It didn’t take long. When I was a trainee copper, I’d had to take my statements down in longhand in a daft wee notebook, in the knowledge that I might have to read them aloud in court. I had heard tales of what could happen to policemen in the witness box, and afterwards in the Chief Constable’s office if their jotters had been doctored in any way. ‘Let me see your notebook, officer,’ is the last thing any Plod wants to hear the judge say when he’s up there, in the box, under oath. My book was always impeccable, but for all that I was still a pretty awful copper.

  ‘Thank you very much,’ said young Morrow, when we had finished talking to the tape. ‘I’ll have these transcribed, then I’ll ask you to sign them. It’ll take about twenty minutes, half an hour at most. You can either wait, or look in again later. It’s up to you.’

  ‘We’ll come back in,’ I said, taking an executive decision. ‘Will you be ready by one?’

  He nodded, and showed us out through the front office and into the street, where yet another traffic warden was prowling around my car. We jumped in quick and drove off, leaving her scowling in frustration.

  It took us a while to find Celtic Scenery. You don’t expect to find business offices right on a dockside, but that’s where it was, tucked in behind the Malmaison Hotel, not far from the radio station.

  The entire resources of the company turned out to be two networked computers, and two bright, energetic young women. This time, I left the talking to Prim.

  The ladies looked at us in surprise as we entered. I guessed that theirs was a business which attracted few customers to the door. There was no counter and only one spare chair. We stood there awkwardly for a few seconds, until they stood up and came round from behind their desks.

  ‘Hi,’ said Prim. ‘I hope you can help us.’ She fished in her handbag and produced a driving licence. ‘I’m looking for my sister, on a very urgent family matter. She’s an actress; her name’s Dawn Phillips. And here’s mine, look.’ She held out the driving licence for the women to inspect. They looked at it, but the suspicion on their faces was unwavering.

  Prim ploughed on, using everything she had to establish her credibility. ‘Rawdon Brooks, at the Lyceum, sent us down to see you. He told us that Dawn has a part in an American movie that’s being shot on location over here. He couldn’t remember the name, but he said it was a Highland epic, and he thought that you might have been involved with them.’

  The women looked at each other, then at Prim, then at me, then at each other again. Finally one of them nodded, and went back to her work-station, leaving the other to deal with us. She was stocky and confident, dressed in jeans, a tee-shirt and sandals.

  ‘It sounds like the remake of Kidnapped;’ she said. ‘It’s Miles Grayson’s new project. He’s playing the lead and directing as usual. It’s the second time he’s used us to do setups for him.’ Her face shone with professional pride. I wasn’t surprised. Apart, maybe, from the President of the United States, the Pope and the Queen, Miles Grayson is the most famous human on the planet.

  ‘We don’t see the cast list,’ the woman went on, ‘so I can’t tell you if your sister’s there or not, but yes, we do know where they’ll be today.’ She paused. ‘Look, it would be more than my life was worth to send you to the set, but I’ll take a chance and tell you that they’re booked into the Falls of Lora Hotel, in Connell Ferry, tonight and tomorrow.’

  ‘Could we phone the hotel and check whether Dawn’s there?’ asked Prim.

  The woman shook her head. ‘No. We made a block booking for them, and they won’t have checked in yet. If it’s as urgent as all that you’ll just have to go up there to look for her. It’s not that long a drive, actually. Go via Bridge of Earn and you’ll do it in about three hours.’

  We thanked the girls and went back out to the dock. There was a breeze coming in off the sea. We stood there and looked around, across the grey-blue river mouth to the Waterfront Bistro, and beyond, to the new Government office building, in all its white awfulness. We grabbed a coke and a quick sandwich in the Malmaison Bar, then drove back up to the police station, parking this time outside the bakery in Elbe Street, seeking sanctuary from the wardens.

  Young Morrow was in the front office as we entered the old building, at about twenty past one. ‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘did we keep you from your lunch?’ He smiled and shook his head, giving me the impression that lunch was for wimps.

  ‘Here you are; they’re all typed up and ready. There’s no need to go through to the Black Hole again. If you’ll just read them and sign them, that’ll be it.’

