'Do you want your seat back?' Jackson said to Marcus and he said, 'No, you're all right, I'm happy back here with the dog,' but Louise said to him, 'Actually, you can drive, I'm feeling tired, I'll sit in the back,' because she couldn't bear to be so close to Jackson and not be able to touch him again.

'No probs,' Marcus said. 'All change. Men in the front, women in the back, just how it should be. Joking obviously,' he added swiftly, catching sight of Louise's face in the rear-view mirror.

It was dark long before they recrossed the border. The miles after Berwick dragged. They dropped Reggie and Jackson in Musselburgh. 'You're sure you want him staying with you?' Louise said doubtfully to Reggie.

'He hasn't got anywhere else to go.' 'Well, I do have a home to go to actually,' Jackson pointed out. 'It's just that the world and his wife seems intent on stopping me reaching it.'

'You have to help find Dr Hunter,' Reggie said.

'Finding Dr Hunter is my job, not his, Reggie,' Louise said. 'I don't want any amateur interference.' She turned to Jackson and said, 'We can do this without your help, thank you.'

'Go home to your kids, Herb, kind of thing?'

'Exactly.'

'Nice wheels,' he said, patting the roof of the BMW affectionately as if it was an old friend. 'Bugger off.' 'I'll see you tomorrow,' he said. 'Will you?' 'Yes, of course.' Her heart lifted, she would see him again tomorrow. This was how teenage girls felt, how Louise had never felt when she was a teenage girl. Patrick was right, she'd never had an adolescence. Making up for it now.

'I wouldn't go home without saying goodbye,' he said. Bastard. She wasn't enough to keep him, couldn't compete with the pull of his new wife. Tessa. Bitch.

She wanted to say, come home with me -well, not home, she could hardly take him home, introduce him to her husband, to Bridget and Tim, 'This is Jackson Brodie, the man I should have married.' Not married. Marriage was for fools. The man she should have run away with. Over the hills and far away. 'Take a leap of faith with me,' that's what she wanted to say to him. But of course she didn't.

'Who's Herb?' Marcus puzzled.

'Shit. I should have taken that handbag off Reggie.' What was happening to her? She wasn't usually forgetful. Now she was beginning to feel as if her brain was fraying.

'I'll organize a uniform in the morning, boss.'

'You're a wee treasure, so you are.'

Marcus said, 'Just drop me somewhere,' and she said, 'Don't be silly, I'll drop you off at home.' He lived in South Queensferry, miles out of her way.

'I'm miles out of your way, boss.'

'Not a problem, really. I've got my second wind.' He still lived with his mother. Archie wouldn't still be living with her when he was twenty-six. 'Girlfriend?' She'd never thought to ask before, Marcus had never seemed like a boy who had a girl.

'Ellie.'

'But not living with her?'

'Next step, boss. We went to view a house last night as a matter of fact. Malbet Wynd.'

Yes, of course, he was a boy who did things properly, in steps and stages. A girl called Ellie, a house in Malbet Wynd. He prepared for things.

After he'd climbed out of the car Louise slid back over into the driving seat and rolled the window down. 'First thing in the morning we need to find out ifJackson Brodie's credit cards have been used and where. And see if we can put some kind of trace on that phone.'

'Right, boss.'

'Night, Scout.'

'Night, boss.'

She waited until he'd unlocked the front door and turned and waved goodbye before disappearing into the house. A curtain twitched in a downstairs room, his aspirational mother she supposed.

She sat for a while longer wondering if there was somewhere she could go that wasn't home. Fife and all points north was just across the water. How far could she get before anyone noticed she was gone?

Tribulation WITH HINDSIGHT, REGGIE COULD SEE NOW THAT PERHAPS SHE should have mentioned her criminal relations to Jackson Brodie. If she'd warned him about her brother, for example, before inviting him to stay with her tonight, then he might not have walked into Ms MacDonald's living room ahead of her (while she locked the front door so they would be safe -irony, ha, etcetera) and found himself with a nasty-looking penknife nicking the skin covering his carotid artery at almost the exact spot where she had desperately felt for a pulse on the night of the train crash. Billy was on the other end of the knife.

'Surprise!' Billy said flatly. 'Who is this joker?' He pressed the knife deeper into jackson's neck. 'What's he doing here?'

'Let him go,' Reggie said. There was no point in appealing to Billy's better nature because he didn't have one, but a person had to try. 'He's nobody to you.'

To her surprise, and Jackson's too, Billy did let go of him, shoving him to the floor where he landed heavily as he only had one good arm to break his fall. Reggie was caught off guard by Billy grabbing her instead, putting his arm round her neck, almost crushing her windpipe. He used to do the same thing when they were little. Mum would say, Give your little sister a kiss to say sorry, because he was always having to apologize for some misdemeanour -snatching her doll, kicking over her Lego, biting -he was a terrible biter -and he would sing out 'Soreee, Reggie,' and under cover of kissing her would halfstrangle her and Mum would say, Bad boy, Billy. He looked wild-eyed, like the horses in Midmar field did when Sadie got too close to them.

Jackson struggled on to all fours and then got slowly to his feet. Billy stopped trying to choke her and instead pressed the point of the knife against her neck and said to Jackson, 'Don't even think about doing anything.' She could feel the blade, cold and sharp on her skin. It was such a small knife yet it could do so much damage to her.

There were books allover the place. Jackson stood in the middle of the floor amongst the wreckage ofMs MacDonald's library, tensed and on his toes like a fighter ready to go into battle. She could see him thinking, weighing up possibilities and she thought, oh no, don't.

'I'm your sister, Billy,' she whispered to her brother. 'Your own flesh and blood.' Better nature, appealing, no point etcetera, but still you had to try.

'He's your brother?' Jackson said. 'You little fucker,' he said to Billy. 'It's your job to look after your sister.' 'Says you and whose Bible?' Billy said but she did feel his hold on her lessen a fraction.

'Your friends have been looking for you,' she said to him.

'What friends?' Billy said. 'I don't have any friends.' The sad thing was that he said it like he was proud of the fact.

'You told them you were called Reggie, didn't you?' Reggie said. 'Told them you lived in Gorgie. They came and threatened me, they set fire to my home.'

'Yeah, it's a funny old world, as dear old Mum would have said.'

'Don't speak about Mum like that.' Ifshe could just keep him talking he would get bored, he had the lowest boredom threshold of any human being ever, and then he would leave and then Jackson wouldn't do whatever it was he was about to do -going for Billy with his bare hands by the look of it.

And then she heard it. It was the primeval sound of a huge wolf roused from its ancient lair. The creature was standing in the doorway, its hackles raised, its fangs bared, a great growling, snarling noise in its savage chest.

Reggie had forgotten about Sadie. The dog had raced up the stairs when they first came in the house, still in pursuit of Banjo's ghostly trail.

The dog rose on its haunches and with one leap was on Billy, grabbing on to his forearm and sinking its teeth in so that Billy dropped the knife and started screaming at Reggie to get the dog off him. Reggie tried yelling, 'Down, Sadie,' but it had no effect. Then Jackson did something you wouldn't expect him to do, he punched the dog hard on the side of the head and her jaws slackened and she dropped to the floor like a sandbag. That was when things went a bit blurred for Reggie. Within a second,Jackson had Billy on the ground, kneeling on his kidneys while he shoved his good hand on the back of his neck.