job once you were gone.’

‘His manner was odd, too,’ Jasmine said. ‘Very serious, full of a thousand questions, then all of a sudden getting flippant and telling me not to worry about it.’