No Shadow In The City

By John Callaghan

Glasgow’s Southside is scorching in unaccustomed heat and the neighbourhood teeters on the edge, simmering and riot-ready.

In the city's docklands, a taxi driver murders his family in a bloody daylight massacre.

A bitter dispute between a union and a politically-connected business family escalates into firebomb attacks and violence.

Meanwhile, racist gangs organise violent confrontation after a white girl is raped and a Muslim woman attacked with acid in apparent retaliation...police and politicians struggle to prevent the tension turning into war on the streets.

And Stevie McCabe isn't a player in any of this. He's four hundred miles away, in London, planning to work for a bank, bird-watching and learning how to play Go.

He's four hundred miles away...for now.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Callaghan
• Release date: Aug 23, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476405124

John Callaghan

Vice Principal and English teacher in catholic school in Essex. Born in the East but raised in the West of Ireland. Married with two children. Writer of plays, short stories and two novels.

Book preview

Chapter 1 – Elder Park is Melting in the Dark

Pradip Jadeja killed his children in Elder Park.

For some fuck-knows-why reason he took them, hand in hand, all the way down to the playground at the Clyde Tunnel end of the park and he killed them there, among the swings.

Not with a gentle pillow, not with the drifting bliss of narcotics, not with a mad twist of his steering wheel into the eternal embrace of a Douglas Fir.

But, instead, with a knife.

Bloody, visceral, and public, he killed them where everybody could see, even although none of them wanted to, men, women and children.

No, Pradip Jadeja killed his children in Elder Park.

Both of them.

And when the police went back to his tenement flat overlooking the park, they found he’d killed his wife, too.

Of course, naturally.

With the same ten-inch blade he used to kill his children. And he didn’t bother to wipe it, witnesses said.

No, he led his two children through Elder Park to the chutes and roundabouts where they died, carrying a huge fucking bloody blade in his hand.

How do I know? How does anybody know? Because the witnesses said so.

The witnesses who watched a man grasping a bloody knife and leading children by the hand.

The witnesses who noticed enough to remark – later - on what they saw, but who never thought to intervene.

Who failed to prevent the murder of two children under the age of seven, butchered beneath a darkening evening sky in Glasgow G51 by their loving father.

But, listen…some of that story isn’t true. How much? Some…plenty…most…I don’t know. I don’t know, because I wasn’t there and because witnesses are the worst kind of evidence upon which you could ever choose to base any conclusions. Witnesses lie, they forget, they invent, they rationalise, they concur. They will tell you what they thought they saw, what they wanted to see, and what they think you want them to tell you they saw.

If ever you hear the words I saw it with my own eyes tumble from the lips of a member of the general public, assume whatever they are saying is garbage. If you do make that assumption, you’ll be right more than half the time – which immediately makes you more reliable than most witnesses.

So, all I know about Pradip Jadeja and the death of his children in Elder Park, I read in the papers or I heard at the other end of a phone. And then again, it was because of the phone calls that I read the papers. The papers...they take what witnesses say and add their own gloss, their own slant, their own...lies.

And it didn’t - couldn’t – concern me anyway, because I was four hundred miles away. I wasn’t in Glasgow at all. Instead, I was ambling across Blackfriars Bridge, trying to figure out how that new station worked, the one that was on both sides of the Thames, when Tommy Mac called.

’How ye doin’, Stevie?

I’m good, jist admiring some architecture here…well, actually, it’s a train station on a bridge across the river, so mibbe it’s more a question of engineering than architecture. Anyhow, shouldn’t you be educating Scotland’s future about now?

That’s a job for lesser men and women. This time of day, people like me are doing management. Put some quotation marks round that, if you like.

Which includes this phone call to me?

It seems to. Thought I’d give you a bell and see if you’ve had enough of London yet.

Samuel Johnson said…

…I know what he said – what does Stevie McCabe say?

