“What about the six hundred odd thousand sales reported in the press?”

 “Oh come on Danny! Do you really think McLeod hasn’t got people working in the media, weaving illusions for him and lending his scams credibility?”

 There was a pause, during which Danny no doubt tried to digest the extent of the deception, before interrogating Bob further.

 “So I take it he was paying you a wage?”

 “Two hundred and fifty quid a week plus touring expenses. The cars and suits were on credit and Ingrid was able to fund most of our nights out, after she landed a well-paid TV commercial when we returned from Italy. Stupid cow believed I was paying thousands out a week on mortgages, and so thought she was getting the best end of the deal. Not only did she think I was paying for the apartment and our retreat up on the coast, but a couple of places I’d invented in St Tropez and Mauritius too…what a friggin’ joke eh?”

 “How the hell did you afford those houses then? And what about the little knocking shop over in Govan?”

 “They all belong to Rex. Of course, as soon as I attracted the attention of the police he kicked me out. Do you know where I’ve been living this past year?”

 “Where?”

 “Herman’s.”

 “Friggin’ hell, after all that’s gone on?”

 “One frosty night, I was driving round Calton when I saw him with some church group, handing out cups of hot soup to the hookers. I felt obliged to take him home…though I don’t know why, not after all the harm he’s done me. When we got there, his house was lit up like a bloody Christmas tree…there was a friggin’ party going on! There must have been fifteen of the dirty rotten scumbags in the place — old winos with beards and smack head louts, supping out of cans from cardboard crates, neatly stacked up along the living room wall, all the way up to the ceiling.”

 “Jesus.”

 “He’d only been down to the Great Eastern and invited everyone back to live with him. Said it was an act of contrition, for what happened to that mouthy little bitch Curran. Also, he was trying to emulate you.”

 “Me?”

 “Yes. I’m afraid you’re his new hero. You’re all he ever talks about, ‘Danny this’ and ‘Danny that’. He’s been trying to do with the down and outs what you’ve done with the kids…it’s pathetic. At one stage he locked all the booze away until they sat through his music appreciation classes in the kitchen.”

 Danny blew his cheeks out, a little spooked at being Herman’s new obsession. “And you moved in there, with all that lot?”

 “Well, I’d been living in a bed and breakfast, so I thought, if I can just get rid of the freeloaders, Herman’s pad could make a good springboard for the future. So I did, while he was attending an appointment up at the loony bin. I got Rex’s lad, Jimmy, to come round with a team and scare them off. In return they helped themselves to some of Herman’s more valuable furniture. When he got back I just told him the down and outs had robbed him and fled…stupid bastard was devastated.”

 “So I take it you’re still living there?”

 “I was, up until a fortnight ago, when the prick stopped taking his medication and got detained again. Some do-gooders came round wanting to know my connection to him. Unsatisfied with my answers they returned next day with the police and had me evicted. For the past fortnight I’ve been sleeping on the back seat of my car, in a lay-by off the A82, between Glasgow and Dumbarton. It was while I was making the return journey to town — to wash at the swimming baths — that I spotted Ingrid and Francesca heading out here.” Bob stopped talking for a moment, as if suddenly stunned by a vision of some sort, before announcing: “It’s all over Dan. I’m gonna have to go back to my parents.”

 “Stay here with us.”

 “No, I’ll stay the night then it’s time to confront reality. It’s going to be hard, explaining that their precious only child never really made it big after all… that he’s a failure… a vulgar gangster’s ping pong ball…When I went to prison my mother attempted suicide you know. Fortunately, I’ve managed to convince her I was the innocent victim of a madman’s spite and she’s made an almost full recovery now. God knows what this is going do to her.” He made another big sigh. “But for that mouthy whore everything would be ticking along fine! The moment they arrested me I became a liability in Rex’s eyes. You see, his boys used the Govan stair my apartment was on for storing and chopping heroin. He’d put the whole place under my name and turned it into apartments with non-existent tenants. That way, if the police raided, they couldn’t pin anything on an individual. Luckily, the latest cargo had been shipped out by the time they arrived to try and gather evidence against me…not that they were gonna find much after I’d repainted the place twice and repeatedly jet sprayed the stairs with bleach and water.”

 “Hold on…heroin? Rex Macleod doesn’t go near drugs, he bloody hates them!”

 With what sounded to Judith like exasperation at Danny’s simplicity, Bob affected a sneering laugh. “What was it Shakespeare wrote? ‘Methinks the lad doth protest too much.’ Macleod hates drug dealers like Roy Cohn hated homosexuals. The anti-heroin persona? That was just a smokescreen for one of Europe’s biggest drugs barons. The street corner dealers he used to shop? They were actually banging out his gear, but didn’t even know it — stupid wee bastards! Just like I never knew he was buying all my records.”

 “So where did my money come from?” There was a panic in Danny’s voice now.

 “Definitely not from song royalties, put it that way. When you blackmailed me I begged Baxter to help find a solution, but he deserted me as a Rex McLeod reject. Until, that was, I explained the painting scam. He put it to the Big Man, who then lent me seven hundred and sixty grand on the express understanding that he recouped a million within twelve months, or else. Mercifully, my brainwave was a success, otherwise I’d be couriering packages every other month and ending up in the same prison cell the whole scheme was designed to keep me out of in the first place.”

 “What do you mean, painting scam?”

 “The kebab house man who bought all your work at the exhibition I set up in London was in the loop. He bought the paintings from me with money which Rex was already laundering through his takeaway shop tills. Then, having established a phoney market for your work, he sold them for real and got over a million quid, all of which went straight back to the Big Man, netting him a handsome two-hundred and forty grand profit on the original seven hundred and sixty he’d lent me in order to pay you off. The rich get richer my friend, but then you already know that better than anyone, after all, it’s pretty much all you’ve ever droned on about these past twenty-five years”

 “You mean this college is courtesy of the plague that’s ravaged our city? Oh please God…no! Kids have died in their hundreds, been made homeless or lost limbs so that I can play with paints and drink fine wine? You bastard! You knew what you were doing all along didn’t you? You’ve deliberately made me complicit in that which I despise…compromised my soul and will no doubt destroy my mind in the process. All that crap about me having ‘won’, it’s just your bitter sarcasm. You’re the winner. Now, till the day I die, I’ll be more miserable than you ever could be.”

 “You’ve only yourself to blame Danny. You relinquished the right to moralise once you entered the world of blackmail. Besides, it’s your own vanity that’s making you miserable…your romantic need to be perceived as ‘the good guy’. No one leaves this world with a clean sheet Danny boy, so why the hell did you think you were going to be any different?”

 “You should have told me! You should have let me know you were broke! I’d never have shopped you anyway!”

 “I couldn’t take that chance…not with your friggin’ morals! I may have made the most of my time-out in Barlinnie Prison to think, but I certainly had no intention of going back there.”