“I’m surprised you want to see me,” he said, forlornly.

 Embarrassed by Danny’s self-deprecation, Judith’s eyes wandered from the single bed at the centre of the cubicle to his mother’s portrait painting, now nailed to the wooden wall behind. Looking down again, her attention was grabbed by a hardback book on the pillow behind him. Staring up from its glossy flysheet, against a backdrop of iron shuttered, concrete tenements was Ryan, head turned just enough to flaunt his battle scar.

 “Why are you here Danny?” She regained eye contact. “Is it because you feel guilty about being happy that year up at Gairloch? Are you ashamed that your contentment was funded by McLeod’s drug money?”

 “How do you know about that?” Danny exclaimed, his eyes following Judith as she approached the bed and picked Ryan’s book up.

 “I overheard your conversation with Bob.”

 Danny looked relieved not to have to explain everything. In the meantime Judith perused the item in her hands. Published by another Rex McLeod front called Highly Educated Delinquent, it went under the title ‘Toi’s Are Us’ — Toi being the name of the ‘team’ which Ryan had led around his housing scheme.

 “I stole it from Waterstone’s,” Danny confessed. “Somehow, shoplifting seemed more moral than subsidising a heroin dealer.” This elicited an exasperated sigh from Judith.

“Ryan really disappointed me when he accepted McLeod’s proposition. My own corruption was bad enough, but his fall was like the end of all hope. It was as if everything me and him had discussed over that past twelve months meant nothing. After he let me down like that, I didn’t want to be near human beings ever again.”

 “But you let him down first Danny…can’t you even see that! By being all nice things to all men, you allowed the bad to prosper at the expense of the good. You should have been protecting Ryan and all those other kids from spiteful weirdos such as Bob Fitzgerald, but instead you allowed him to sleep under the same roof…you even invited him to stay permanently! You were too blinded by those damned egalitarian beliefs to notice the danger you were putting everyone in. The fact is Danny, there are people who are always going to be bad, no matter what, and they don’t deserve our compassion. Those types have to be expelled from society otherwise it just isn’t worth living in.”

 “I’m not saying you’re wrong, but, because of my upbringing, it isn’t easy for me to think like that.”

 “What’s that toe-rag up to these days anyway?”

 “Bob? He’s avoiding Rex McLeod full-time, odd jobbing his way round the world and restricting himself to remote places. The last I heard, he was supposed to be working at a fish canning factory, somewhere north of the Arctic Circle in Norway. I just hope to God he manages to evade that filth peddling bastard for ever more.”

 “Why?”

 “Why? Well, mainly, because if anything terrible happens to Bob then it’ll be all my fault, for making McLeod aware that he’d been sharing trade secrets with me.”

 “But if McLeod does catch up with Bob, then you’ll at least have achieved some justice for that poor girl Carina…what’s her name?”

 “Curran.”

 “Yes.”

 “Well, first of all, I’ve learnt that there isn’t any justice and, secondly, if it was wrong of Bob to have inflicted violence upon Carina, then it would be no less wrong for Rex McLeod or anybody else to inflict violence upon Bob. An act of barbarism shouldn’t suddenly become palatable simply because it’s supported by a moral argument. I’m not having a pop at you Judith, but frankly, there’s nothing more sinister than a sadist in search of legitimisation. As far as I’m concerned, you either enjoy violence or you don’t.”

 Judith stood in silence, wracking her brains for a counter argument. But at heart she felt Danny was right.

 “So, apart from festering in this hole, what else have you been up to these past ten months? What’s happened to the college for God’s sake?”

 As Danny’s explanation gained steam, Judith sat down on the bed, listening intently.

 It transpired that he’d never returned north, being unable to set foot in a house financed by heroin. However, he had spent his final fifty grand employing qualified teachers to get the kids through their diplomas. But, according to Katy — who visited him regularly at the hostel — it had been a miserable place thereon. The new employees did only as much as they were paid for and eschewed the students when outside the classroom. The big communal dinners became a thing of the past, and the kids were discouraged from the house altogether. Instead, they were expected to prepare their own individual meals back at the byre, in a tiny kitchen which occupied the room vacated by Ryan.

 With all the joy removed, only six of the original twelve Glaswegians had completed their second year. Thanks to the foundations laid by Danny, Hamish, Judith and Angie, though, they all achieved high grades that summer — most notably Belinda, who passed English with distinction, despite being heartbroken over Ryan’s departure.

 Once the place had been deserted — around mid-May — Danny had put the house and byre on the market for less than he’d paid for them derelict, so desperate was he to be cleansed of any association with Rex McLeod’s money. It sold within days. The only problem was, his charity owned Gairloch College and so he had to conduct the absurd charade of selling a painting to it for one hundred and fifty thousand pounds, in order to get his hands on the cash. At first he’d been more than happy paying the Capital Gains Tax to the government, until he learnt that Rex McLeod’s security firm had just won a large government contract. There seemed to be no escape — he was either being paid by or paying for the drug dealer.

 Carrying the remaining money in a holdall, Danny had walked through some of the city’s most deprived areas, during the early hours, redistributing it as he went. First off, he’d revisited North Glasgow, where Katy and her parent’s now lived in an even worse and older building than their original tenement, which had been demolished for private houses. Not only was it a far cry from the home with front and back doors that the housing association had promised, but it too would soon be torn down. Here, he’d posted ten thousand pounds through the letter box, as thanks for the girl’s unstinting dedication to his ill mother, and to help finance the creative writing degree she was embarking on that autumn, down in East Anglia. Then he’d hit the daunting, thirty floor, Springburn high rises. Despite the elevators not working, he dropped twenty grand at a fourteenth floor apartment, home to a guy called Brucie Cruickshanks, who was dying from Mesothelioma after years working with asbestos in the Govan shipyards. The poor bastard had been denied compensation and Danny hoped his donation might lessen the stress, if not for Brucie then maybe for Mrs. Cruickshanks. After this, he’d returned to the East End, pushing a similar amount through the door of a football club for recovering drug addicts, before crossing the M8 footbridge and walking several miles to a new, semi-detached house in the redeveloped Blackhill area, where he posted a manila envelope containing fifty thousand pounds. He hadn’t quite made it back down the path though, when a squat, moustachioed fellow aged about fifty came out, wanting to know what was going on. Danny could not have imagined a worse situation. He’d been left with two choices: run or finally confess his sins to the person he’d exploited most. In the name of decency, he’d felt compelled to introduce himself.

 The man had invited Danny inside, where a thin, dark haired woman lay on the couch watching TV — it was Carina Curran. Having spent months semi-comatose, followed by years in a deep, appetite suppressing depression, she’d shed much of her former weight. She’d made a steady recovery in the three years since the attack, and even regained her ability to walk, but only over short distances and then very slowly.