It was nudging eleven, too late for a visit, but Morrow was searching for a spark of comfort in a melancholy day and so she drove on.

The roads around Castlemilk were broad and straight, designed for the age of the automobile, but with a population who could only afford the bus. The wide streets weren’t used for anything other than mowing down toddlers and racing stolen cars so the planners had sprinkled them with deep speed bumps and extended the pavements to create traffic-calming swerves in the road. Morrow was taking it at ten miles an hour and it still felt reckless.

Passing the local police station, another solid fortress in brown brick, she pulled up a short steep hill and parked in one of twenty parking spaces. The flats looked scruffy and ominous, three high blocks watched the city. The glass column of each stairwell was lit in a different color, electric blue lights in the middle, orange and purple on either side. The vibrant-colored lights clashed with the winsome time-drabbed pastel of the outside walls: mustard, pea green, brown.

She stepped out of the car, thinking to herself that as well as visiting a witness alone, she had parked her private car in full view of the flats. She looked around. CCTV cameras were pinned onto lampposts at every corner. From where she was standing she could see more than ten and they all looked operational.

If anything happened tonight the bosses would know she’d come here alone in her own car. Still, she didn’t turn around and get back in but walked over to the middle block, checking her notebook for the flat number, pressing the buzzer before looking through the doors. The lobby was tiled white and as clean as an operating theater. Haranguing signs on the wall ordered the residents not to have dogs in their flats, not to dump rubbish in the lifts, not to graffiti. They didn’t seem to need much ordering around. Even the signs were nice and clean.

A young girl’s voice crackled “Hello?” on the intercom.

“Hello, is this Kay Murray’s flat?”

The girl turned from the intercom and shouted, “Mum! For you!”

Morrow smiled as she heard Kay’s voice approaching, “…bloody ask who it is instead of just bawling at me.”

But the girl stomped off and a door slammed shut.

Kay cleared her throat and spoke, “Aye?”

“Kay? It’s me.”

There was a pause.

“Alex?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh. Come up…”

The entry door buzzed angrily and Morrow pushed it open. Across the lobby she pressed the call button for the lift and the doors slid open into a warm orange light. The floor was clean, none of the plastic buttons were charred with lighters and there was just the faintest tang of disinfectant. It was an unthreatening environment but still, as the doors slid shut in front of her and the lift took off, Morrow felt a jolt in her stomach.

The doors opened again onto cold strip lights and a lingering smell from a takeaway curry bag left hanging on a door handle. The floor was vibrant pink with turquoise diamonds set out in a path. All the doors were turquoise with mottled glass panels, some lit, some dark. Morrow walked down to number eight.

Kay’s window had a ruffle of pink nets inside. It was an old door, a good sign: it meant she’d been there a long time, had paid her rent and no one had kicked it in. A shattered and patched door was a classic signifier of a problem household.

Morrow chapped and stepped back, waiting. Behind her, the lift doors beeped and she turned and watched the orange light narrow to a slit and disappear.

Without preliminaries, the front door flew open and a tall thin boy stood there, looking her up and down.

“Hello!”

Morrow forced a smile. “Is this Kay Murray’s house?”

He grinned at her polished shoes. “God, you really are a polis.” He leaned out and took her elbow, tugging her gently into the small hall and shutting the door. “She said she’d met an old pal from school and you’d became a polis. You really the same age as her? You look younger.”

“Oh, I’m all puffy because I’m pregnant,” she said, but she was pleased nonetheless.

The hallway was busy with empty cardboard boxes for detergent, washing powder, crisps, crackers, empty trays for washing-up liquid bottles and shampoo. They were stacked messily on top of each other, four or five high and shoved against the wall. Morrow thought briefly of shoplifting, truck hijacks and theft from employers. She stopped herself: she was here to see Kay, it wasn’t supposed to be official business.

The living room and kitchen doors lay open to her right. In front of her were three more doors, each decorated by the occupants: one was matte black, one painted pink with randomly placed glittery butterfly stickers and a greasy, balding bit of pink marabou wrapped around the door handle. The third was split down the middle, half Celtic green and half Rangers blue. The Celtic fan had used a felt tip to reclaim part of the border lands but the Rangers fan had smeared the green intrusion off with a wet cloth.