Well, I’m still here. That’s the non-breakin’ news today. Am I missing much while I’m away?

"Uh…everybody’s, you know…the same…the weather’s amazin’, though. The weather, you believe it? This heat, never known anything like it. Everybody was like lobsters for a few days, now they’re like walnuts. Canny get a breath, even at night. Hotter than Casablanca, they said on the news…talkin’ about the news, did ye see that thing there, those murders? Terrible thing over your old patch last night. This taxi driver killed his kids, right there in Elder Park. Two or three of ‘em, stabbed them on the swings, a sword or somethin’."

Jesus. Bastard. Gettin’ back at his wife for some reason, usually, that type of thing. If I can’t have them, nobody will. They divorced, him and the mother? A certain kinna guy just…

Dunno. I jist heard it on the TV, and people are talkin’, y’know? Like you’d expect. How could anybody do that, and so on. Shockin’ thing – is it not on the national news?

Might be, haveny seen it...but I must admit, news isn’t the first thing on my mind these days.

Whit? Not even the Daily Banner?

Ouch, Tommy, that hurt, but I guess I asked for it. Or did I? Anyway, sure, I’m still spending the Daily Banner’s blood money. It keeps me from havin’ to do anything as tedious as actually work. For now, anyway.

So… you thinkin’ seriously that you might actually stay in London – you gettin’ on okay with your mate?

Ronnie is bein’ very good to me, but I’m cramping his style. It’s fine the now, but…dunno. He could get me a job, probably, if I wanted it, workin’ for the bank he’s at. Dunno if I want that, or not. An actual job...hmm. Depends on a lot of things.

Doesn’t everything? You talked to Bernie?

Talked? Eh…

Simple enough question.

You’d think. Yeah, I phoned her, twice, so we talked.

How is she? About you, I mean.

"She’s the way you think Bernie’d be. She’s angry…no, that’s not right…more like she was angry, now she’s disappointed. Like when somebody lets you down, and you knew it was comn’, but it happened anyway. Disappointed like that. But she’s…fair. I think that’s the word. She’s not slow to stick the knife in, you give her the chance, but what can I say? She’s right, that’s fair."

And ye’re not down there makin’ matters worse, with that woman from your TV show?

Worse? Christ, Tommy, Sarah is just a friend.

Whoa there, where did that word come from, ‘friend’? Sounded just wrong in that sentence, Stevie, like you’d said ‘colander’, or ‘stickleback’. Or worse.

"Well, Tommy, it’s a weird fuckin’ day in old London town when it’s you givin’ me relationship advice. I think you need to get back to your management, in quotation marks, or telling 5C about covalent pair bonds."

Fair enough – just let me know what address to send your wedding invitation to.

And he was gone before I could ask what wedding? I knew anyway, it would be Tommy and Veronica, who else? And I guessed that they would be inviting Bernie as well as me.

Still, he had planted a seed in my mind, so I made my rounds of the news sources of the world wide web and after an hour I was better informed than Tommy about the bloody murders in Elder Park. Elder Park, Govan’s dear green space, every inch of its northern perimeter staring down a huge brick-and-steel industrial mass of what had once been the shipyards that built the world’s fleets but was now…what? I don’t know. Nothing, probably. Reading the words on the screen stirred some memories, prompted some thoughts, provoked some doubts…

And so, Pradip Jadeja and his tragic family crept their way into my life, not as experience, but as drama, a tale told by another, who was himself playing the tribal historian and adding his own layers to the truth. Still and all, lies and their bastard offspring are…were…my stock-in-trade

But me, I’m in London. What do I care?

Chapter 2 – London Is Burning and I…I Live By The River

Ronnie, you still got a pair of those binoculars, the big old heavy Zeiss numbers the Met used to give you for surveillance?

Eh, most likely, somewhere. Why, you on somethin’ moody? Some tail job, surveillance? No? Don’t tell me you’re going bird-spottin’ or some mad ‘hing?

