She could remember a time when there was no take-out food, no Thai restaurants, when Vesta packets were the nearest you came to anything exotic. A time when food was herrings and mince and luncheon meat. She had mentioned to Emily once that she could remember a time before aubergines, and her daughter had snapped, “Don’t be ridiculous,” at her. She finished her lunch with a slice of Genoese sponge (the secret was in the addition of a spoonful of hot milk). She had already hung her Victorian kittens-in-a-basket painting in place of the gloomy stag at bay, although its ghostly impression was still visible, thanks to a faint outline of grime. It was only last year that the room had been redecorated, after the new security system was installed, but it never ceased to surprise Gloria how quickly dirt gathered. The kittens looked completely at home on the wall.

She was so far lost in the contemplation of innocent kittenhood that she wasn’t aware of the lumbering shape that appeared at the French windows until it raised a meaty paw and knocked on the glass. Gloria nearly fell off the sofa.

“For God’s sake,” she said crossly, heaving herself off the peach damask and opening the window. “You nearly gave me a heart attack, Terry.”

“Sorry.”

Terence Smith. Graham’s golem, formed from the slime at the bottom of a pond of lowlifes somewhere in the Midlands. Sometimes Murdo borrowed him to work on the doors or do bodyguard duties (Murdo’s security firm looked after fragile celebrities when they made appearances in the capital), but most of the time he was simply Graham’s pet thug, driving him around if he was too drunk to find the steering wheel-Graham refused to crush his ego into Gloria’s red Golf-or hanging about in the background with the same air of doltish fidelity as his dog. Gloria fed cake to both man and dog and kept them away from cats and small children. There was no sign of the dog today. “Where’s your dog today, Terry? Where’s Spike?”

He made an odd choking noise and shook his head, but when he spoke it was to ask after the whereabouts of Graham, his puppet master.

“He’s in Thurso,” she said. It was funny, but the more she said that, the more it seemed true, in a metaphysical sense at any rate, as if Thurso were a kind of purgatory to which people were ban-ished. Gloria had been to Thurso once and found that to be pretty much the case.

“Thurso?” he repeated doubtfully.

“Yes,” Gloria said. “It’s up north.” She doubted that Scottish geography was high on Terry’s list of specialist subjects. She frowned at him. His face, always ugly, had acquired a new and disturbing florescence. “Terry-what happened to your nose?” He put his hand over his face, as if he’d grown suddenly bashful.

The phone rang again, and they both listened in silence to Emily’s bleating. “Mother-Mother-Mother.”

“That’s your daughter,” Terry said eventually, as if Gloria had failed to recognize Emily.

Gloria sighed and said, “Tell me about it,” and, against her better judgment, went and picked up the receiver.

“I’ve been ringing forever,” Emily said, “but all I get is the answering machine.”

“I’ve been out a lot,”Gloria said. “You should have left a message.”

“I didn’t want to leave a message,” Emily said crossly. Gloria watched as Terry lumbered down the path. He reminded her a little of King Kong, but less friendly.

“Mother?”

“Mm?”

“Is something going on?” Emily asked sharply.

“Going on?” Gloria echoed.

“Yes, going on. Is Dad okay? Can I speak to him?”

“He can’t come to the phone just now.”

“I have some news for you,” Emily’s less-than-dulcet tones announced. “Good news.”

“Good news?” Gloria queried. She wondered if Emily was pregnant again (was that good news?), so she was taken aback when Emily said, “I’ve found Jesus.”

“Oh,” Gloria said. “Where was he?”

27

Louise stared through the windshield at the rain. This could be a godforsaken country when it rained. Godforsaken when it didn’t.

The car was parked down by the harbor at Cramond, looking out toward the island. There were three of them in the car, her-self, DS Sandy Mathieson, and eager-beaver Jessica Drummond. They had steamed up the inside of the car like lovers or conspir-ators, although they were doing nothing more exciting than talking about house prices. “Where two or more people are gathered together in Edinburgh,” Louise said.

“Supply and demand, boss,” Sandy Mathieson said. “It’s a town with more demand than supply.” Louise would have preferred “ma’am” to “boss,” “ma’am” made her sound like a woman (somewhere between an aristocrat and a headmistress, both ideas quite appealing), whereas “boss” made her one of the boys. But then, didn’t you have to be one of the boys to cut it? “I read in the Evening News,” Sandy Mathieson continued, “that there aren’t enough expensive houses in Edinburgh. There are millionaires fighting over the high-end stuff.”

“The Russians are moving in, apparently,” Jessica said.

“The Russians?” Louise asked. “What Russians?”

“Rich ones.”

“The Russians are the new Americans, apparently,” Sandy Mathieson said.

“Someone paid a hundred thousand for a garage last week,” Jessica complained. “How insane is that? I can’t even afford a starter home in Gorgie.”

“It was a double garage,” Sandy Mathieson said. Louise laughed and cracked a window to let out some of the hot air. The tide was dropping, and she caught a faint smell of sewage in the damp air. She never knew whether or not Sandy Mathieson was being funny. “Not” seemed more likely, he never seemed sharp enough to be witty. He was true to his name, from his gingery hair to his little beard to his giraffe-colored freckles. He made Louise think of a biscuit, shortbread or gingerbread, perhaps a digestive. He was a straight-down-the-middle type, married, two children, docile dog, season ticket to Hearts, barbecues with the in-laws on the weekends. He had told her once that he had everything he had ever wanted and would die protecting any of it, even the season ticket to Hearts.

“That must be nice,” Louise had said, not really meaning it. She wasn’t the sacrificing kind. Archie was the only thing she would die for.

“Where do you live, boss?” Jessica asked.

“Glencrest,” Louise said reluctantly, she had no desire to start chatting about her private life with Jessica. She knew the type from her school days, winkling out intimacies and then using them against her. “Louise Monroe’s mother’s an alkie, Louise Monroe gets free school meals, Louise Monroe is a liar.”

“That Hatter Homes development out by the Braids?” Sandy Mathieson said. “We looked at that. Too pricey, we decided.”The “we” sounded emphasized, Louise noticed, underlining his little world. “Me and my wife and my two children and my docile dog.” Not a woman on her own with a kid whose paternity had always been a matter for speculation. Sandy was a plodder, too unimaginative to be unfaithful to his wife, too stolid to rise above the rank he was at now. But he would always do the right thing by his kids, and he didn’t dodge and weave with the truth, didn’t seed favors- a blind eye here, a deaf ear there. Wouldn’t screw a DI in the back of a police car, too drunk to remember that sex was a biological imperative with only one goal. (“I’m pulling rank on you, Louise.” Hilarious, how they’d laughed. Jesus.)

“It’s a very small house,” Louise said defensively.

“Still…” Sandy said, as if he’d proved some point about Louise’s untold riches.

“Didn’t there turn out to be some problems with Glencrest?” Jessica asked.

“Problems?” Louise said.

“Subsidence or something.”

“What?”

“Real Homes for Real People,” Jessica said. “Word on the pave-ment is that Graham Hatter’s going down.”