He read about the terrible damage to her hand and empathised with her pain, with the awful disfigurement she would have to live with, but deep inside he was pleased that he had shot her, because now she wouldn’t be perfect and a hundred miles above him, because he had caused her photo to be on the front of the paper and he could look at her whenever he wanted.

The rolls arrived and he carried them, fat seeping through the paper bag out to the car. Eddy told him to be careful not to get grease everywhere; it was a hire car and they’d have to pay extra if they got stains on the seats and that. Use the newspaper on your lap, he said.

But Pat folded the paper carefully and tucked it into the pocket on the door, letting the fat get on his jeans instead.

‘What’s it saying?’ Eddy nodded at the paper.

Pat filtered through the story to find the facts. ‘She’s stable,’ he said. ‘In the hospital. Intensive care.’

Eddy stopped chewing and stared at him. ‘Who’s stable?’

‘The girl.’

‘Oh, the one you shot?’

That stung, him saying that so lightly, as if it was a detail. Pat looked out of the window. ‘They’ve clues anyway.’

Eddy took another bite and asked through a mouthful, ‘Can I see?’ He held his hand out to the paper but Pat hesitated. He didn’t want Eddy to touch his paper. He braced himself and handed it over casually.

They finished their rolls in silence, Pat holding a secret vigil over the paper until Eddy handed it back, and licked his fingers before accepting. He folded it nicely so that her face was visible and tucked her into the car door pocket. They drove on, looking for a phone box that didn’t have a camera right nearby. Cameras were all over the city like rats.

Finally Eddy stopped the car in a quiet street, a few spaces away from the phone box in case they were being watched, and they looked around, keeping their eyes up, looking for cameras on the sides of buildings and on street lights. It was a residential area, a quiet street with big trees and bushes in front of the tenements.

‘Right.’ Eddy pulled on the handbrake, and snapped his belt off.

‘No.’ Pat touched his arm with a staying hand. ‘No, I’ll do the phoning.’

Eddy looked at him. ‘Why?’

‘’Cause you’ve been under a lot of pressure…’

Eddy liked that characterisation. He nodded at the windscreen. ‘Well, be threatening. And tell them two million by tonight.’

‘And we’ll call back with a drop place?’ Pat knew that was what they had to do, they’d talked about it enough, but he wanted to make Eddy feel as if he was deciding. ‘Aye, that’s right, that’s… a drop point. We’ll call back later.’ ‘When they’ve got the money?’ Eddy nodded again. ‘When they’ve got the money.’ Pat got out and took the newspaper with him.

The street of tenements was tall and narrow but surrounded by fields, like a lone passenger crammed into the corner of an empty lift. The pink sandstone was stained to blood red over the years by the black belching from the backsides of cars and buses passing through the stone valley. It was part of a city now gone, the buildings running along either bank of a road that once snaked through other tall streets. All its neighbours had been knocked down before they crumbled away, the families of mine and dock and factory workers decanted to the schemes and new towns.

The Anwars’ shop would never have excited the interest of an avaricious passer-by. It was a poor corner shop. The shop front was painted with what looked like navy blue undercoat, matt and dusty from the street, with ‘Newsagents’ hand painted in red, weathered to pink, above the window. The window was frosted with dirt, the counter inside abutting glass obscured with adverts for newspapers and magazines and comics. A blue plastic ice-cream selection board sagged drunkenly in the window, too far in to be read, too old to be true.

The close was straight across the road and the outside door didn’t give a good account of the neighbourhood. Wired glass scarred with poorly drafted graffiti in felt tip. Names on the intercom were messy, biroed onto stickers, stuck over the outside of the perspex. Something dark yellow, possibly paint, had been spilled on the red floor tiles and scrubbed into the grout.

Nestled in among the messy names ‘J. Lander’ was typewriter-written in an old-fashioned font, the plastic over his name was clean, as if he had tended it carefully over the years. Morrow pressed the button.

‘Hello?’

‘Is this Mr Lander?’

‘It is indeed.’ His voice was high but steady, neat, like his name plate. ‘Who is this?’

‘Mr Lander, we’re from Strathclyde CID. We’d like to speak to you concerning Mr Anwar.’

‘Of course.’ The door clicked open in front of them and Lander came back on the intercom. ‘Two up, first on the left.’

Morrow thanked him and he hung up.

The inside of the close was clear, no piles of rubbish bags or discarded furniture, well tended but the building was in bad shape: a white plastic mobility handrail had come loose from its shorings at one end and was resting forlornly on the floor, as spent as the tenant who had requested it. The walls above the skirting board were damp-bubbled, crumbling but held together with thick burgundy gloss paint. The imprint of a heel in the skin of paint had burst a bubble and white plaster powder had been walked up and down the steps.

Above in the echoing stairwell a door opened. Footsteps clipclopped out onto the landing and a man called over the balcony, ‘Hello?’

‘Hello?’ Morrow led Bannerman up the stairs. ‘Mr Lander?’

‘Aye, that’s you, come on,’ he said, guiding them, as if there was any way of getting lost in a close. ‘Up this way.’

Morrow looked up and saw a small man in his sixties leaning over the rail, big hands clutching the banister. Brown cardigan, grey slacks with stay-press seams down the front, a neat white moustache no wider than his mouth, grey hair that had been tidied with a watered comb.

‘Good morning, officers,’ he said, withdrawing as soon as he was sure they had seen him and knew where to go.

Morrow reached the top of the stairs first and followed him through the brown front door. His front step was dust free, the ‘welcome’ mat clean and square to the door.

She stepped into a moss green hallway and found Lander standing patiently at the door to the living room, watching behind her for Bannerman. When Grant stepped into the hallway behind her and shut the door Lander nodded, muttered a little orderly, ‘Uh huh’ to himself and went into the living room, ready to receive them.

The hall had a single shelf above the radiator with a bowl for keys on it. On the back of the door was a single peg for a scarf. No coats chucked on chairs, no bags dumped on the floor, no shopping bag of rubbish left hanging on a handle ready to be taken out when someone remembered.

Morrow followed Bannerman into the living room.

An old-fashioned box television sat on a low table. A small settee in orange velvet and matching armchair, both old but well preserved. Hanging on the arm of the chair was a cloth pocket for TV remotes and a booklet of the weekly television listings inside. There was nothing in the living room that was not functional or essential, no display cabinet of half-loved ornaments or better-day mementoes, no unread newspapers. It was more than bachelor-flat tidy. It was institutional tidy. Morrow made a mental note to check for a prison record.

They stood in front of the settee in a perfect equilateral triangle. Bannerman looked at Morrow expectantly, telling her to take charge of the questioning, as if he was saving his own moves for the more important interviews.

‘Please,’ said Mr Lander, taking the prompt for himself, opening his hand to the settee. ‘Sit down.’