Actually…

Whit? You’ve lost it, McCabe. Truly. You’ve turned back into your fifteen-year-old self. Your face’ll be breakin’ out in plooks next.

Phone ringing, screen saying it was Bernie. Bernie Feeney, my ex, my partner, my former lover, my significant other, my past, my future, my victim.

Early in the day to hear your voice, Bernie, they tell me the weather up there is-

Sorry, Stevie, later, eh? This is business just now. You see the news, from up here I mean?

Oh, that guy wiped out his family, happened in Elder Park, some of it anyway. Shockin’ thing, Tommy Mac phoned and I-

No, not that, something else - remember the Dornoch Textiles fire?

What? Ah…warehouse or a factory or somethin’, out on the Southside, I used to pass it sometimes when I was working on that TV show, you could still see the-

Aye, that’s the one. Client of ours got five years for arson, racist attack as well, they said, because the factory employed mostly Asians.

Ronnie was shouting that he had left the binoculars in the hall as I flipped open the laptop to scrape the rust off my memory of Dornoch Textiles and their convicted firebomber, described as Murray Gilchrist, 24.

It’s coming back to me now…I’m Googlin’ it, I’m lookin’ at the old news report here…okay, it’s history, I don’t see the joy?

"Well, we think there’s something to play with. Murray Gilchrist always denied he did the attack – I mean, genuinely denied it. And there’s been a second firebomb attack, same deal, same method, same result, and Gilchrist’s still in jail. We think this goes to his innocence. It was never a strong prosecution in the first place, they painted a load of shit on his back just cuz he was a zoomer in this white power mob, hooked an Asian one time, used all the non-magic words while he was doin’ it…"

I dunno, that sounds pretty good evidence to me – punch a Punjabi for Scotland, that’s a crime even if he’s wearin’ a tartan tammy when he does it.

Well, we’re his lawyers-

’course you are. Every wide-o with an agenda knows he’ll get the best defence from his enemies, unless he just wants to make a point and wave his flag. So he picks you, nice liberals. And now you think this second firebomb’s gonny help an appeal, right? When anybody else’ll jist think it’s one of his Nazi buddies. Even if these guys’re not givin’ him some help, they might just do it for the fun – that’d be a good night out for the master race on the Southside.

"Like I say…we’re his lawyers. It’s our job, and we just get the message – strong message - that the coppers aren’t too keen to find anything that’ll take one out of the win column. We need a second opinion."

Bernie, I’m not your guy, I’m in London, for Chrissake, I-

"Nobody knows better than me that you’re in London, Stevie, nor why. At least, I think I know why, but you weren’t usually the kinda guy to run away from something. Kinda the opposite."

Ah, now, suddenly it’s you-and-me talk?

Actually, no. That was just me taking a shot – I’m entitled, don’t you think? So, if you plan to get your arse back in Glasgow any time soon, we’d appreciate your help with this wee business. And I’m saying that nice.

"I’m the only guy you can use? Just call anybody on your books, or do you not trust all the other ex-coppers not to get a wee bit too cheerful gettin’ a gig as cheerleaders for white power? Unless you think there’s somethin’ about me that I’d be your best bet for-"

"No. I think there’s somethin’ about you that might make you do it for me."

Call ended, and I knew I’d lost. Fucked if I could tell what it was I’d lost, but it was something, maybe more than just one battle and it hadn’t even been close.

Fuck you, Murray Gilchrist (24). Who were you, creeping into my day unbidden and smearing your shitty hands all over it? Another guy in a black hat, hundreds of miles away, like Pradip Jadeja, letting other people broadcast their versions of his story, another tribal historian telling tales. This one, though…I owed her. Not this way, I didn’t think, but when you’re in debt, you don’t always get to pick and choose how you pay. So, Dornoch Textiles…

Their warehouse/factory was only a few blocks from the location of a TV show I’d worked on, Unmissable You, the cause - one way and another – of all my recent troubles. Unmissable You was the reason I found myself in London, the reason I was separated from Bernie, the reason why I was considering a change of career, and the reason why I had money to spend…hey, sometimes there’s a silver lining. Different effects, different outcomes, different feelings, but all stemming from Britain’s most sensational, most ridiculous, most talked-about (for mostly the wrong reasons) TV show.

