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of Colin’s life, would surely have harmed her more than any exposé of his infidelities. Marriage to a serial philanderer was heartbreak, but a less brutalizing shock to the system than marriage to a killer.
    Miriam, hartzenui .
    Perlman lingered over her name. He loved the way it began and ended with the same letter, self-contained and private, as if the M’s were two strong doors. He loved how the name included ‘i am’, like a concealed statement of pride. I Am. This is me. How I am. The sound of the name pleasured him –
    Christ, this is a daft road for you to take, Lou, he thought. This is some retarded adolescent mustang rearing in your head. The lover denied his true passion. The bandage you’ve kept wrapped round your heart for more years than you can remember. He believed Miriam knew what he felt. How could she not read it in his face or his eyes, or in the clumsiness he showed in her company?
    This line of thinking derailed him; what were the rules when it came to loving the wife of your dead brother? Was a matter of taste involved, an etiquette unknown to him? He concentrated on the rattle of his Mondeo. The car was dented side and front where it had been struck twice in separate minor accidents.
    Music. He needed music. He stuck a CD in the deck he’d had installed recently. An old Paul Butterfield album, Buried Alive in the Blues . The sound zipped him back to the early ’70s, when he’d been a constable pounding a beat in Partick. Colin had already graduated and worked five years in a local brokerage firm, before leaving, as so many Scots did, for London and fortune.
    Lou remembered seeing him off at Central Station in the dreamy haze of a midsummer night. Colin, drunk on ale and giddy with notions of prosperity, had climbed clumsily inside a carriage, suitcase in one hand, crumpled coat slung over his arm, a burnt-down cigar between his lips. He’d worn his best suit, a blue single-breasted worsted he’d bought at Burton’s. It was probably the last time he’d ever shopped at a chain of off-the-peg tailors.
    Details came back sparsely. The unexpected press of Colin’s lips on Lou’s forehead – ae fond kiss , Colin had said, and then we sever ; the only time Lou had ever been kissed by his brother. The splatter of cigar ash on Colin’s dark blue lapel. He looked, Lou remembered, so damn confident . He knew he was going to make it in the big city, in the toughest playground of them all.
    London changed him. Money changed him. And what a fatal talent he had for making it.
    Perlman turned off Edinburgh Road and into Barlanark. He drove slowly down Hallhill Road. The rain had stopped at last. In the eastern sky a weak sun carved a thin rainbow beyond a water tower. A tiny miracle. Another sign, Perlman thought. Maybe it’s spring. Finally.
    Got caught up in a landslide. Bad luck pressing in from all sides … Perlman pressed the stop button of his CD deck as he entered the cemetery. He hadn’t been here for months. The dead didn’t care if you neglected them, so why did he feel guilty? He parked, got out. His legs were stiff and he felt the dull ache the hellhound had caused. Did you reach a time when you were nothing but the sum of all your petty pains? Take me away, stick me on a codeine drip.
    He turned from the ranks of headstones and looked across the street beyond the cemetery wall. He saw a row of shops: a Chinese restaurant, Haddow’s off-licence, and – ah yes – the inevitable tanning parlour. These establishments were the rage in Glasgow. People who’d never been further than the Gallowgate strolled the streets looking as if they’d just come back from Jamaica.
    He walked between the headstones. He was the only visitor in the cemetery; there was no sign of Miriam. He wondered at the existence of a Jewish burial ground in this part of Glasgow, where there was no Jewish community. It was probably safe