‘There you go, then. Three hundred easy, after which you’re away clean with the rest, without having to kill anybody else. Just view it as Big Fall getting his share first. Aye, a pay-off from Tony McGill: just like the good old days. I don’t really remember you, though. Mind you, you weren’t Gallowhaugh CID, were you? You were Drug Squad. How did that work?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean what was the quid pro quo? Drug Squad: I’m guessing Tony was good for information, got you plenty of arrests, dope-on-the-table stuff. It’s your end I can’t suss. Normally it was about turning a blind eye, but with Tony there were no drugs to turn a blind eye to. That was his whole deal: the man keeping drugs out of Gallowhaugh. What did you do for him? Was it just about getting rid of problems, eliminating the competition, same as now? Did you kill the Ramsays for him? What did they do wrong? How did that go down?’

‘It wasn’t like that,’ McDade said, his voice trembling with emotion. He almost sounded tearful. ‘It was nothing like that. You called it the good old days, well it fucking wasnae. It was the worst of times. You’re not too young that you don’t remember. It was wild, brutal. We were stretched so thin you could practically see through us. We had to do the odd deal with the devil, accept a few least-worst solutions.’

‘Taking folk up the Campsies and killing them doesn’t sound least-worst to me.’

‘Look who’s talking,’ McDade said bitterly.

‘I never swore to protect and serve, or whatever you chancers claim. You were supposed to be the good guys.’

‘Compared to the shite we were up against, believe me, we were the good guys. Still are. Nothing was black and white in those days.’

‘Describe the shades of grey for us then.’

McDade dropped down a gear as he approached the off-slip for Royston and Springburn, taking them north of the city, towards the Campsies. Jasmine thought she saw his left hand hover around his jacket pocket, and worried for a moment that he might have a second gun concealed there. Fallan appeared to have noted it too, and didn’t seem concerned.

‘There was an accident,’ McDade said. ‘There was this wee ned, right hard ticket. I knew he had information about a supplier up in Maryhill, but I was getting nothing out of him. I mentioned it to Bob and he said they could help. They being him, your dad and Bill. Said they’d talk to him in the back of a van, you know?’

Fallan’s face darkened.

‘I’m familiar with the practice. Saw the aftermath getting dumped out up the Spooky Woods in Gallowhaugh plenty of nights. Sometimes they could still just about walk. Our taxes in action.’