‘If it’s the latter, I’d be looking at Callahan,’ Raeside suggested. ‘Word is he’s the only one whose supply lines haven’t been disrupted in recent months. If he fancied muscling in to Gallowhaugh, now would be the time. The former is the nightmare scenario. Wounded animals taking bites out of each other. That’s when you get weans hit by stray bullets and folk stabbed because they look like somebody else. Either way, we need to nail this down quick with proper police work: show these bampots that we’re in charge before it escalates.’

Catherine glanced again at what used to be James McDiarmid. Raeside was right: the aftershocks would be seismic. Nothing said ‘game on’ quite like somebody abducting your right-hand man, beating him into submission, blowing his brains out and then bringing his corpse right back home for everyone to hear about. Paddy Steel would have to strike back.

Raeside said they wanted bodies for this. It was polis-speak for arrests, but either way, from where Catherine was standing, bodies were guaranteed.

The Presence of Absence

Jasmine was only moments in the door of Jim’s office when she was beset by a shuddering sense of unease.

Out of nowhere, she went from her usual Monday-morning condition of mild anxiety at how she might screw up today, mixed with the growing comfort she was starting to enjoy at having a wage-earning purpose to her days and weeks, to being blindsided by a quite startling feeling of certainty that something was very wrong.

It wasn’t transient or merely some disturbing passing thought: it had physical symptoms, like she’d just received an injection or eaten something to which she was allergic. She felt a twisting, hollow sensation in her stomach like she was inside a falling elevator, all her hairs prickling on her skin and a frightening awareness of being fragile and vulnerable. She had an urge to lock the door, offset by an equally unfocused concern that whatever was scaring her might be inside the office.