Dornoch Textiles was located a little south of the TV studio and occasionally, when I wasn’t using West Street subway station, I’d pass the factory on my way there from where the bus dropped me off. Those would be the times I was arriving from Bernie’s place…better times.

The textile factory occupied an entire block, classic red Victorian brickwork around dirty windows, secured behind I-defy-you security screens, as if the building protected gold, not silks and cottons. And along the longest wall that faced the main road, soot-blackened bricks told one part of Murray Gilchrist’s story…

…sharp frost nipping at his face, he kept close to the wall as he turned the corner. He knew there were no CCTV cameras here, but he didn’t need anybody seeing his face – don’t wear a mask, ya fanny, Magsy said, it’ll jist make you look rank, walkin’ right out there like some kinna criminal. He was outside the place now, where all they Pakis worked. The screens looked impressive over the windows, but they were attached to the wall with crappy brackets that his wee crowbar pinged off like party poppers. He peeled back enough of the screen to take aim at the glass beneath, punching a jagged hole with a half-ender, simultaneously trying to muffle the sound the brick made as it shattered the window. He squirted petrol through the hole, spraying it as far as he could and hurling the incendiary after. Don’t make that fuckin ‘hing blow up in your face, Magsy said, keep the wick ‘hing , the fuse timer ‘hing, whatever it is, away from ye when ye light it, ye get me? So he did, the deep whoosh of flame startling and exciting. He launched the flaming missile through the hole in the window and watched the dark factory interior jangle to life in the light-and-shadow dance choreographed by the juddering spikes of flame. He wanted to stay and watch it burn, but Magsy said get off yer mark, quick as, the busies’ll be down in a minute and you need to be somewhere else by then.

Was that how it happened? I don’t know, I wasn’t there, I made that up. But, yeah, it made sense and it was the story people believed. The blaze caused extensive damage, whatever that means, despite whatever fire-detection and prevention systems Dornoch Textiles had (or hadn’t) installed.

Later stories told me that Murray Gilchrist was arrested, charged and convicted for the offence, betrayed by his boasting-down-the-boozer and a cache of incendiary devices found in his home, in a classic stupid/evil mash-up. He pleaded not guilty to the end, but…oh, here we go, here we are…his membership of Scotland: White Power did him no favours, made the jury believe that he was that wee bit more likely than the next guy to firebomb a factory employing largely Asian workers. Bye, bye, Murray Gilchrist (24), see ye in five.

And now, it seemed like somebody else was intent on pursuing his unholy mission, because Dornoch Textiles had suffered a very similar attack and it wasn’t – for sure - the bold Murray, since he was still in HMP Barlinnie. I guessed all the other members of Scotland: White Power, if any, would be tidying up their cupboards and garages as a matter of some urgency, jettisoning anything that would burn.

Anyhow, so what? Me, I’m in London, what do I care?

Chapter 3 – Waterloo Sunset

I had a great day, an honest-to-God day out. I got my cappuccino as usual from Lina the smiley Latvian barista on the ground floor of Ronnie Kinnaird’s apartment block, thinking as I always did that a coffee shop called Roasters would never work in Glasgow, any more than one in Chicago called Douchebags.