The bathroom door opened and Kay stepped out, her wet hair swept harshly back from her face. She had a tired purple towel around her shoulders, frayed at a corner, splattered with old spots of hair dye, and one of her ears was rimmed brown. She looked angrily at the boy and kicked at an empty box. “I keep telling you to take these things down but you just walk past them.” She smiled nervously at Morrow. “My pal’s got a Costco card.”

“Lucky you,” said Morrow.

“Aye, it’s great.” She clutched the towel at her neck and lifted an empty crisp box, sitting it on top of the others, kicking them against the wall. “We’ve got a club, buy in bulk and then split it up when we get back here. I don’t know if I’m saving any money or just buying more.” She gestured at the boy who had answered the door. “They’re right gannets. Just eat whatever I bring in. Food just evaporates. They’ve been necking a bucket of gefilte fish.”

The boy rolled his tongue out. “They’re disgusting.”

Kay rubbed at her hair with the towel. “Still eating them though.”

The boy was dark and handsome, had a commanding unibrow and blue eyes. Morrow could see faint traces of Kay about him but not much. Suddenly earnest, he asked Morrow, “Listen, seriously: how would I get to be a polis?”

Kay shook her head at Morrow. “Fuck’s sake.”

Morrow shrugged, not certain he was being serious. “Just apply. Phone them and ask how. You have to apply a few times though, so don’t get discouraged.”

He thought about it, seemed to arrive at a resolve: “I wouldn’t get discouraged.”

Kay looked embarrassed and said to Morrow, “As if they’d take you, anyway.”

“Why, what’s wrong with me?”

Kay tutted and stepped across the hall to the kitchen, rubbing her hair with the towel as she walked between them and flicked the kettle on. “Ye know fine.”

“Seriously, what’s wrong with me?”

Kay ignored the question. “Alex: tea?”

No police officer on duty would accept a cup of tea from a member of the public. It made the stay longer and you never knew what they would put in it, but Morrow said, “Aye, thanks.” As if to prove to herself that it wasn’t official.

The boy was still talking to her. “Defo. I’m gonnae phone and get a form. Mum, will ye help me fill it out?”

The pink bedroom door opened and a young teenage girl looked out accusingly. She was her mother’s double at the same age but chubbier than Kay had been and prettier for it. Morrow smiled warmly. “Hello.”

The girl looked suddenly shy and shut her door a little, half hiding her face.

“Your mum and I were pals when she was your age.”

“Oh.” Clearly not interested but too well brought up to let it show, her eyes strayed to the wall.

“She looked exactly like you, only not as pretty.”

The girl blushed, panicked and slammed the door shut. Her brother smiled and looked at the pink door, knowing his sister was listening. “She’s gorgeous, isn’t she? She doesn’t even know she’s gorgeous.”

Morrow was touched. The custom of complimenting children was relatively new in Scotland. She had never been complimented on anything until she met Brian, and it was far too late by then, she never really believed him.

Kay looked up and sighed. “Right, Joe,” she said gently, “you fuck off. We’re gonnae have a chat.”

“Oh, aye.” Joe raised his eyebrows suggestively at Morrow. “Old times? Gentlemen callers?”

“Sarah Erroll.” Kay looked sad.

“Oh.” Joe couldn’t think of anything funny to say about that. “Terrible.” He backed off to his wee sister’s door, knocking and walking in without waiting for an answer. They could hear him speak and the girl’s squeaky voice responding.

Kay reached into a cupboard. Morrow saw her take out a mug, look into it, flinch and put it back. She chose two from the back. The worktop was littered with giant packets of crisps and cakes, the sink clogged with used tea bags and everything smelled of cigarette smoke.

Morrow slumped in the doorway to the kitchen. “I hope it’s OK, me coming here?”

“Aye,” said Kay, “no problem.” But she was embarrassed and gestured at the mess. “I don’t get much more prepared for company than this.”

Morrow’s insincere response about the mess in her own house was lost in the rumble of the kettle.