  We did as we were told. I gulped inwardly as I put my pen to our economies with the truth. ‘How’s the investigation going?’ I asked, by way of conversation.

  Morrow looked at me, unsmiling for the first time. He leaned towards me and whispered, so that only I could hear. ‘The boss said to me that you used to be one of us, so I’ll tell you. We identified the guy an hour ago. His name’s William Kane. He’s a stockbroker. He left his wife a wee while back, for another woman. The wife says she doesn’t know who it was, but Dylan’s going on the assumption that it was your girlfriend’s sister. So if she shows up, we’re going to want to speak to her.’

  I winced with a show of concern. ‘Shit!’ I said quietly. ‘Thanks for that. I can’t believe that Dawn would get herself involved in that kind of situation, but don’t worry, if she shows up in town I’ll bring her to see you myself.’

  We turned to leave. My hand was on the doorknob when he called after us. ‘Oh! Miss Phillips, I almost forgot. Mr Dylan told me to ask you about that torn fiver you picked up yesterday. He said that technically he shouldn’t have let you take anything from the house, so he asks, could he have it back for now?’

  Prim looked at the young detective, all sweetness and blushing innocence. ‘I’m really sorry,’ she said, ‘but I taped the two halves together and spent it. On groceries, I think. Inspector Dylan won’t get into trouble, will he?’ Morrow smiled grimly, as if trouble for Mike Dylan wouldn’t bother him too much.

  ‘Let’s hope not,’ he said, untruthfully.

  In which we have a visitor, and Ali does too

  Heavy clouds covered the sun when we stepped out into Queen Charlotte Street. It looked as though the weather was about to break. As I drove back up Leith Walk towards the Old Town, we talked tactics, and agreed that we would head straight for the Falls of Lora Hotel. By the reckoning of the girl in Celtic Scenery, and it was her business to know these things, we would be there by five-thirty.

  I looked up at the belvedere as I drew up to my parking space. ‘That’s funny. Old Wallace must think the sun’s still shining.’ Prim followed my gaze. Our loftmate was sprawled out along the window ledge, pressed to the glass as if he was trying to reach some sunshine just outside.

  ‘You going to like living with an iguana?’ I asked my new flatmate, as I parked.

  ‘Oz my dear, if I can cope with you, I could cope with a tyrannosaurus.’ She smiled. There’s something about Prim’s smile that goes straight to my knees. You can see right through it into her heart, and know that she’s happy. It’s the sort of smile that made it seem right then as if the sun was still shining inside my old Nissan, for me alone. She kissed me quickly on the cheek and jumped out of the car.

  We knew that something was wrong as soon as we stepped through the front door, and saw the kitchen. All of the contents of the cupboards were laid out along the breakfast bar, every last tin of beans, every last jar of herbs.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ I said. ‘Those mice are getting too bloody cheeky for their own good!’

  Prim beat me up the stairs, but only just. Her cry of alarm was still hanging in the air as I reached the living area. ‘Ransacked’ is a word I’d never used in my life until then. There’s nothing else in the OED quite like it, and when you think of it, it’s as descriptive as you can get. Everything I, everything we, had was laid out in neat piles. Prim’s bag was empty, on the floor. Her clothes had all been turned inside out. A dozen tampons in their paper casing were lined up neatly beside their box. I think that, more than anything else, was what made her cry.

  All of the cupboard doors lay open. The drawers of my desk were stacked upon its surface, one on another. Even the lining of Wallace’s cage had been disturbed.

  Ever seen an outraged iguana? That’s the only way I can describe the look on his face as my dinosaur appeared down the ladder from the belvedere. He glared around the room in human indignation, then at us, as if to say, ‘What the hell’s this then?’

  Prim saw him and all at once her tears, which had been making my shirt decidedly damp, turned into laughter.

  ‘Poor old chap,’ she said, jumping on to the sleeping level, and for the first time in either of their lives, picking him up. The old bugger swelled with pride. I’ll swear that he nuzzled his head against her breast. Imagine, for a fleeting second I was jealous of an iguana. She carried him down, and separated some food from the pile on the floor, putting the rest back into its box. As she did, she looked up at me.