The sun shone, although not quite as fiercely as everyone told me it shone lately in Glasgow, and I took the train through the grey-brown streets of south London, all the way west to Barnes bridge and the London wetlands centre. I felt fifteen years old again - endorsing Ronnie Kinnaird’s assessment - trudging around ponds and pools, meres and scrapes, as Great Crested Grebes nested on matted tussocks, Wigeon whistled like broken flutes and Grey Herons stood stately, arch and unconcerned at any intrusion into a world where they ruled as plumed kings. Those, I could remember unaided, but the Sedge Warblers and Reed Buntings rattling and scratching in the phragmites…those I needed the book to identify, which is also where I found that the reeds were called phragmites. My old skills, ropey in any case and approximate as a youth, were stuck in the half-open position by the passage of time and eroded by the day-to-day of a different life.

Still, here was Glasgow’s fugitive tough guy private eye communing with nature, feeling the sun and breeze on his face, sitting motionless while geese and ducks parped and squabbled in aimless activity. And none of those dark visions welled up, none of the betrayed and the victimised called to me from somewhere else, nobody asked me to save them, to dip my feet in the compromise and the filth that pumps like a corrupt vein through the city.

Peace, perfect peace, as Common Terns wheeled overhead, slim white boomerangs with their strangled robot howls.

But that’s not true. That tale, that vision of rough humanity at one with Gaia – not true.

Sure, I got that coffee and took that train, yes I paid the madly expensive entrance fee for the privilege of walking through a sculpted swamp, aye I saw the birds dive and sing, but I heard more than the calls of the wild, echoing across the marsh. I heard the voices of the lost and found, the condemned and reprieved, the saved and the damned. I heard Gibby Gibson, befuddled by cheap wine in his tower block, aiming low and undershooting; I heard Carol-Anne Gilhooley, bright as a box of buttons, hooking on the midnight corners, her USP that she wasn’t a junkie, roll up everybody; I heard DS Terry McNeil, life fragmenting, reaching for truth in a storm of lies; I heard Struth Fordyce-Anderson, high on the oxygen of contempt and despising the world; I heard a woman I only knew as Meche, whose every word to me had been a lie, but whom I might have loved.

Some of those…I saved…some I doomed…some I failed – they were on their own journey and nobody could still its insistent velocity. Some I didn’t affect, one way or another.

I heard, weaving in and out of them all, the voice of Bernadette Feeney, the woman I had loved, did love. The woman I betrayed, in the oldest, most obvious, most stupid way.

But that’s just me, up and down, I can’t fight it, voices in the night and sometimes in the day, too. And it was a good day, truly, birds whirling by the Thames. It’s just that there’s no escaping who you are and what you’ve done. Not if you want to look yourself in the eye and not flinch.

I had spent longer than I knew among the coots and rails – as the train from Barnes bobbled into Waterloo Station, the sun was starting to descend in the west, scattering long rays along the Thames as I crossed the bridge on foot, wondering about the evening ahead with Sarah La Dauncey.

*** *** ***

Now, this at least I can follow – you’re after a leg-over, like any man does. Not that bird stuff, wildlife and that, that’s jist no’ you, Stevie.

What’s the beef, Ronnie? It’s not as if it’s dress-makin’. It’s outdoors, it’s green, it makes baby Jesus happy-

Well okay then, that’s what I was missin’ all those years, when I put down some scabby wee burglar, or turned the key on a rape/murder. I used to go hoorin’ and drink the boozer dry, that was my idea of a time…turns out I shoulda relaxed with a wee stroll in the forest, lookin’ at wood finches. Get much chance to do that, up by, you and mother nature?

"Naw, as it happens. Not for a long while. Last time I thought about it, I was stuck on a hillside near Helensburgh, watchin’ a house where nothin’ happened. Sky was closing in, rain started, there was jist me and the river Clyde, grey and flat. And out there on the water was an Arctic Skua, jist drifting down to the sea. Or up – I don’t remember. Stercorarius Parasiticus, I thought to myself. I remember that, it stuck with me. That was the last time, and by the way – there’s no such thing as a wood finch."

