‘That probably covers it. Can’t think what else to tell you.’

‘It helps, Danny. Thank you.’

‘Any time. Come back if there’s more I can help with. What about you, kid? How are things with you and my nephew?’

‘Good. Very good, actually. He’s behaving himself, not bugging me, generally doing what I tell him. The training is paying off at last. I think I might keep him.’

Danny raised his coffee mug. ‘I’ll drink to that. So where do you think you two will go from here? You just going to keep playing at secret boyfriend and girlfriend for ever?’

She gave him a warning stare for a moment or two but it melted. There probably wasn’t anyone else she could talk to about this.

‘Maybe not. Probably not. It’s maybe time to become adults, Dan.’ She said it with a smile.

‘Adults, eh?’ he mocked gently. ‘You sure you’re ready for this?’

‘No,’ she laughed. ‘But I can feel us changing. For the better. That time we had apart made me think a lot about what I wanted. Now, I’m pretty sure I know. I love him. I still have my dad to think about, of course, but there’s probably room in my life for two men.’

‘Three surely?’

‘Ha. Of course, three. No show without punch, Uncle Dan. I need to sit down and talk to him about where we go from here. It’s difficult though, I need to make sure I—’

‘Find the right time?’

‘Yes. Exactly. This is serious stuff, Dan. This could go either way. It really could.’

Chapter 13

Tuesday afternoon

‘Hold your horses. I just want a last look around before we total the place.’

‘What for? It’s a dump.’

Jackie Doran sighed and not for the first time he wondered about the philistines he had to work with. Okay, so if he’d wanted to have profound conversations about the art deco movement or the meaning of life then he shouldn’t have got into the demolition business. It wasn’t exactly choking with philosophers. It still got on his tits though that guys like Murray Inglis just didn’t see what was around them. All they wanted to do was knock the place down and get to the pub.

Jackie was older. A lot older. Maybe that’s why he appreciated it more. When you were sixty-four and seeing the end of your own working life looming up in the rear-view mirror then you had a feeling for buildings like this that were about to be smashed to bits. It was called empathy. Murray Inglis would probably think empathy was a rap star or whatever they were calling them now.

It was more than that though. He used to be a regular at the Odeon long before Inglis was born. His mum and dad, God bless them, used to take him when he was a kid. He remembered seeing his first movie there when he was eight. The 7th Voyage of Sinbad. He’d never forget being amazed at the size of the room. Nearly three thousand people in one huge auditorium. Tell that to the kids today and they wouldn’t believe it.

He couldn’t swear that he was impressed by the art deco then as much as he was by the movie. But he did remember the ceiling looking like it was fashioned in waves as it moved down over the balcony towards the screen. And at the sides of the stage itself were massive gold-coloured designs like the sides of great church organs, all latticed and glitzy. There was a tea room and ritzy foyers and lounges. It was some place, the old Odeon.

Of course he didn’t know or care back then that it had been built by Verity & Beverley, the company that built all the big luxurious cinemas in Britain. This was the only one they built in Scotland and it was a beauty.

Standing here now, inside with the doors long shut, he felt like he was part of it. Looking down on Renfield Street, seeing the world going past but being unseen behind the old building’s grimy windows, was exciting in a way that young guys like Inglis wouldn’t understand. It was like watching an old movie but in reverse. Like looking out from the screen.

The building on the other side of Renfield Street looked fabulous. It was true what they said about most people never looking up. They missed out on so much, especially in a city like Glasgow. The architecture was stunning. The place opposite had incredible stone balconies, statues and carved heads. Intricate scrolls, beautiful pillars, arches and stonework. All above a couple of modest pubs.

The building diagonally opposite was pretty incredible too. How many people walked past it every day and never noticed the terracotta turrets at the top that looked like they’d been pinched from some German castle above the Rhine? Maybe there was a princess locked up in one of them, or a dwarf. Maybe he’d watched too many movies.

‘Jackie, are you going to shift? We’re on a schedule here and I’m going out the night.’

Murray Inglis was going out every night. He didn’t know any other way to live his life. He would come in every morning with a hangover and go away every evening with an itch for another one. Jackie was too old for that nonsense. A few beers on a Friday night was his lot these days.

‘Son, I’m having a last look around. Deal with it. This building’s been standing here for seventy years. Another twenty minutes isn’t going to kill anybody.’

Jackie wasn’t Inglis’s boss. Not technically. But he’d been round the block often enough to get away with just about anything he wanted. They couldn’t sack him for it and they certainly weren’t going to promote him if he was a good boy. There were benefits in being a year from retirement and being a bolshie bastard was one of them.

Inglis disappeared, no doubt to tell the gaffer that the old bugger was being an old bugger again. That suited Jackie just fine. He could have a wander round in peace.

What else did he see here? Lawrence of Arabia. Peter O’Toole appearing through the desert on that big screen. Bonnie and Clyde. Dr Zhivago. Which everyone had raved about but which lasted over three hours and bored him. The Dirty Dozen. And dozens more.

It wasn’t just the movies either. The Beatles played there. The Rolling Stones too. He couldn’t get a ticket for the Stones and hadn’t wanted to see the Beatles. His cousin George had seen the Stones though and talked about it for weeks.

The last thing he saw on the big single screen was On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. The one with the Australian guy as James Bond where his wife gets killed at the end. That was 1969, just before they ruined the place. Every bit of the old interior, all the beautiful art deco stuff, disappeared. They made it into a three-screen complex and covered the front of the building in dull grey corrugated sheeting. Maybe no one knew it then but that was the beginning of the end.

They added more and more screens and took away more and more of the magic. He wasn’t even sure of the last picture he’d seen there. It might have been Wall Street or maybe Rain Man, something like that in the late 1980s. Long time ago now. Seemed like another world.

And now he was part of the team that was going to blast the Odeon into smithereens. He didn’t exactly feel good about that but he was just the hangman: someone else had been the judge and jury. Just following orders, the oldest excuse in the book.

The front façade would be kept, safe from the other ravages, and would form the centrepiece of a new ten-floor office development. Nobody seemed to give a flying fuck for the rest of it though.

He walked through what was the main foyer, images of usherettes in tartan dresses and male staff in dark suits tumbling through his mind. The stairs rose from here to the old upper foyer where there had once been a bar, a walk he’d made a hundred times but never like this. This time, the likelihood was that no one would ever make it again.