LITMIR.BIZ

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only real connections with this area. So there must be some connection between them and Elizabeth Jane. There has to be. So we get working on Lynzi Traill’s connections in the West End. Who’s in the shop, for instance? Try to crack those alibis. And get working on Elizabeth Jane’s new-found freedom. Her flat was a recent refurb; she’d been in it for only a few months, first time she’d been away from her parents. What was she getting up to? The MO’s being circulated nationwide, and so far we have nothing that comes close. So this is on our doorstep and nowhere else. Costello, you’re coming with me for the tea-and-sympathy bit. The rest of you, get on with it.’

      There was a murmur of assent, as the migration for the coffee machine started. It was going to be a long day.

      It took a good two or three minutes’ discussion before Sean McTiernan got what he wanted, and by then the mid-morning queue of Saturday shoppers behind him was stretching out to the street. The menu said ‘Coffee Latte Light with Wings.’ He didn’t know what that meant.

      It turned out to be bog-standard white coffee with a prong stuck in it that pulled the dark brown of the coffee through the white of the milk to form a pattern. It was, he presumed, supposed to be the Ashton Café logo. Or was there a ‘right way up’ to drink it?

      He proffered a pound coin. The bored waitress with the plaits didn’t look up. Her outstretched hand hovered in mid-air as the other pulled the receipt from the chattering till. A foreigner in his own city for a moment, he looked again at the price list and gave her another pound coin. The waitress flicked it over before depositing it in the till and scooping out some change with long red nails. She dumped the coins on his tray and walked away.

      The only empty tables were at the back of the café. Sean chose a seat in the corner, his back against the wall and his eye on the door by force of habit. He moved the coffee cup back and forth under his nose, enjoying the aroma, trying to see the Betty Boop watch of the peroxide blonde sitting in the booth opposite. He couldn’t make out the time. It must be nearly half eleven, and Nan believed there was an eleventh commandment . . . thou shalt not be tardy. He was about to lean over and ask Peroxide the time when a man slid into the other seat at her table. Sean glanced at the man’s watch, its larger face easier to read backwards and upside down. Five to. He caught sight of white cuffs and a dog collar as a piece of paper passed from him to her. Peroxide looked at it, puzzled. The dog collar seemed to explain something, and she nodded. Then there was an abrupt goodbye, and he was away. The blonde crumpled up the paper and threw it dismissively across the table. For a minute she was lost in her own world, then she caught Sean looking and smiled alluringly, curving her wide red lips over a cup of espresso. He caught the scent of her musky perfume, cheap, too strong.

      He didn’t smile back.

      A week to go. Seven days of being out more often than being in, a phased return to the community.

      A week to go . . . and he would be with her again. Seven days of waiting. But he had waited four years. Seven days made no difference. He dipped his spoon into the coffee, drawing the black liquid at the bottom through the white foam, making patterns of his own. The last time he had seen her, she had been stomping down the road in a bomber jacket and baggy jeans, her blonde hair dyed black, cut short and spiky, looking like any Scottish teenage boy. He would never have recognized her, so what chance would anybody else have had? He remembered standing at the window of the dark green bedroom in the flat in Petrie Street, with the ceiling he never got round to painting, the bed still warm from their bodies, watching her go to the bus stop, carrying a bin bag full of her life, kicking it as she went. He had felt tears prickle at his eyes then.

      He felt them again now.

      He sipped at his coffee. It smelled better than it tasted. It tasted like cow piss.

      Two weeks ago he had been released into the care of Martin the social worker, an anaemic-looking Geordie who walked down Sauchiehall Street dressed for the north face of the Eiger. Martin had never cautioned Sean to assess the psychological parameters of his crime, never asked him why he had kicked Malkie Steele to death with such prejudice he had burst his liver. Martin had simply asked if he preferred McEwan’s or Tennent’s, and had given him his own set of keys. All he had to do was take time to adjust.

      In prison Sean had evolved an acute sense of when he was being observed; he knew Miss Peroxide with the red lips was looking at him, waiting for him to meet her eyes again. It was the same game he played. He knew he was good-looking, and inside or out it was something to trade.

      He looked round the café, letting his eyes pass over the blonde without stopping. She was looking at him through the peroxide wire that covered her eyes. Her features were too heavy to be beautiful, but she was carefully made up, with an oriental tilt to her eyes, a wide nose, her lips beautifully painted pillarbox red.

      Sean let a smile soften his lips. Soon he would be home; he would go running every morning, running every night, along the beach from the white cottage under the shadow of the castle, along a beach that went on and on and on . . . to a beautiful blonde witch, waiting with her familiar.

      Miss Peroxide smiled across at him. He smiled back, then looked away, noting the miniskirt, the chunky legs in green ankle boots.

      She was far from perfection.

      But after three and a half years she didn’t have to bother to look decent. The fact that she was a female with a pulse was enough for him. She would have a comfy bed, clean sheets, a duvet, nice toilet paper.

      He looked at her face again, giving her his James Dean smoulder, then let his eyes linger a little longer on her thighs.

      ‘Aye!’ A thin old woman dumped a plastic shopping bag on the table in front of him, sending a tidal wave of expensive coffee over the rim of his cup, obliterating the Ashton Café logo.

      ‘Hello, Nan, how are you doing?’ He stood up, planting a kiss on her cold bristled cheek, embarrassed to feel a tear in his eye.

      Here was his Nan, miserable as usual, with her thrawn smile. The turquoise butterfly glasses had been changed for small gold rims, but the mole was hairier than ever, standing to attention on her top lip. She pulled her grey crocheted hat further down over her lank straight hair, then, just in case anybody thought she was enjoying herself, she began cursing under her breath about his choice of meeting place, the mole hairs twitching as she muttered.

      Miss Peroxide, still watching, still interested, shot him a look of amused sympathy. The pigtailed waitress came over with a cup of tea.

      ‘I told them you’d get it,’ Nan said.

      Sean paid, pushing the waitress’s hand away, telling her to keep the change.

      Miss Peroxide twisted her head slightly, the three gold chains round her neck narrowing down her cleavage, and crossed one chunky leg over the other. There was a lot of flesh between the top of her ankle boots and the bottom of her skirt. She raised her cup to her lips, smiled at him again and turned away.

      Nan blew her nose on a napkin, giving her nostrils a good clear out. That brought back memories to him, memories of the kids’ home, of paper hankies like steel wool and a hard slap every time he used his sleeve.

      ‘You’ve lost weight,’ she said. ‘I’ve made you soup.’

      ‘Oh, ta, what is it?’ Images of home-made Scotch broth boiling away on his Baby Belling.

      ‘Good for you, that’s what it is. Better than that.’ She pointed at Miss Peroxide. Nan never missed a trick.

      ‘She’s nothing,’ he said quietly. ‘How are you?’

      ‘Who listens to me if I complain? Twenty minutes to wait for a train, I’m telling you, ma boy –’

      ‘What else’s in the bag?’ He peered in the top.

      ‘Soup, tablet, chocolate crispies. Where are you staying?’

      ‘Just up the road.’ He kept it vague.

      ‘Good, good,’ she said. She wasn’t daft. ‘Is it near Cleopatra’s Disco?’ She said it as though she had

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