"Why were you there?" asked McEwan.

"At the Northern?"

"Yes," he said, blinking slowly with forced patience. "At the Northern." He seemed to feel the need to be particularly unpleasant to Maureen when they were in her house, as if his authority was threatened by being on her patch.

"I went back as part of my therapy and Martin was asked to show me around again. You can check with Louisa Wishart. She phoned the hospital and asked him to meet me." She picked her cigarettes up from the table and lit one.

"Worst time to smoke, in the morning," said McEwan.

"Then don't," said Maureen. "What time did Martin go missing?"

"He was last seen at two o'clock on Saturday. He wasn't seen for the rest of the shift and he hasn't been home."

"His wife's worried sick," added McAskill.

His wife hadn't seen him, he hadn't been home. He couldn't sit in his den for twenty-four hours, no way. "Two o'clock… That was a couple of hours after I left."

"What time did you leave?"

"About noon."

"Where did you go afterward?"

"I went to visit a pal."

The kettle boiled and she took a mug down from the cupboard, filled it with water and shook in some coffee granules straight from the jar. She had assured Martin that it would be safe to tell her. She had talked him into it. She swirled the mug around to mix the coffee with the water and sat down opposite McEwan.

"Did Martin say anything to you about going away?" he asked.

Of course, the Jags. "Oh, God, he was talking about a Thistle game in France yesterday – Meatis? Meatpiss?"

McAskill corrected her. "Metz," he said, and smiled the fond way men do when they're talking about their team. That's why he didn't give a shit when she said she was Catholic. McAskill was a Thistle fan.

"That's it," she said. "Martin said the bus left two hours before his shift finished so he couldn't go. Maybe he changed his mind."

McEwan used his mobile and got the number off Directory Enquiries. He phoned the Partick Thistle office, asked for the secretary of the supporters' club running buses to Metz. They gave him the guy's work number and he phoned, looking out of the kitchen window as he waited in a telequeue for his call to be answered.

It was a gray day outside the window. The cloud was so low that Maureen could see above little puffs of mist clinging to the roofs below.

"It's quite a view you have from here," he said.

"Yeah, 's nice," said Maureen, sipping her coffee happily.

The secretary said he'd check the passport list for Martin's name and phone McEwan back.

Maureen smiled to herself. Martin could be sitting on a bus in France somewhere, singing Jags songs, surrounded by old friends and red and yellow scarves and hats and jerseys. She sketched the image in detail, trying to convince herself that it was a possible explanation, maybe even a probable explanation, but she knew it wasn't. Martin had made her promise not to tell anyone.

It was lunchtime for McAskill and McEwan, and Maureen's breakfast time. At her suggestion they agreed to go down the hill to the Equal Cafe for something to eat. She wanted to stay near McEwan until the call came through from the supporters' club. "Let's get that carpet downstairs then," said McAskill, pushing himself forward from the work top. He stepped carefully over the piles of books in the busy hall and went into the living room. "You get that end," he said, wrapping his arms around the roll and letting it slide horizontally onto the floor.

McEwan's defiance was underspoken. "No."

"It'll only take a minute."

"I've got my good gear on."

McAskill held on to the end of the roll and dragged it across the living room and out to the front door, leaving a brown trail of blood dust. Maureen nipped into the bedroom and put on her boots. She dropped her money and the new keys into her overcoat pocket, handing the coat to McEwan as she stepped over the rolled carpet and lifted the free end in the living room. McAskill opened the front door and stepped out into the close. "You shouldn't have to do it," he said.

McEwan muttered a curse and moved to take off his coat. "Let go," he said to Maureen.

"I can manage, Joe," said Maureen.

"Let go of it," he said firmly.

' 'M fine," said Maureen. "I've lifted things before." But the carpet was much heavier than she thought it would be. It was rolled up loosely and was difficult to get a hold of.

McAskill was standing pressed up against Jim Maliano's door and still the end of the carpet was inside the front door.

"Can we bend it?" said Maureen.

"Aye," he said, bracing himself. "Give it a shove."

Maureen pushed hard, getting the carpet to bend slightly in the middle. She moved sideways onto the first step.

"Look," said McEwan, following them out onto the landing, "I'll get it."

' 'M fine," she said, trying not to sound breathless. "Lock the door after ye. The key's in the pocket."

McAskill and Maureen struggled down the stairs, negotiating the landing turns by bending the roll and shuffling sideways. McEwan locked the door and followed them sullenly. The carpet was beginning to buckle of its own accord, the belly sagged downward, dragging on the ground, making it heavier, and Maureen was losing her hold on it. The weight was bending her fingernails back.

They turned slowly on the bottom landing and carried it out of the back door. They were both sweating when they got outside. A cool rain speckled Maureen's hot forehead as she staggered the last few steps to the midden. McAskill's face was blotchy and red. He bent over to put the carpet down and his head inclined close to hers; his eyelashes were dark and long, the pores on his nose were open.

"I found a stain in the cupboard," said Maureen, shaking her sore hands.

"Yeah?" puffed McAskill.

"Yeah."

He brushed off the front of his coat and rubbed his hands together.

"What was it, Hugh?"

"What was what?"

"What was in the cupboard?"

"I can't tell you that, Maureen."

"Why?"

"We'll need it to identify the killer. If it leaks it's useless."

"There must be other facts you could use. I wouldn't breathe a word. I know how to shut up, hand on heart."

McAskill looked at her suspiciously. "Why's it so important?"

McEwan appeared in the doorway carrying Maureen's coat. "Come on!" he shouted.

"It's important because I live there," she said.

McAskill sighed and wiped his hands clean.

"Because it's my house," she said.

He turned to the close. "I can't tell you," he said under his breath. "I'm sorry".

He walked back to McEwan, head bent against the damp weather, leaving Maureen standing next to her bloody carpet, both of them growing soggy in the spitting rain.

McEwan peered out at her. "Come on," he shouted unpleasantly. "We haven't got all day."

"You are a fucking arsehole," whispered Maureen to herself.

MAUREEN AND MCASKILL BOTH ordered the all-day breakfast and McEwan asked for a salad. When the waitress brought the wrong things he sent her back for the right things. Her limp and her depression got visibly worse every time she returned to the table and McEwan got more and more annoyed. When it finally arrived it was a very Scottish salad: limp garnish stepped up to the size of a meal. McEwan looked at it miserably for a long moment before attempting to eat it.

His mobile phone was sitting on the table, swaddled in soft black leather. Maureen kept looking at it, willing it not to ring and tell her she was wrong, tell her that Martin wasn't sitting on a coach with his pals, drinking lager and laughing his head off.

The all-day breakfast consisted of a runny fried egg, a potato scone, black pudding, Lorne sausage, mushrooms, fried tomato and bacon. Maureen worked her way silently through various combinations, egg yolk over sausage, scone and crumbling black pudding, egg white and mushrooms, but nothing sat comfortably in her mouth or her stomach. Martin's wife was worried. He hadn't phoned to tell her he was going to Metz. It felt like a long time since she'd enjoyed a meal.