He puffed his cigarette and looked sadly at the table. He seemed to be taking Siobhain's inability to discuss her brutal rape as a personal reproach. "Well, we'll try again later," he said.

"I don't think you should do that," said Maureen. "You have no idea what you're putting her through."

He ignored her objections and sat upright, regaining his distance. "What I was saying before is you don't need to be defensive with us now. You can tell us everything you know."

"I have told you everything."

McEwan tapped the list. "Why didn't you give me this?"

"I just didn't get a chance, Joe. You haven't been overfriendly and I wasn't going to rush down here with the list so that you could call me a twat."

He seemed hurt. "I've never called you anything," he said.

Maureen looked at him. McEwan was like a different man. He was being thoughtful and kind, comfortably displaying genuine emotions, and he was asking her to help him without trying to bully her. He had been unbearably adversarial but now that he wasn't suspicious of her Joe McEwan was almost likeable.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I am sorry for calling you that. You were being very aggressive to me and I wasn't on top form."

"Where is the list?"

"At home."

"We'll go and get it when we've finished here. Now, why were you getting lists off him and why were you visiting someone who was on the George I ward?"

"I'm just stuck in the middle of this," she said. "Honestly, Joe, I'm not interviewing people before you get to them. I've known Siobhain for years and Martin gave me the list to give to you."

McEwan seemed genuinely upset. "Let's go and get the list," he said heavily, and stood up, stepping behind her and lifting her coat from the back of her chair. He held it out for her and helped her into it carefully, lifting the heavy coat up her back and fitting the collar around her neck. She swung back to the chair to get her bag and saw McEwan out of the corner of her eye. He was smiling to himself, a sly, private smile. Joe McEwan was at it.

The sullen temp was back for another eight hours sitting on the uncomfortable chair. Their full-time receptionist, a middle-aged woman with gray hair, had ME and kept having to take days off. The next time the agency phoned her with this job she'd tell them to get someone else. If she wasn't saving up for the fortnight in Corfu she'd never have come here in the first place, never mind for a second time. The lobby was drafty and the whole place smelled of the stale smoke from the TV room.

And there was another thing. When she was taking her coat off that morning the Mongol man with the tranny came straight up to the desk and tried to touch her on the chest. She wasn't a nurse, she wasn't trained to deal with maddies like that. She'd reported him to the back office but she heard them laughing when she walked away. When she went to get a cup of tea she saw the woman social worker holding his hand and the two of them were talking away, quite the thing.

At lunchtime she put the machine on, not that anyone phoned there anyway, and went around to the shops to buy a Wispa and a can of ginger to cheer herself up. The Weight Watchers said she could have a Wispa anyway as long as she took diet drinks and not the real ones. She bought a magazine as well because she had a plan: the desk in the lobby was high enough for her to hide a magazine under the shelf and read it when she was supposed to be working. If she saw someone coming she could shove it under as they walked over to her and no one would be any the wiser.

The Wispa didn't even last back to the day center. She opened the can of diet ginger when she got back behind the desk, took a big mouthful, and turned the answer phone off. She opened the magazine and put it down, walked round the desk quickly and leaned over it from the other side. The magazine was invisible under the shelf. Feeling very clever, she skipped back round and sat down. She started reading a true story about a dog burial service who used the same coffin the whole time and charged all the clients £200 for it.

The phone rang. "Hello," she said apathetically. There was no answer on the other end but she could hear a strange, loud clicking noise. "Hello?" she said. "This is the Dennistoun day center." The caller hung up. Confused, she put the phone down just as another call came through on the same line. "Hello," she said. "Dennistoun day center."

She listened but no one spoke. All she could hear was the strange clicking noise on the other end. She was so engrossed she didn't notice the figure coming through the farthest entry door, one hand tucked into a bulky pocket, scratching the receiver on a mobile phone. It slid unnoticed through the lobby, heading straight for the dayroom, where Siobhain was sitting in her chair watching television, alone.

The temp turned the page. The police exhumed the dogs after a disgruntled groundskeeper got the sack and reported them. The dog widow was gutted. She wanted the police to charge the company with fraud. She knew she could never replace Scamper but she was looking at puppies and wanted to tell her story to as many people as possible so that they would be spared -

"What do you want?"

The woman's cardigan was buttoned up wrong and she had disgusting red lipstick all over her old mouth. She smiled and her teeth fell out onto the desk, rolling over the edge and tumbling onto the magazine. They were covered in spit and lippy and bits of chewed digestive biscuit.

"Go away," spat the temp, standing up and grabbing the old lady's arm tightly. She spun her around and pointed her at the dayroom. "Go. Go in there."

The old lady looked back at her, confused. "Shoo," said the temp, waving her hand.

The old lady shuffled away, one arm out in front of her.

The temp picked up the magazine at the edges and dropped the teeth into the bin, ripping out the pages they'd landed on. The spit had seeped through to the next effing pages as well. It better be a good holiday anyway.

He had only taken one step toward her when the toothless old woman walked into the room and said hello. Siobhain turned her head slowly, the bud of a smile flowering softly over her pretty face until her eyes fell on him.

Maureen opened the front door to her flat and stepped in, knocking over a pile of books with the swing of her overcoat. McAskill bent down to pick them up. "It's all right, Hugh," she said. "The place is a mess anyway."

He stacked the books into a tidy pile against the wall.

"Where did you leave the list?" asked McEwan kindly.

"Oh, Joe, it's in the kitchen somewhere," said Maureen, putting her bag down on the floor. "Listen, you go on, I'll just nip to the loo."

"Whereabouts in the kitchen?" asked McEwan.

Maureen gestured to the mess in the hall. "I'm not the sort of woman who has a special place for storing lists." She smiled at him and walked down the hall to the toilet.

She sat on the side of the bath and took the list out of her pocket, folding it carefully between the staff names Martin had given her and the list of Siobhain's ward mates. She put the toilet seat down and leaned the list on it, scratching the fold with her thumbnail until it was crisp. She opened it out and put a hand flat on either side of the fold, pulling it apart from the top down, ripping Siobhain's list off the bottom. She licked her fingertip and ran it along the ripped end of Martin's list, flattening the minute telltale hairs. She flushed the toilet and washed her hands.

Back in the kitchen McEwan was looking through the piles of newspapers on the window ledge and McAskill was sifting a pile of bills Maureen kept in the toast rack. She turned her back to them and opened the plastic-bags drawer, pretending to rummage through it. "Found it," she said, and held out the list to McEwan. He took it off her and held it up to the window. "What ye looking for?" she said innocently.