She knew she shouldn’t feel sad for Kay. This house was a good house. The kids were talking to each other and to Kay, but she felt that they both recognized it as a depressing replay of the places they had grown up in. Homes full of ciggie smog and broken biscuits and unspoken anger, of reluctant affection and ridiculed ambitions.

Kay took two tea bags out of a giant packet of Tetley, dropped them into the cups and poured water on them. Morrow felt she had to say something positive. “He’s lovely, your Joe. Handsome.”

“Too charming. Gets in trouble.” She corrected herself, “No, they’re good kids. They’re nice to each other. Bodes well, I suppose.” She added the milk from a six-liter carton and put it back in the fridge. “Sugar?”

Morrow shook her head and Kay handed her the cup. “’Mon.”

Morrow followed her into the living room. A scuffed leather settee was stacked with clean, folded clothes arranged in neat rows. An ironing board was standing up in front of a boxy old television. Hung around the walls were a collection of clip frames of family photos. A lot of them had slipped behind the glass, giving the impression of an avalanche of family events and parties, school plays, of lives passing in a great, hurtling blur.

Morrow saw Kay’s eye flick anxiously to marks on the floor, to a greasy strip around the light switch where hand after hand had swiped it on their way out and in.

Kay put her cup down on the floor and looked for room for Morrow to sit down. Then, resentment telling in the jerky speed of her gestures, she carefully stacked the separated piles of ironing on top of each other, putting them on the ironing board, making a space for her.

Morrow kept her coat on, put her mug down on the floor and sat down.

Kay took the armchair, looked at her, seemed annoyed and looked at Morrow’s mug. “Is that too wet for you? Fancy four gross of shortbread with it?”

Morrow smiled. “Not really.”

“Multipack of Hula Hoops?”

“Naw, ’m fine.”

Kay held her hand up and waved a rainbow arc in front of her face. “All the flavors…”

“No thanks, I’m going home to my dinner anyway.”

“Late…aye.” She looked at Morrow’s stomach. “Important to eat right, eh?”

They ran out of things to say suddenly and Morrow felt awkward in a way she never did when she was on business. Kay gave into her mood and asked, “What’s really going on, Alex?”

“How d’ye mean?”

“Why are you here on your own?”

Kay knew the police always flew in twos. It troubled Morrow that she did. “I wanted to ask you about Sarah, what kind of person she was, stuff like that.”

“Background stuff?”

“Yeah, you know, background…”

But Kay narrowed her eyes at Morrow, staring too long, trying to read her.

Morrow kept her face straight. A smile would have looked sly. Morrow was working, she lived in a bought house, had a car. She had gotten away and Kay hadn’t. Morrow was worried that this was what she had come here for, not for comfort or nostalgia or to find out who Sarah Erroll was, but to measure herself against Kay, looking for cheap confirmation that, measured and weighed, she was doing better than her old friend.

Kay watched her unmoving face, seemed to recognize that she was being stonewalled and why. She blinked and began reeling mechanically through some facts: “Sarah was nice. She loved her mum, even though Mrs. Erroll was a cheeky cow. I liked Joy. That was her name, Mrs. Erroll. Joy Alice Erroll. Everyone called her Mrs. Erroll.” She put a leg straight out in front of her and rocked her bum off the seat, reaching up to the ironing board for her cigarettes and lighter. She opened the packet and looked at Morrow’s belly. “Mind?”

“Wire in.”

They smiled at that, each away from the other, because it was word-for-word a conversation they’d had a hundred times, a hundred years ago. Kay lit up, puffed hard and leaned down over the side of the chair for a dirty glass ashtray. She cradled it on her knee.

“Did Sarah have a boyfriend?”

“Never brought a boyfriend home. I know she was going with someone though. She’d get texts and…well, the way she smiled at the phone…” Kay remembered quietly. “Mother of teenagers. Makes you kind of psychic. Probably didn’t want him to meet her mother.”

“Was her mother difficult?”

“Auch, doesn’t take a difficult mother to make children secretive. They just are. Natural, isn’t it?” Kay thought about it and smiled. “But Joy was difficult, yeah, and bananas. Bad combination. If she didn’t hate him, he’d have hated her.” Then she squealed in a posh old lady’s voice, “Kay, you look absyolutely dredful! How very fat you are!”

