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come to see him.”
    I frowned. “Sorry?”
    â€œYour friend from the boat—Alex Curragh. That was his father.”
    â€œOh—good.” I was a little surprised: although the police would have contacted Curragh’s next-of-kin at the same time as they were breaking the news to Frazer McAllister, there hardly seemed to have been time for him to get here from Crinan. Perhaps he didn’t live in Crinan. “He’s going to need his family. A thing like that will be with him a lot longer than it takes the broken bone to heal.”
    Ros nodded, sympathy pursing her lips. She was a tall, dark woman of about thirty and she’d seen a lot of pain and misery and despair come through those doors in her time. “Maybe his da can help him with that too. What happened to him must have taken some coming to terms with.”
    We seemed to be at cross purposes. At any event, I didn’t understand what she was saying. “Sorry, what?”
    â€œDidn’t you see? No, of course, he had his back to you. He must have been in a fire—not recently, but it did a lot of damage. Half his face is gone.”
    I could feel alarm stretching my eyes, saw incomprehension cloud Ros’s. But now I understood—as well I might, I’d been told enough to identify him three times over. Even the limp—he had an artificial foot, Harry said. Alison’s dread of fire presumably stemmed from her husband’s experience.
    There was no time to explain. I set off for the lifts at a determined jog, the closest I could manage to a run in mules, shouting back at Ros as I went. “Find a policeman. Get Jim Fernie. That wasn’t Alex Curragh’s dad you sent up to his room—it was his mistress’s husband!”
    The lift was too long coming. I kicked off the borrowed mules and took to the stairs. He had a head start on me, but I had the greater sense of urgency. Also I knew where I was going. The upshot was that I skidded round the last corner of the corridor in time to see Frazer McAllister throw open the door, stride limping powerfully into the room and lift Curragh half out of the bed by one big fist twisted in his pyjama front.
    In a voice that was not merely Glasgow but Gorbals through and through, he bellowed into the boy’s face, “Are you the wee shite that murdered my wife?”

Chapter Four
    I got there first but Neil Burns was right behind and infinitely more effective. He elbowed past me in the doorway, grabbed McAllister by one shoulder of his expensive suit and bent low enough to shove his young rugby player’s face into the older man’s rained one. “If you don’t put my patient down now, I’m going to stuff your head down the autoclave.”
    As a threat it may have lacked subtlety, particularly in view of McAllister’s face, but it had the desired effect and I don’t think appeals to the man’s better nature would have done. He let go of Curragh, who dropped back onto the bed with a thump, and rounded on Burns. “Wee son, you’re crumpling my suit.”
    I doubt Neil Burns had been addressed thus since he passed the six-foot mark, somewhere around his fifteenth birthday, and certainly not by a man he could look squarely in the bald patch, but if there was anything intrinsically silly about the big young man being warned off by the shorter, older, damaged one, neither of them acknowledged it. Burns took his hand back and straightened up. “You have no business here.”
    Frazer McAllister broadened visibly, like a ruffled fighting-cock. He was a strong, substantial man, a big man every way but up. Wide, heavy shoulders and broad arms filled his jacket as his thick neck filled the collar of his white shirt. His big heavy head jutted forward, like an old boxer used to taking everything on the chin. I was still behind him, still couldn’t see his face, but his big skull was fringed copiously by a lion’s