“What? What suddenly hit you?” Judith probed.

 “This is a little awkward for me. Promise, promise, promise you won’t tell anybody what I’m about to say.”

 Judith took both of the girl’s hands with her own. “I promise.”

 “Last year, I spent a night trying to be a prostitute…I can’t believe I did it, but I had no money and was determined not to ask my parents for any help. You see, I’m trying to divorce myself from them, from their ideas, from their expectations…from everything, so that I can finally be my own person.” At this point she made a limp hand gesture, dismissing the tangent she was racing off on. “I say ‘trying’ because in the end I just couldn’t go through with it. I got into a car with some guy, but when we pulled up at Glasgow Green for the business, I sprang out of the passenger seat and ran as fast as my legs would carry me.” She gripped hold of Judith’s arm as if pleading to be understood. “That same night, one of the girls was beaten almost to death. I was the last person to see her out of a wheelchair.” She raised her eyebrows ashamedly. “She was getting into a Mercedes — with Herman. I came round to confront him myself… thought it best to get his side of the story before doing anything rash.”

 “Why don’t you just ring the police?” Judith asked, confounded.

 “Would you if it meant the whole world thinking you were a prostitute?”

 “There’s no need to tell them that and, besides, you’re not are you?”

 “Oh, and you think that’ll make any difference to some defence barrister? By the time they’ve finished with me I’ll be Madam Whiplash.”

 “But what if he does it to somebody else?”

 Sighing deeply, the girl took a phone from her jeans pocket.

 “You’re absolutely right. It’ll be good to get it off my conscience once and for all. That’s one of the things I wanted to talk to somebody about. It’s been bad enough keeping this to myself for so long, but now I know who it is – Christ!”

 The police said they’d send someone round to the girl’s apartment within the hour and Judith agreed to go along and provide moral support. Before leaving, she went down onto the lawn and said farewell to Dickens, though kept him in the dark concerning their intruder’s revelation.

 “Thanks for the tea. I’m really glad I met you.” She gave him a warm hug and kissed him on the cheek. “I love you Dickens.”

 This was said in a platonic way, but it was obvious that Dickens, so starved of affection all his life, saw something there that wasn’t.

Judith’s new acquaintance lived in a one-bedroom apartment in Mount Florida, on a steep street of blonde sandstone tenements, whose bow windows created a wonderful ripple effect. Judith had assumed it was in the process of being redecorated, until the occupant confessed it had never looked any different in the two years she’d been living there. The walls were bare but for the odd stubborn patch of patterned wallpaper, and there were no carpets, just rough floorboards. Indeed, the only décor in the living room was an old chintz patterned couch and a portable TV on top of a crate. Nobody would have guessed that this pasty girl, called Angie, was the daughter of wealthy parents down in London; her father a City hedge-fund manager; her mother a novelist. But this was because she’d divorced herself from them and their middle class ways, intending to plough her own path, free from accusations of ‘privilege’ every time she achieved something under her own steam. Not only had she changed her surname by deed poll, but turned down a place at Oxford University — where both her parents and her two elder sisters had graduated with first class degrees — for Glasgow instead.

 Angie told Judith all this in the three hours it took for a Detective Chief Inspector to arrive. He introduced himself, but the women were too stressed by his accusatory stare to comprehend his name. Once he’d confirmed that Angie did indeed want to talk about the attempted murder of a Miss Carina Curran, he gestured for her to take a seat alongside Judith, as if he owned the apartment. Once she got started there was no holding her. In fact, on several occasions he had to ask her to slow down. He wasn’t taking notes, just listening with blank inscrutability. This caused Angie to keep repeating herself, in the futile hope he’d acknowledge that what she was saying was being heard or, more importantly, believed.

CHAPTER: 4

 Judith left Angie’s shortly after the detective. Her travel schedule ruined, she thought she may as well visit Danny, whom she’d been ringing to no avail ever since the party, worried about his feelings in the wake of Ingrid’s appraisal on the landing. Having driven back across town and into the more neglected side of Glasgow, she turned onto the field of flattened earth, where she caught her first sight of thick grey smoke, billowing from somewhere among the derelict tenements up ahead. Reaching the junction for Danny’s street, her way was blocked by a police squad car, parked across the road, blue light flashing. Kids on bikes were hurtling into the street unobstructed, so she abandoned her vehicle and jogged behind, towards the dark mist and deep buzzing sound of fire engines. Reaching the outer ring of what must have been fifty onlookers — many dressed in black — she heard an exasperated voice through a loud hailer, repeatedly imploring people to move back. Standing on tip-toes, she caught her first glimpse of violent flames, but it was impossible to tell from which part of the building they were coming exactly because of the smoke, and so it took another whole minute before her worst fears got confirmed. It was Danny’s apartment.

 Judith barged to the head of the crowd, but as she stumbled out from the throng, her way was barred by several shirt-sleeved police officers. Beyond them, two crews fought the fire, half a dozen hoses blasting the growling building in vain. Staring into the flames, she found it difficult to comprehend that Danny and his mother might be trapped in that diabolical heat. Just then, a warm breath tickled the back of her ear.

 “How’s that for a leaving party then?”

 Judith turned round — it was Danny! In spite of the hot sunshine, he was wearing a baggy black suit, which would have been fashionable sometime in the mid-eighties.

 “Danny! Thank God you’re safe. Where’s your mother? Is she Ok?”

 “There’s nothing that can harm her now. She died on Friday night while I was out at Bob and Ingrid’s party…We’ve just come back from the cremation…wanted it over and done with as soon as possible, as was the old girl’s wish.”

 “I’m so sorry…what happened to the apartment?” Judith asked, a little excitedly.

 “Well, it was left empty today for the first time in eight years and, coincidentally, it just happened to go up in smoke, along with all the booze and pieces for the wake,” Danny snorted sardonically. “The bastards got me out in the end eh!”

 Judith, who attributed this statement to Danny’s paranoia, was more inclined to point the finger at kids bored on their summer holidays from school than at some capitalist conspiracy. During her week driving around the city, she’d seen quite a few burnt out apartments, usually in derelict tenements on the outlying schemes, but sometimes in semi occupied blocks as well. Unfortunately, not only was Glasgow the murder capital of Western Europe, but the house fire and arson capital of Britain too.

 Judith had intended to get off as soon as possible, but she felt duty bound to make sure Danny was going to be ok first and so ended up at the relocated wake. It was held at The Brothers Bar on Saracen Street — a whitewashed, single floored, apartment roofed, windowless place, welded onto the end of a red-stone tenement. After a while, Danny started to tire of people’s sympathy and asked Judith to accompany him outside, where they sat on the roadside of an adjacent service lane, in the cool shadow of the pub. Her job, she knew, was to listen.