“Did Sarah like her?”

“She loved Joy to bits. Even though she was confused Sarah loved her, and that’s unusual. She was an only child, you know?” Kay dropped her eyes, remembering, Morrow thought, that Alex herself was an only child, but that her relationship with her mother had been less than happy. “When it works it really works.”

“How do you know she loved her?”

Kay smiled. “Face lit up whenever she saw or talked about her. ‘I’d do anything for my mum.’ She said it over and over. God Almighty, I miss Joy.” She blinked valiantly against sudden tears. “Just—her company, know?”

“You were close?”

“Probably not.” Kay smiled at her ashtray. “It’s different with Alzheimer’s. The personality changes. Their family don’t recognize them. But the person she became, with the dementia, I was awful fond of that person.”

“Did you ever see anyone else up the house? Any pals of Sarah’s?”

“No.”

“When did you last see Sarah Erroll?”

Kay exhaled a stream of smoke and frowned at her. “Hmm. Not being funny, Alex, but that’s a real polis question. Should we not wait until someone else…?”

“Oh aye, aye. You work in another house there, now?”

“Yeah.”

“They all rich there?”

“Not as rich as they used to be…They lost a lot of money—you should ask them, they all had their money invested in shares.”

“You work for Mrs. Thalaine?”

Kay shook her head. “See, that’s a polis question.” She looked hard at Morrow. “You shouldn’t have come here alone.” Feeling herself too harsh, she softened. “Tell me it wasn’t a sex thing?”

“Why do you ask?”

“You were asking about boyfriends.”

“Just for background.”

Kay nodded at her cigarette. “Good. I’d hate to think she was interfered with. She was a nice person, you know, proper and that.”

“Proper?”

“Ladylike.” She touched her wrist. “Always had a hankie…”

She was lost for a moment, head tipped, eyes damp. Morrow let her find her own way back and wondered if they could be wrong about the sex work. But then being very proper could have been a selling point.

Kay looked at her hopefully. “It couldn’t have been an accident…?”

Morrow didn’t answer her. She didn’t want to sound too adamant.

Kay sipped her tea and they fell silent again. Out in the hall the front door was opened and a boy’s voice called, “Hiya, it’s me!”

Kay called “hiya” back but the boy who had shouted didn’t come into the living room. Joe and the girl had shouted back too and they could hear the bedroom door open to a rumble of voices.

Kay dropped her voice and asked urgently, “What are you really doing here, Alex? Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice to see ye and everything but you shouldn’t be here on your own and we both know that.”

Morrow nodded. “Yeah.”

“Yeah.” Kay tapped her cigarette fast, rat-tat-tat on the side of the ashtray, suddenly very angry. “Yeah, I’m a bit annoyed at you for coming here alone, to be honest. ’Cause if you find the guy that did this, and he gets off because you’ve asked me something here, and there’s no one to corroborate that and then the case fails on account of that—”

Morrow’s voice was hard and loud: “How do you know that?”

Kay froze, staring at her. She raised her cigarette and took a draw. Her hand was shaking as she lowered it to the armrest: “I’m the chair of the Crimespotters up here. We organized a campaign. Against the police across the road.” The smoke began to seep out of her nose and mouth, rising slowly up her face, sticking to her wet hair. “They were sending single polis up to interview people who’d been burgled so everyone else on the shift could get their dinner.” She looked at Morrow and narrowed her eyes. “The clear-up rate for burglaries is so low, I don’t think they’d ever have been found out. A lot of the people up here didn’t know that a single copper meant they weren’t going to do fuck all. So I mounted a campaign to tell everyone about the corroboration rule. I leafleted everybody in the block. Go over to the station and ask them about me if you like. They know me.”

If Kay was right it was an outrageous allegation. It not only meant that the senior officers were giving up the possibility of solving the burglaries, it also meant that junior officers were being put in danger by coming over alone with no back-up. But Morrow had listened to complaints from the public before, recognized the odd sensation of her consciousness retreating slowly away. It was a reflexive familial defensiveness, rehashing worn excuses: they don’t know the pressure we are under, they don’t understand, they-they-they versus us-us-us. She had already chosen a side.

