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“Why I live here. It’s not my house. It belongs to a friend who’s not in good enough health to stay here alone anymore. So I’m long-term house-sitting.”
    â€œGlo,” he said. “That’s all very—We’ve got more impor—”
    â€œWait,” I said. “Just listen. It’s Nicky.”
    Nicky ! I thought when I swerved to avoid Stig on the road. I can’t have a car crash because who’ll be there for Nicky?
    Nicky ! I thought when the knock came at the door. I can’t be attacked in my home by a crazed madman because Nicky needs me .
    And crouching in the huttie looking down at the curled shell of April Cowan’s body, my only thought was Nicky!
    â€œMy son, Nicky, lives at the home,” I said. “I go every night after work. I’ve never missed a day in ten years and if they were to close it off—for an investigation—and I couldn’t go … Well, it maybe doesn’t make much sense now, but that’s why I wiped the prints.”
    â€œWhat’s wrong with him?” said Stig.
    â€œThat’s why I wiped the prints,” I said again, ignoring the question. Nothing is wrong with Nicky. “For Nicky. Because never mind an investigation. They might have to close the home.”
    â€œThey wouldn’t.”
    â€œI can’t chance it.”
    â€œWe can’t just leave her there!” said Stig. “We have to phone and tell someone. People will be worried about her. Her family.”
    â€œIf they close the home … ”
    â€œThey won’t. Things happen, Gloria. Bad things happen. People die. Very unhappy people kill themselves. There’s a pub in Edinburgh where a girl was murdered and it’s still open. It’s only a pub and that was a murder. They won’t close a care home .”
    â€œBut what if someone who works there is mixed up in it somehow? If there’s a scandal and they lose their license?”
    â€œThey won’t,” he said again.
    â€œHow can you say that!” I said. “It happened before. It happened when the home was a school. It happened at Eden.”
    â€œExactly,” said Stig and drained his glass. “What happened tonight is nothing to do with the home. What happened here tonight started with Eden.”
    â€œYou know that for a fact?”
    He nodded.
    â€œOkay,” I said. “Phone them.”
    But he shook his head and laughed very softly.
    â€œNo,” he said. “Now it’s my turn.”
    Dorothy had been sitting on the floor looking up at us and now she finally made her choice. She sprang up into Stig’s lap, kneaded the grey sweatpants for a moment and then curled into a ball, purring. He stroked her back in slow gentle movements. I noticed because he had patted Walter Scott before and usually someone who knows how to pat a dog is too rough with a cat, ruffling them up and confusing them. Stig smoothed Dorothy’s fur from just behind her head all the way to the tip of her tail, and she uncurled and stretched along the length of his legs to let him make a proper job of it.
    â€œWhat is it you need to say?” I asked. But he just kept stroking the cat, not looking at me. His head was sunk down onto his chest. The cat purring, the aftershock, the whisky. His breathing sounded halfway to snores, but then some heavy men do breathe that way.
    I tried again.
    â€œEarlier you said you knew April was talking about Moped. Was that because she said more then you’ve told me? Because just from what you’ve told me, it could have been anything.”
    He roused himself at last. “You’re sharp,” he said. “You always were even though you never looked it.” He was staring down into his empty glass, but he didn’t reach out to the bottle for more. “I would have guessed if she’d said even less,” he went on quietly. “It was my first thought when the first