"But there is such a thing as a woman with a ‘La’ in her name? Sounds like a classy act. Mibbe you’re not such a lost cause after all. I hope she appreciates her bit of Glesca rough - working in TV, probably a shortage of-"

"-real men, you gonny say? I worked in TV, for a bit, don’t forget. Most of the guys were too fuckin real. She knows what’s gettin’ with me."

Ah, she’s ‘gettin’ something, is she? Hey, don’t bite my nose off for bein’ crude, I’m just glad to know there could be somebody else’s sleeping quarters you might be usin’, that’s all. No rush, but some day? Great to be a mate, Stevie, but you here, in this place? Cramping my style, just a measure.

I hear what you say, Ronnie, but I can’t guarantee I won’t be back here tonight.

No such animal as a sure thing? Even at your time of life? I s’pose. Jist don’t forget to go prepared.

*** *** ***

I sat on the tube, thinking I liked it better when Ronnie Kinnaird lived in Putney – bigger place, less style to cramp. Now, he was halfway to the sky in a Docklands apartment, smaller but more expensive, pretending he wasn’t a middle-aged man trailing his divorces behind him, a gamma male bewildered by the speed and expectations of the companions his new habitat brought him – look, babe, it’s got river views!

But, beggars don’t have a long list of options, although – living temporarily off grubby, compromised, tabloid newspaper money – I was less of a beggar than most and Ronnie was still the only man in London who would let me doss on his premises in my preferred fashion. More of an acquaintance than a friend, there was still enough of that old-copper shared history for him to open his door to me – me, an occasional buddy who hadn’t been in touch since the last time he let me abuse his hospitality, chasing Elena Mavridis, a runaway who was much more of a threat than a victim, as a scumbag named Gerry Walsh could testify…that is, if he hadn’t been dead.

Ronnie was a police inspector then, in that preferable Putney flat, two divorces down. Now, he had taken his ticket from the job, collected another lightning-quick happy parting – a blitzscheidung, the Germans would probably call it – and was working in security for a steel-and-glass banking institution somewhere on Bishopsgate. They had a vacancy for his underling, he had told me…mine if I wanted it. It would be nice, he reckoned, to have two Glaswegians staring down all the threats faced by the Banque De Beaubourg. All I had to do was stay in London, and behave respectably…

Only that.

I got off the train at Angel, checked the directions to the restaurant Sarah had recommended and checked my reflection in a travel agent’s window. I looked like me.

I was ten minutes early, Sarah five; I ordered the pasta with truffles, Sarah the capocollo. It just stuck in my head, after they kept talking about it on-

-The Sopranos, I know.

Yeah, a friend of mine – distant friend, but still - did some PR on that, later seasons, y’know? When it got big?

When it lost its heart, too.

Ah, I don’t think you can blame her for that one. It got a lot of exposure, right? Job done!

"Talkin’ of work, how is it for you, after Unmissable You? Are you stinking up the town, or are you the girl who rode the dragon?"

"Never been better, I can honestly say that. The phone is ringing the whole time. I’m in Morocco next week, nice gig. Got four, no, five things that’ll be long-term, TV, theatre, that kind of thing. A museum. Seems like getting caught in an explosion was a pretty good career move."

You told me you’d get paid, I remember, when you sent out the press packs telling the tale, all with your own company’s name on them.

Sometimes, in this business, the thing you have to publicise is yourself. But you, Stevie? You never really told me why you’re here when you called. Or for how long…

Well, there’s fall-out. Some people didny walk away from that thing, good and bad. My business isn’t your business – different set of values altogether. And Glasgow’s gettin’ by okay without me, give or take a multiple murder and a racist firebomb attack.

Nothing to do with you...

’course not. How could it bother me?

…but you know all about what’s happening. You follow it on the news?

Worse – people call me up and tell me about it, as if -

"- as if it was something to do with you. You can’t escape it."

"Some people don’t want me to – I mean, you could see it that way."

Some people? What about you, are you one of those people?

I don’t think it’s an escape…I dunno. I’m like a…like a monk in retreat, gettin’ my head together. How’s that for a philosophy?