Kay leaned forward, as if she saw Morrow shutting down. “You better get the guy that killed that lassie.”

“I will.”

“’Cause she was a nice lassie.”

“I will.” She was surprised to hear herself saying that. She had no way of knowing whether she would or not.

“Ma?” The door opened and Joe looked in. His brother was behind him, a different kind of boy, chubby like his sister but not good-looking, his hair dyed black, several piercings on his ears, a large plug in one, and a black T-shirt with white writing on it. He was shorter as well and smiled at Morrow, nodding a greeting as he looked her up and down. “Ma,” said Joe, “Frank’s bought a DVD, can we use the telly?”

Frank smiled, proud. “Just been paid.”

“What is it?”

“Paranormal Activity.”

“It’s very late. Anyway, isn’t Marie a bit young for that?”

“She is a wee bit.”

“I heard it’s very scary.”

The girl shouted in from the hall, “I’m not a baby.”

Kay shouted back, “Aye, Marie, you’re not fifteen either.” She dropped her voice, “Frank, put something else on, there must be something else she can watch with ye.”

The conversation swirled around her but Morrow wasn’t listening.

She was looking at the boys’ feet. And she was feeling sick because they had the same Fila trainers on and they were black suede.

It was stupid but Morrow felt as though she was betraying Kay as she drove into the police station across the road.

She parked around the back and locked the car, walking around to the front. The automatic door swished open, and she stepped in, walked over to the unmanned front bar and rang the bell attached to the desk. They were watching her from beyond the mirrored wall, she knew, so she nodded at her reflection and took out her warrant card, holding it up until the door opened and a middle-aged officer came out and checked it properly.

“What can I do for you, ma’am?”

“I’m over here talking to someone. You know the high flats?”

“Aye.”

“Kay Murray? Joe Murray? Frank? What can you tell me about them?”

He raised his eyebrows and kept them there, looked down at her warrant card again and lifted the bar. “You better come in and speak to DC Shaw.”

He left her waiting in the back bar while he phoned around for his colleague. She found it interesting that, although it wasn’t shift change, he seemed certain Shaw was in the building, as if that was his habit or he wasn’t allowed out. When Shaw finally arrived she found he was old-fashioned police: smart hair, clipped manner, same age as her but less chippy and awkward.

“The Murrays are a pest. The mother ran a spite campaign to discredit this station, drove quite a wedge between us and the local populous of the high flats. Has taken months to get them back on side.”

“Really?”

“Yes, quite the rabble rouser.”

“What are the kids like?”

“Oh, listen, they were taking the leaflets around for her. Putting them through the doors of the people who—” and here he broke away, looked shifty, shuffled his feet.

He glanced up at her, suspicious, wondering if she was investigating the practices at the station. Morrow let him think it.

“These CCTV cameras everywhere around here—they all working?”

She saw his eye flick to the side as he thought through the playback, of the officers being seen traipsing up to the high flats alone…

“Look,” she said, “I’m going to huckle you up to London Road in a minute if you don’t just answer the question.”

“Yes,” he said automatically.

She pulled away from him, opened the door to the front bar. “You worry about the safety of junior officers at this station?” She saw a spark of shame in his eye. “Young, inexperienced officers, out in a hostile environment? Needing back-up? And you’re down here reading The Digger. Even if nothing happens to them, they get to think it’s acceptable practice, then they send coppers out and something happens.” She was getting close to making an allegation so she stopped. “If I hear anything else about this station I will come back and I will fucking huckle you, understand?”

His mouth tightened when she swore, so she did it again, “I fucking will, as well.”

She walked off and slammed the door shut behind her, walking quickly through the front bar to the door.

Outside the air was threatening frost. From the side of her car she looked back up to the high flats.

Shaw had told her a lot about the Murrays. Everything he didn’t say was a volume. He didn’t have anything concrete to discredit Kay with, the kids didn’t have any previous offenses. She wasn’t in dispute with an ex-partner or neighbors, wasn’t screwing the brew or prone to drunken parties. If she had he would have brought it up.

The Murrays were nicer than her family anyway.