'Sure. Hang on, Martin's finishing up here. I'll show you myself in a minute.'

McIntosh eagerly beat Beckett to taking the kid, and was 287.

rewarded with a shoulderful of puke for his enthusiasm. Kate led Angelique up the stairs and into a small, cluttered room, dominated by an impressive PC set-up. The walls were covered with cartoons, all of them hand-drawn. Taking pride of place above the PC monitor was one of a stubby cowboy with a beard down almost to his waist and a sheriff's badge shining through it. Kate noticed Angelique's interest.

'Ray used to draw cartoons for a few local publications. He's been doing it since he was wee. He had a regular one in The List a few years back, usually music-related.'

'Are these all his, then?'

'No, a lot of them are copies from Bud Neill. Ray's crazy about him. That's how he got started. His dad had a scrap- book of Bud Neill cartoons and Ray used to copy them when he was a kid.' She pointed to the cowboy. 'He even uses that as his online player model. Lobey Dosser.'

The name meant nothing to Angelique, but she did recognise one of the cartoons, having seen a framed version on the wall at the Tulliallan training centre. It depicted two drunks in a fight, one jumping up and down on the other, bottles lying discarded around them, and in the foreground two uniformed cops. The caption read: 'Now, the smart caper here, probationer, is tae wander roon the corner till somebody reports it.'

'You said he just plays games,' Angelique said, booting up the machine. 'Where's the joystick?'

'Only lamers use joysticks.'

'Sorry?'

'Just quoting Ray. It's his only area of machismo. The kinds of games he plays, you use a mouse. You can use a joystick, but you'd just be frag-fodder.'

'Frag-fodder?'

288.

'Sorry. I try not to listen when he starts, but you can't help picking up the lingo.'

Angelique had a quick scout around the system, checking the usual places: recent browsing history, temporary caches, deleted mail. Personal greetings correspondence aside, it backed up what Kate said: everything was gaming-related, even the techie websites about improving processor and graphics performance. She ran a Fastfind, looking for image file-types. The dedicated cyber-pervs were often known to have their collections stashed away somewhere, and a cluster of .gifs or .jpegs in one folder was the giveaway. In Ash's case, the only image files were in his Internet temporary cache, all belonging to those gaming pages. If he'd been inclined to abduct little boys, she'd have expected to find something more illicit than the Savage UK CTF fixture list, whatever the hell that was.

It was the den of a typical overgrown adolescent, a regression cave where he could retreat now and again with his toys and nostalgia. Outside it, there was clearly a very strong marriage and a child he'd become a teacher in order to support. There was nothing to suggest a reason why he would attract the attention of the Black Spirit, or indeed any other gun-toting ne'erdowells. Neither was there anything to back up Glenn's idea that he was an attention-seeking fantasist, or on the verge of a breakdown, other than the kind most new fathers go through when they realise it's for keeps. The only jarring thing was that he hadn't told his wife the truth about his evening swim, but this was probably because he didn't want her worrying. Same with the dead bloke at the airport. It didn't do for one new parent to let the other think he was totally losing it.

Angelique said her thanks and went outside, where McIntosh had already brought the others up to speed about 289.

Ash's phone call. She stopped Mellis before he could go in.

"This Ash/ she said. 'Does he have any form, do you know, or has he been on the wrong end of anything before?'

Mellis nodded. 'For what it's worth, yeah. Breaking and entering. Donkey's years ago, though. Nothing since/ 'You've got a file?'

'The jacket's with DI Carmack at Burnbrae.'

'Lot of use that is to me.'

'Don't sweat. You'd be better talkin' to Angus McPhail at Partick. You know Gus?'

'Aye. Thought he'd retired.'

'Christmas he bows out. It was his collar.'She dropped McIntosh off at HQ then headed for the West End, her old student stomping grounds. Partick copshop saw more than its fair share of the bizarre, having Glasgow Uni on its patch, which was why Raymond Ash had ended up there in the final year of his degree.

'It was just a student prank that got out of hand,' Gus McPhail told her, having looked out the station's records of the case. She sat opposite, a hand over her own folder containing notes and updates on the Black Spirit. "They broke into the university museum. They didn't steal anything, just, ehm, rearranged a few of the exhibits.' He smiled as he spoke. It was the kind of case he didn't mind recalling.

'Wait a minute, I remember this. I was a student here too. I was in first year at the time, but it was the talk of the whole campus. Was it not some kind of protest?'

'Well, catch-all excuse for anything students get up to, isn't it? I think it was part protest and part just because it was there to be done. The uni had spent a whole load of cash on a new security system for the museum.'

290.

'And the students were saying the money could have been better spent elsewhere, I remember. I think I was at a meeting about it. You go to everything like that in first year.'

'So these two decided they'd break in to prove the system was keech anyway.'

'How did they manage it?'

'Computer hacking, distraction, what have you. They were quite clever, but . . . well, they didnae need tae be that clever. That was the point. They didnae just succeed in provin' the security was keech - they proved that if somebody had wanted to screw the place, it would have happened already. Anybody could have done it - they were just the first to bother.'

'So how did they screw up?'

"They didnae. Nobody knew whodunnit.'

'How did you catch them, then?'

'An anonymous tip. Well, supposedly anonymous. It was called in from the guy's parents' hoose, but it was a young bloke's voice and he had nae brothers. He gave himself away.'

'Ash?'

'Naw, the other fella. Simon Darcourt, his name was.'

The name rang a bell, but she couldn't place it. Maybe she remembered hearing it in her uni days, but she was sure it was more recent than that.

'Why did he do it?'