  ‘Who did it, Oz, do you think? Were they looking for…’ My nod cut off her sentence unfinished.

  ‘What else? Or did you smuggle some uncut diamonds back from Africa? As far as “who’s” concerned, who knows about the fiver? Mike Dylan asked about it, but that doesn’t prove that he understands what it’s about. It’s quite possible young Morrow’s story was straight up, and that Dylan was just trying to cover up a mistake.

  ‘No, the only people we know of who understand what that fiver’s really worth are Ray Archer and your sister, although it’s possible that Dawn only opened the account, and doesn’t know what’s in it.’

  Prim shook her head and stood up, leaving Wallace munching on the floor. ‘There could be another.’

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘The mystery man who was looking for Dawn before we found Kane’s body.’

  ‘True, unless that was Ray Archer — and it could have been. Whoever it was, he still doesn’t have the fiver, does he. And with the sort of dough it unlocks at stake, somehow I don’t think he’s going to give up looking.

  ‘The safest thing we can do, love, is go to see Mike Dylan, give him the fiver and tell him the whole story. If we were lucky he’d only charge us with wasting police time.’

  She squeezed my arm. ‘I know that, but …’

  I cut her off again. It’s a bad habit of mine. ‘Yes, I know. That would land Dawn right in it. Even if she could prove she was out of town when Kane was killed, she could still be charged as a party to theft, for opening that bank account. The police, and nine juries out often, would assume that she knew what Kane was going to do.

  ‘There’s also the small matter,’ I added, ‘of our cut from Ray Archer for picking up the money.’

  ‘Except that if you’re right and if Archer is involved in Kane’s death, that cut might be our throats.’ Primavera has a wonderful knack of getting to the nub of a situation. ‘So what are we going to do, Oz?’

  ‘The same thing we set out to do this morning. Find your sister, before someone else does. Leave this place exactly as it is just now. Let’s stuff that bag of yours with enough clothes for a few days, arrange an iguana sitter, and head on up to Connell Ferry.’

  She nodded and began to pack. Five minutes later, we closed the door behind us. This time, I locked the mortice as well as the Yale. We looked around as we stepped into the street, as ready as we could be for anything, but no-one was watching us that we could see. I threw our bag in the boot of the car and turned the key in the lock, then taking Prim by the hand, I led the way up to the High Street.

  As I looked down the street before crossing, I thought I saw a familiar Armani suit in the distance.

  ‘Hullaw ther youse two. Enjoy the breakfast then? Mair sausage for lunch, or is it back tae the tuna rolls?’ I shook my head and explained to Ali that we had decided to go away for a couple of days. Some people think that I take a hell of a chance asking Ali to look after Wallace, but that’s a racist slur. I happen to know that he’s very particular about what he puts into his curries.

  I handed him my spare key, then took a flyer. ‘You just had the police in here?’

  ‘Aye. Did you see the bastard? It was that flash boy Dylan, him that’s in the papers a’ the time. He came marchin’ in saying something about fake banknotes, and wantin’ tae check the cash in the till. Cheeky sod. Accusin’ me of handling bent money! He had a look through it, but he didnae find anything. ’S as well he didnae come yesterday. Ma lunchtime relief took a tenner that was practically still wet. Ah wis dead lucky. Got rid of it in change tae a whisky salesman!’

  Smiling at Ali’s good fortune, and mulling over all the possible connections between Dylan’s official search, Prim’s off-the-cuff fabrication to young Morrow, and our visitor with the ability to open Yale locks without a key we jumped into the Nissan as fast as we could and put the old grey streets of Edinburgh behind us.

  ‘Why would Dylan lie to Ali?’ Prim murmured, eventually, as we passed the towering bowl of Murrayfield on our way out of the City. ‘Why would he spin him a line about fake money, when all the time he knows that he’s looking for just one particular note? All he had to say was that the note was evidence in a case.’

