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bounce. By Eddie’s standards he was almost tentative.
    ‘That fella that got sent down? The one your girlfriend defended?’
    ‘She’s not my girlfriend. Johnson? What about him?’
    ‘Found dead in his cell this morning. Hanged.’
    It shocked me like a cold shower. ‘Shit!’
    ‘Aye, it is. Suicide. Used a sheet from the top bunk.’
    I shook my head. ‘I never thought he meant it.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘That he couldn’t face it. Couldn’t face another prison.’
    Eddie was watching my face. ‘Do you want someone else to write it?’
    ‘No. I owe him that.’
    I wrote the story of how Sergeant Alan Johnson, formerly of the Black Watch, hanged himself in Barlinnie Prison just five days into his sentence. And how society had failed the
man. How we’d demanded too much of him and those like him. Was that a personal plea? Then I called Sam. She’d already heard. Her voice was dull.
    ‘I’m not covering myself in glory these days, am I, Brodie?’
    ‘Sam, if it wasn’t for you, he’d have got ten years! You were brilliant!’
    ‘Five, ten? What does it matter? He went down. Now he’s dead.’
    We hung up, each in our way clinging to the rational argument that we’d done the best we could, but each troubled by guilt. We hadn’t imagined he was serious. It was a lesson I was
slow to learn; I’d forgotten about Ishmael’s oath. The first hint came on the Sabbath.
    It was work that got me up bright and early on this Sunday morning and out the door. Not for the kirk: God had mislaid me, or maybe it was the other way about. Anyway, we
weren’t on speaking terms. I was off to the hospital, as was my habit these past three weeks. It was McAllister’s idea, a routine he’d followed for years and which had led to a
number of roaring pieces in the Gazette on a Monday morning. Not that he was now having a lie-in. Wullie had his pick of hospitals and access to the sergeant’s desk of most of the
central nicks. Spoiled for choice.
    I didn’t mind on a morning like this. The day was crisp and sweetened by the westerly blowing up the Clyde. I left my digs in Dennistoun whistling ‘Stardust’ . Tommy
Dorsey had just been belting it out on the wireless. I decided to walk along Duke Street and then up the hill to the infirmary. I was in shirtsleeves and feeling virtuous, my head as clear as the
sky. Instead of the usual pain between the eyes and churning stomach – no wonder we called the beer heavy – I’d gone to the pictures with Morag Duffy, a lassie from the
typing pool. Nothing serious, just a pleasant evening with a bonnie smiling girl with red curls and a cheeky swing of the hips. I’d walked Morag home, stolen a kiss or three in her tenement
close and fallen into my own cold bed, alone and sober as a Salvation Army major. It did me good. I should do it more often. Except for the cold lone bed. And except for the teensiest tug of guilt,
as though I was being unfaithful. Which was ridiculous given how things stood with Samantha Campbell.
    I strode up the now familiar hospital steps and headed down the shining brown lino floors towards the accident ward.
    As I pushed at the ward door, the Sister slid out from under her stone.
    ‘ Mister Brodie.’
    ‘Good morning, Sister. A fine morning it is.’
    She lifted her bosoms up and aimed them at me. ‘And who are you visiting this morning, Mister Brodie?’
    She’d made it clear last week that she didn’t like her sanctified ward being cluttered up with riffraff like journalists. Unless of course they’d earned bed and nursing by dint
of an injury, preferably serious. At the same time she was a staunch reader of the Gazette and as glad as the next to see the sins of her more wayward patients exposed. Salutary reminders of
what happens when you fall from grace.
    ‘Think of me as a church visitor, Sister. Bringing solace and comfort to the sick and injured.’
    She crossed her beefy arms and gave me the look that said If ever you find yourself in