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to assume that Barlanark’s Jewish population was close to zero. The Jews generally hadn’t settled in the east of the city – although Perlman chose to do so, in a small area known as Egypt located in a network of streets behind Parkhead Cross. His klatsch of aunts berated him whenever he saw them. Why choose Egypt? Always you have to be the contrary one, Louie? What is it, this need to live in the east end? The Aunts – he thought of them as a chorus from a Greek tragedy – managed to make ‘east end’ sound like Hong Kong, exotic and just a little dubious.
    He liked Egypt. He found it a friendly place. He was reasonably popular, perhaps on account of being a cop, an accessible one: he’d responded a few times to a local burglary or a streetfight. He induced a sense, however small, of security – although there were a few in the community, ex-cons and small-time neds, who regarded him with sullen suspicion. He was known to the local kids as The Detective. Sometimes they clustered round him on the street and questioned him about baddies and guns and what it was like being a polisman.
    He read headstones. Deeply mourned by. Sadly missed by . He came across the grave of Nancy Meizenburg, buried in 1975 alongside her husband Joe. Nancy, a small bright-eyed sparrow of a person, had given Lou piano lessons when he was twelve, thirteen. He could still hear the incessant tick of her metronome, and see the yellowing keys of the piano. She coerced him into playing ‘The Merry Peasant’ until he had it down note-perfect.
    Memories of the dead, the lost music of boyhood.
    He kept moving. Damp earth sucked at his shoes. He glanced at other stones. Krasewitz. Matafsky. Guberman. Old European Jews, survivors of pogroms, camps, who knows what they had to live through and how far they had to travel to reach Glasgow?
    The sun was milky. The air still smelled of rain. Overhead, a coven of crows, sinister in their concentration, flew quickly. He walked the lettered rows where more recent graves had been dug. No headstones here. It was the custom that a year pass between the funeral and the raising of the stone. The new graves were marked with simple plaques of wood. In Row S, he found Colin’s name, and he stood before it, lowering his head a little.
    A little leap of association made him think about the voice on the telephone: I think you should know, Sergeant, I saw Kilroy drive his Bentley the morning after your brother was killed …
    Lou had asked, ‘Who is this?’
    The man said: I’ll be in touch …
    Or maybe he’d said: I’ll get back to you with details … Whatever, the sense was the same. Who was the caller?
    He stared at his brother’s name hard, as if he might somehow conjure an answer from the grave. A stranger’s voice. I’ll be in touch … Maybe it was only some nishtikeit bent on causing mischief, but he’d sounded authoritative, knowing. So who was he and what did he want and why hadn’t he called back?
    Perlman bent to pick up a stone. It was wet in his fingers. He placed it on the grave to mark the fact that the site had been visited. He became aware of a figure moving in his direction between the graves.
    She wore a long black coat and boots. Her head was uncovered. Her hair, shoulder-length the last time he’d seen her, had been cut short. It gave her face a stark kind of beauty. She moved across wet earth with glorious balance. Perlman’s heart was a leaf in the wind. I should learn to unfeel , he thought. What would the Aunts say if they knew his secret? Your dead brother’s wife, you crazy? It’s incest practically.
    He walked a few paces to meet her. He felt coy, unsure of how he was expected to behave. Four months without seeing her; he was out of practice. He wanted to hug her, touch her face, kiss her forehead. And more, God help him: his urges were carnal and deep. When she was close enough, he