  Smart girl, my Primavera, isn’t she. I glanced at my watch, which told me that I had known her now for over twenty-eight hours. A day and a bit. The longest day and a bit of my life, the most memorable, and even if we didn’t come through this whole business intact, the greatest. We were flying, Primavera Phillips and I, high on adrenalin, high on the thrill of the chase. And we were flying too, from a city where danger lived. More than likely we were quarry ourselves, in the eye of someone with the ruthlessness and the physical strength to ram that knife all the way up into wee Willie (or big Willie, if you want to look at it that way) Kane’s head. Now, I guessed, we had what that someone wanted, the key to a bank vault containing a serious amount of hot, and once it was moved on, untraceable money.

  ‘Why’s Dylan after the fiver in the first place?’ I said. ‘The boy Morrow was right. Technically he shouldn’t have let us take anything out of that house, in case it had an essential print on it or a piece of DNA. Maybe he’s embarrassed by that. But if he is, why stir the thing up? The best way for him to cover his tracks is just to forget about it.

  ‘Instead, he has Morrow ask us about the fiver. Yet he’s so keen to get it back that at the same time he takes the chance of breaking into the loft and turning it inside out.’

  She looked at me in astonishment. ‘You think Dylan did that?’

  ‘Aye, of course he did. Policemen know a thousand ways of opening lockfast places as quick as you like without making a mess. And whoever did the loft went through two locked doors, the one to the street and m …’ I caught myself. ‘… ours,’ She smiled and squeezed my hand at the plural, ‘without leaving a mark. Point one, a real housebreaker would have gone straight through the door with a crowbar, point two, would not have been daft enough to try the street door in the daylight, and point three, would have had no way of knowing that the loft was empty. Last and finally, point four, straight after the break-in Dylan walks into Ali’s, just round the comer, and talks his way through the till. What’s the betting he’d just phoned young Morrow?’

  ‘Aghast’ is another of my favourite words, but I’d never seen anyone looking that way until Prim looked at me in the car. ‘But that’s desperate!’ she gasped. ‘Why would he do all that?’

  ‘Either because someone’s cut him in on the deal, or because someone’s put the fear of God into him over his career prospects if he doesn’t get the fiver back, having broken procedure by letting you take it from the flat.’

  ‘But who could do that?’

  I opened my mouth, the usual smart-arsed ‘Ah, my dear, that is the sixty-four dollar question!’ hanging on the edge of my tongue. And all at once I knew. I saw for certain who could put the fear of God in Mike Dylan. I saw too, that he was not a man to concern himself unduly with a trivial oversight. He didn’t want that fiver back as a point of principle. He wanted it for what it was. Oh no: whatever the incentive, it came to me that the threat that had shaken the creases out of Dylan’s Armani suit had issued straight from the mouth of the man who had killed Willie Kane. ‘Smart bastard, that Blackstone!’ you may be thinking, but I knew him all right, in that very moment, and for the first time since I had walked into Prim’s flat and discovered the befouled corpse on her bed, I was scared. Really scared for me, but absolutely terrified for Prim. Dylan I could cope with. Dylan was a clown, a slightly bent and mentally limited copper, but no threat. But this guy …

  Prim was looking at me. Her aghastness had changed to expectation. My hands gripping the wheel as I turned towards the M8 junction, I smiled, sideways, the first and last insincere smile I’ve ever given her.

  ‘Ah, my dear,’ I said, ‘that is the sixty-four dollar question!’

  She laughed and punched my arm. ‘Oz, that’s my first disappointment. I thought you had an answer for everything!’

  In which the fourth most famous human on the planet buys us a drink

  We made a deal that on the journey to Connell Ferry we would forget Dylan, torn fivers and the rest. The amazing thing was that just by being with each other we could do that. We chatted about nothings, funny experiences from our lives. We sketched in the broad facts of our previous love-lives, without either of us feeling any strange pangs.

  I filled Prim in on the basics of my relationship with Jan. She tutted in disapproval when I admitted that my last live-in had left after she found out that under the influence of a few bevvies, I had admitted to Ali that my nickname for her was ‘Tomorrow’. It was a cruel thing and I’m not proud of it. I didn’t have to spell out the punchline for Prim.

  A daft thought came to me as I drove along, casting off the shackles of prehistory. ‘All my past life now,’ I said grandly, ‘I’ll call BP, Before Primavera.’