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anything like that, but they’re a tough bunch. But Bernadette, she’s not taken any shit from them. She just told them she was marrying Rab and if they didn’t like it, they could go take a flying fuck to themselves. Maybe no those exact words, mind you, but that was certainly the sentiment.’
    Bobby also brought news of Abe, the plucky wee mongrel dog Davie had rescued from an abusive owner. Joe had always said they must never accept cruelty to women, children or animals, and Davie had taken it to heart. It brought him Audrey and it brought him Abe. When he was sent down, he asked Rab to take care of the wee dog, but in his heart he knew the big guy was not an animal person. To be fair to Rab, he tried, but eventually Abe was rehomed with a young couple in Easterhouse. Bobby Newman had checked them out and he knew the dog was going to a good life. The girl was pregnant and they believed a child should be brought up around animals, which was good. Bobby said he looked in every now and then and Abe was happy, which pleased Davie.
    So the months passed and Davie’s release date grew closer as he settled into the routine of being locked down, slopping out, working making concrete slabs, in the cobblers or the laundry, lunch, exercise, work, teatime, lock-down, recreation, supper and lock down. Then the next day it all started again – slopping out, work, meal breaks, exercise, lock down. Every day the same. Every day being yelled at by grim-faced prison officers. Every day hearing the alarm bells go off somewhere and seeing the officers running to contain some trouble, for Barlinnie was full of violent men and the violence within them must boil over. Davie McCall had violence in him, he knew that, but he fought hard to keep it bottled up. And he succeeded.
    Until Donald Harris came along.

3
    AUDREY FRASER WATCHED the illuminated numbers count down to the ground floor. She was alone in the lift of the Daily Record high rise at Anderston Quay, heading out to interview a drug addict. It was bog-standard stuff, the horrors of addiction laid bare as the sub-heading would no doubt have it, and she wasn’t particularly looking forward to it. There had been a time when she would have given her eye-teeth and one or two of her internal organs for a chance at doing such a piece, but she’d been green and hungry then. Now she was ripe and well-fed, thank you very much. But the interview was part of a larger series about the drug trade in Glasgow and the West of Scotland, and necessary, if she was to give the full picture.
    The lift doors opened on the second floor and Audrey smiled as she saw the reed-thin frame of Barclay Forbes. She had known Barc since those green and hungry days as a young reporter on the Evening Times . Barc had proved to be a good friend over the years, teaching her everything he knew about crime reporting. And his knowledge was extensive.
    Barc returned her smile and said, ‘Going down, hen?’
    ‘Buy me dinner first, big boy,’ she said.
    He shook his head solemnly as he stepped into the lift and punched the button marked ‘G’, even though it was already lit. ‘Sex on the brain, you.’
    Audrey’s smile broadened. ‘What brings you to the dark side?’
    Barc had worked for years with the Glasgow Herald and Evening Times, a broadsheet and tabloid respectively owned by a rival publisher. ‘Retired man now,’ said Barc, his voice still bearing the roughness of decades of smoking, though he’d given up two years before. Audrey was glad of that, she had nagged him long enough, and in the end he had given in. ‘I can go anywhere I want. The Sunday Mail ’s serialising the book, needed me in to do a wee bit of editing.’
    In the year since he’d retired, Barc had been writing his memoirs, stories of Glasgow crime from the 1950s onwards. He said it looked like a trilogy as the first one only came up to the mid-’60s.
    Audrey said, ‘Hope they’re paying mega bucks for the rights.’
    ‘Bloody