Are you? Or are you like a fighter that’s had one too many fights? And you’re down here, ‘getting your head together’ on your own, without -

- on my own, yes.

- Bernadette. I remember her name. What’s the message there, Stevie? Here you are, here’s me, what’s going on? Apart from the pasta and truffles?

London’s a good place to be, but I don’t know many people down here anymore. I’ve got an old mate – half-mate, really – who is doin’ me the kindness of letting me share space with his washing. But like I say, we’re not blood brothers and there’s twenty-four hours in a day…

So I’m the late shift?

Christ, no, I didny -

Ha-ha, Stevie, step away from the panic button, it was just a zinger, that’s all. I was just winding you up. It’s not a mystery. Sure, you knew I’d moved back down here after the show, so of course you’re going to call me when you fetch up in town. After all, we did have a moment, didn’t we? And maybe there could’ve been more, if it was up to you – tell me I’m not right.

I’m not arguing. But when I called up, you said sure, right away. Why?

"Why? Because we did have that moment."

…I think this’ll be our food now.

*** *** ***

The food was good…was it? Or is that just the sort of thing you say? Well, I cleared my plate, and I don’t remember having to force anything, so… We spoke about this and that, differences between London and Glasgow, movies, work (hers), hobbies (mine), families, pets, coffee, Italy, Florida, Prague, Barcelona, art…

Yes, art. I told Sarah I was going to the National Gallery – don’t mention it to Kinnaird, he’ll have me sectioned – and asked her opinion about the particular things I should try to…what’s that you say? Your daughter? You have to get home to your eleven-year-old daughter? Well, that never cropped up in the family section…

Sorry, Stevie. It’s just…I never noticed how late it had got…not a bad thing, right? Call me and tell me how your gallery goes, okay? Tomorrow?

And she was gone, one buss on the cheek and no, I couldn’t walk her anywhere, a taxi’d be easiest…Not what I’d expected, not what Sarah had planned, but life is what happens when you’re busy making other arrangements.

Ronnie was alone, lights dimmed, watching the river ebb beneath us, a million floors below.

Welcome home, Casanova - how’d your date go? Ye winchin’?

It was…fine.

Fine? That’s no way to talk about your fancy London girlfriend, especially this early in the game.

She isn’t.

What then? You lab partners? BFF?

I think we’re probably friends.

Jesus, Stevie, you just said the F word. You sound about fourteen.

That’s a sad thing to hear. Last time, you said I was fifteen, I’m gettin’ younger.

Well, exactly – you’re gettin’ more and more infantile every day, but listen – you can get your own rusks, when it comes to that point.

What’re you doin’ yourself, love guru?

Watching. I like this, in the dark. You can watch the river from up here, all the streets down there, see the lights, movin’ this way and that, all in the darkness, and imagine who’s down there, what they’re doin’…

Most often when you’ve got outside a few sharpeners, Ronnie?

No harm in that. If the whole world was this mellow…did your buddy McCafferty get you? He phoned the flat a while back and said he was just gettin’ your voice mail.

That’d be right, I had the phone switched off while I was out, still do…what did Tommy say?

Said he’d leave you a message, sounded kinna high, but. Said there was riots or somethin’. Is he a panicky type? Dunno why he was phoning you, mibbe thinks you’re the United Nations.

I pressed to listen to voice mails – there were two, Tommy McCafferty first, gabbling without pause or punctuation.

"Hey, Stevie. Jist keepin’ you in the picture here. Lotta trouble the night round Albert Drive way, news said it was riots, wouldny call it that, not yet anyway, coupla windows in shops panned in, was mostly what it was…reason I got called down there, not my ward, but the city council is worried it might all kick off bigger, tryin’ to get as many faces out as poss, show we take it seriously, know? Political leadership. Priti Kohli’s the local Labour councillor, she’s a mate, so…my name was in the frame…sounds like it could be a