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trying to piece together Sean’s last days. His first port of call is the flat in Gorgie where his son met his demise. It is tucked down a sunless, tenemented side street at the back of Tynecastle Stadium. Canals of mossgrow between its cobblestones and a deathly stillness and silence pervades. The stair door is on an entryphone system, but he pauses, disinclined to start harassing neighbours for information, until he’s learned more about the broader facts of the case.
    The rudimentary details garnered from June badly needed supplementation. Heading up to George IV Bridge and the Edinburgh Library, he reads the newspaper reports of the incident. Then he calls Gayfield Square police station, on the assistance number listed in connection with the case. To his surprise, the receptionist immediately puts him through to the officer responsible for the investigation. The policeman introduces himself as Detective Inspector Ally Notman. Expressing sympathy for Franco’s loss, he says that he wants to see him personally, asking when he can come in. Franco tells him he could be down there within the hour, to which Notman is agreeable. Following this call, he expects the power bar on his iPhone to indicate the charge is spent, but it hangs on resolutely.
    He walks through the city with a peculiar, detached buoyancy. When he comes to the top of Leith Walk, his pulse kicks up further; this is the gateway to where he is from. Despite his positive reception on the phone, it is a strange feeling walking voluntarily into the Gayfield Square police station. On his last visit, many years past, he’d been dragged through those doors into a holding cell, semi-drunk, raging and covered in the blood of Donnelly, another rival, after a knife fight outside the Joseph Pearce pub across the street. This had taken place in broad daylight. What, hewonders, had he been thinking? Fucking kamikaze pilot. He stops, steps back from the glass station doors, looking from the step of the Georgian square back over to the pub. It would have been less hassle to have simply walked into the station and plunged the desk sergeant.
    Now the officer greeting him has a welcoming smile, this continuing sympathetic treatment further knocking Franco out of kilter. The detective he’d talked to earlier is summoned and promptly appears. DI Ally Notman is a tall, dark-haired man, thin, but with an expanding drinker’s waistline. Notman shakes Franco’s hand, conveying condolences at his loss, as he ushers him into a quiet room. Only then does the detective dispense with the soft soap, going systematically through the details of the case. — Sean suffered multiple stab wounds to the chest, stomach, abdomen and thighs. The lacerations on just one arm indicate that he was only able to put up token resistance, probably due to his extreme intoxication. The blow that killed him was a wound that severed the femoral artery in his leg. He would have bled to death inside a minute. Notman raises his dark eyebrows, looking for a reaction from Franco.
    — Seems like the boy who did this was in a rage, and got lucky, Franco considers. — It’s no exactly the work ay a stone-cold assassin.
    Notman keeps his face poker-straight, though Franco thinks he can see a flicker of acknowledgement in the cop’s eyes. Then the detective shows him a copy of the toxicologist’s report. — This indicates that Sean was heavily drugged.
    Franco scans the document; amid the technical jargon the words heroin , ecstasy , cocaine , amphetamine sulphate , cannabis , valium , amyl nitrate and antidepressants jump off the page. Whoever came intae that flat and plunged the poor wee cunt never exactly had their work cut out . — And some, Franco observes. — What was he no on?
    — As I said, it’s unlikely he would have known much about the assault in that condition.
    It was extreme liberty-taking, Franco decides. — Any suspects?
    — Our investigations are ongoing, Notman says blandly. —