Back off, McDade had instructed her. Leave it to the professionals. When you don’t know what you’re doing, you can end up causing more harm than good. Well, if it wasn’t relevant, then she couldn’t do much harm delving a little deeper into why Jim had been looking at this file shortly before his disappearance. And if it was the case that McDade didn’t want her poking her nose into this particular area of investigation, then that was the first place this daft wee lassie was going to look.

Higher Powers

‘What’s the view like from your front window?’ Catherine asked.

They were parked opposite the Bay Tree restaurant in Thornton Bridge, a prosperous suburb to the south-east of the city that was still clinging on tenaciously to the term ‘village’ for its property-value mojo, despite the ongoing housing sprawl that was directly resultant of the same. New-build developments snaked out like spider legs along all the roads in and out of the tiny core of nineteenth-century affluence that constituted the original Clydeside settlement; indeed, the newest ones stood closer to the centres of neighbouring towns but were still advertised as Thornton Bridge addresses.

Catherine remembered being brought to the Bay Tree as a wee girl, for birthday teas and other enjoyable family treats. Her first-year report card: that was one such memorable occasion, the pleasure of the meal augmented by her sense of having earned it, by getting the best grades in her year. Her dad insisted it was for hard work rather than coming first. She understood his sentiment, but he was on to a loser either way, given the level of competition: she’d have gotten the best grades in her year whether she had worked hard or not. Her diligent industry merely enhanced the margin. In fact, simply picking up a textbook and reading it, rather than hitting a fellow pupil with it, would also have enhanced the margin at a failure factory such as Calderburn High.

The restaurant had been very different then: small, cosy and probably well on the wrong side of twee, but heavenly back in a time when she considered scampi-in-a-basket and pear belle Hélè ne the height of sophistication. It had looked like a little cottage in those days, with tie-back curtains on its three little windows, and seemed to be staffed entirely by bustling middle-aged women who made her think of the three good fairies in Disney’s Sleeping Beauty.

‘Much the same as the view from the windows opposite,’ Laura replied. ‘I can see a sandstone tenement boasting varied but inconsistently successful examples of modern soft furnishings. If I go up inside the bay and look hard right, I can just about make out a wee bit of Queen’s Park, but that’s at the price of also being able to see the flat at the far end with these honking green curtains, eh? Why d’you ask?’