'You answered that one yoursel' a minute ago. It was the talk o' the steamie. Everybody was goin' on about how smart and how ballsy these guys had been, and if you ask me, it was killin' him that they all didnae know it was him.'

'Wouldn't be the first time that's given us a body.'

'Aye. You hear them sayin' aboot serial killers that 291.

deep-doon, they want to be caught because they want somebody to stop them. I think some of them want to be caught so they can finally take the credit.'

Their discussion winding down, Angelique asked for a photocopy of the case file, still wondering why that name was familiar, as well as trying to construct a scenario that could tie a student prank to an abduction more than a decade later.

Gus handed her the pages and she opened her folder to accommodate them. She caught him staring at the cover, on which there was a reproduction of the Black Spirit's eponymous calling card.

'Right bad yin,' he said.

Not half, she thought, then remembered that he shouldn't recognise it, that the image was classified. 'You know this? You've seen this before? When?'

'This mornin'/ he replied. 'Ridin' up Woodlands Road on a two-legged horse.'

'Fuck off.'

'I'm serious.'

'And I'm outta here.'That was the problem with not just the Glasgow polis, but the city in general: everybody was a fucking comedian.

Angelique drove down Gibson Street, bringing back memories of the university sports centre at the top, and of the good work undone in the late-night takeaways further down. She checked the tank: running on fumes as per. With a trip out Crieff way in the offing, she'd best fill up. There was a station not far away; quarter of a mile along - as it happened - Woodlands Road.

She coasted through the roundabout and indicated as the petrol station came into view on the left-hand side.

292.

Before she got there, however, she glanced to her right and almost ploughed into the oncoming traffic as a result of what she saw.

'Fuck me.'

Angelique righted her swerve and pulled the car quickly into the kerb, before leaping out and crossing the road with the engine still running. She must have driven past here a hundred, a thousand times; filled up at that station at least a dozen, and though she'd noticed the black statue at the foot of the hill, she'd never actually looked at it.

She was bloody well looking now.

It was a two-legged horse, which should have been striking enough, but it was what it bore on its back that had almost caused her to flip the motor. In front was Ash's bearded cowboy with the shiny sheriff's badge, and riding behind him was none other than the grinning ghost, the smiling spook, the Black bloody Spirit. It wasn't exactly as on the calling cards, which had omitted the brow of his hat to make the figure look more shapeless, but it was undoubtedly the same: a towering black figure with two oblongs for eyes and a gaping grid of teeth below.

There was a plinth underneath. Barely breathing, Angelique bent forward and read the inscription:Statue erected by public subscription on May 1st 1992 to the memory of BUD NEILL.

1911-1970.

CARTOONIST & POET.

Creator of Lobey Dosser, Sheriff of Calton Creek, his trusty steed El Fideldo, resident villain Rank Bajin, and many other characters.293.

She thought Gus had said 'right bad yin' as a comment on the Black Spirit's deeds, but she had misheard.

Rank Bajin. Resident villain.

Jesus Christ.

'They were quite clever, but. . . well, they didnae need tae be that clever ... Anybody could have done it - they were just the first to bother.'

The Black Spirit's MO to a T.

'I think some of them want to be caught so they can finally take the credit.'She couldn't wait until she reached the office to make the call. Instead she got Rowan on her mobile and asked him to relay Enrique's number on the spot. Enrique answered after an even-more-agonising-than-usual number of rings.

'Enrique, it's Angelique. I need to know: does the name Simon Darcourt mean anything to you?'

There was a moment's silence, or maybe it was a month's.

'Simon Darcourt,' he repeated, considering. 'Simon Darcourt. Yes. He died on flight 941 out of Stavanger.'

'You know the names of everyone who died on that plane?'

'No, just Simon Darcourt, Jesper Karlsen, Jostein Groen and Marta Nillis.'

'Why them?'

'Because they're the ones whose bodies were never recovered.'

294.

lobbing clogs into the loom .Lexy rolled over and pulled the covers tighter, thinking with some relief that, as it was still dark, his alarm wouldn't be going off for ages yet, so he could snuggle down again. He looked for the red LED read-out on his bedside table to find out exactly what the time was. That was when he remembered that he had no idea where his bed, table or alarm clock were in relation to his current location.

He was lying down on the lorry's floor, wrapped in a removal blanket; jaggy but warm.

'Shite.'

He reached around for the torch Wee Murph had given him, pilfered from one of the crates, but couldn't find it. Murph was still asleep, his breathing audible close by. Lexy remembered feeling sleepy from the movement of the lorry and the warmth of being buried behind the pile. The pair of them must have nodded off, and worryingly, he had slumped down and wriggled his way out from their hiding place in search of a comfier position.

'Murph.'

'Mmmwaah.'

'Murph.'

'Five mair minutes, Ma.'

'Murph, wake up.'

'Mmm-wuuh-mmm . . . Aw fuck.'

'Murph, where's your torch?'

'Aw fuck, man. I was dreamin' there.'

295.

'So was I. I was at hame in my bed, but I fuckin' woke up here. I cannae find my torch.'

'Put the light on then.'

'Very fuckin' funny.'

'Sorry, man, I'm no' awake yet.'

Lexy could hear Murph rummage among the blankets, then with a click there emerged a beam of light. His own torch was revealed to be sitting about a foot from his knee.

'Christ,' said Murph with a yawn. 'Why did you have to wake me up, man? I was havin' a dream aboot Linda Dixon. I was gettin' a feel ay her diddies an' everythin'.'

'Dreams is as close as you'll get.'

'Well, right noo I'd settle for just seein' her again if it meant we got hame.'