"Is he good at it?" asks Kenny.

"All right. Had worse at St Greggy's, but the cunt gave us four-two on each haun. It's the second yin that's fuckin sair, man."

"Aye, I've heard they can give ye four at a time up here," says Kevin.

"Just for really bad hings," says Tarn. 'Cardinal Sins, the cunt says. "And smoking is the worst of them,'" he mimics.

"Maist ay them are pish at givin it, but," says Scan. "Ma big brer says, anyway. Apart fae Kerr, the geography teacher. It's supposed tae be fuckin agony aff him."

"But he's a wee skinny guy," says Tarn.

"Aye, but he's meant tae have some fuckin brilliant technique. He stretches it or somethin. I don't know. All I've heard is you're best tae keep the right side ay him."

"So is that Tam the first tae get it, well?" asks Chick. "Anybody else had it?"

All heads are shaken.

"Congratulations, man," Chick says. "First aff the mark."

"Four nothin," Tam adds, holding up both hands like he's taking applause.

"Aye, but it's a marathon, no a sprint," warns Kenny. "We'll catch up wi ye soon."

"Come ahead," says Tam, smiling.

"Naw, but seriously," insists Chick. "Let's see who can get the maist lashes."

"Today?" asks Kenny.

"Naw, let's make it tae the end ay the month."

"Fuckin brilliant, aye," agrees Scan.

"Aye, we should all chip in for a prize," suggests Kenny. "Get a wee shitey plastic fitba trophy fae the sports shop up the Main Street."

"That would be gallus," agrees someone else.

"Aye," chips in Andy. "An whoever has the least should get a fuckin doin from everybody as well."

"Whit? Why?" Chick asks.

"So's everybody has tae join in and wee snobby poofs like Jackson here cannae shite oot it."

"Whit have ye got against Martin?" asks Scan. "Have ye finally discovered somebody ye think ye can batter, is that it?"

Eureka, Martin reckons.

"Martin Jackson?" Tarn suddenly asks. "That's your name? You're Martin Jackson?"

"Aye," Martin confirms, a little uneasy at Tarn's enthusiasm.

"Why?" asks Kenny, intrigued.

"I heard you fought Boma Turner once," Tam says.

"Aye, that's right," confirms Kevin before Martin can respond. "Marty ended up wi blood all over the place, but."

"It wasnae exactly-" Martin begins, but is interrupted.

"Fuck's sake, man," Tam says, laughing. "Boma's whit? Two years aulder than ye an twice your fuckin size, but ye still...Fuck's sake, man. Mental."

Martin smiles bashfully, wanting the issue to close, wanting the attention to focus elsewhere. He tries again to say what really happened, but the dressing room is now a babble of voices stating variously how much of a scary and vicious bastard Boma Turner is, as well as listing the illustrious names etched alongside Martin's on his list of vanquished opponents.

Martin got a doing from Boma, an absolute doing. It was over in seconds, and he doesn't think he even landed a blow. But this is proof that on St Grace's virgin territory, the reputations game can go both ways. He's already heard via a St Margaret's kid that it was Richie Ryan who once stood up to the deputy heidie and Father Wolfe at St Elizabeth's. Once upon a time it must have got around Braeview that Boma Turner leathered a kid called Martin Jackson, but while the outcome has not been forgotten, it has been remembered as a fight rather than an assault, and it seems that to have fought and lost is better than never to have fought at all.

Martin doesn't know where to look, but happens to catch sight of Andy again. All the threat has drained from his face and he is suddenly very interested in the toggle on his duffle bag.

Plans "Sorry again about last night," Scot says, once they've traded the standard hails and enquiries.

"Don't worry aboot it. Wasnae as bad a place for a pint as I remember."

"Aye, it's no bad at all. Did you talk to Jojo, then?"

"Briefly," he says, his guilt at lying massively outweighed by the greater need to keep the truth to himself.

"Briefly?" Scot asks, surprised.

For a paranoid moment, Martin wonders whether he might somehow know something. It's a small town, and Jojo is to discretion what...Well, he can think of no equivalent. She's an absolute. "We were never exactly best buddies," he offers.

"Yeah, I know, but I thought you might have pumped her for information. She doesnae miss much in this toon."

In his head Martin hears himself saying: "Well, I did pump her, just not for information." He hears Scotty laugh, too, but in his head is where it stays. There's no end of reasons why he can't joke about it, not least the freshness in his mind of the disturbing alacrity with which they went about their act of making hate.

"So what's the Hampden with gettin me to meet you here?" Martin asks. "First the Railway and now the Bleachfield. Is it a concerted campaign to bring me back down to earth and deflate my metropolitan ego?"

"Naw, and I'm sorry again aboot the prick remark."

"Don't sweat it. I was bein a prick, lam a prick. But what's the script?"

"Well, it looks like I'm gaunny be stuck here all day, an we've got Helen's sister and her man comin over for dinner, so..."

"So it's the only chance we're going to get to talk. Helen's sister: Nicola, wasn't it?"

"Well remembered."

"If I cannae remember background details about the lassie I had a crush on, what can I remember?"

"Let's not go there," Scot says, a twinkle in his eye. Scot never went chasing the lassies, same as he never went chasing the future. Like everything else, he knew it would all happen when the time was right. "What's for ye will no go by ye," as Martin's granny used to say. And what was for Scot turned out to be Helen Dunn. Still, at least it gave a degree of balance to Martin and Scot's relationship: there had to be one thing about him he hated, the jammy swine.

"I could have waited till tomorrow," Martin says. "I'm not shooting back. Told the office I'd need a week. I havenae taken any time off in six or seven months, so..."

"I wanted to talk to you aboot this before I inevitably end up talkin to the polis."

"The polis? About what?"

"The hotel. It belonged to Colin."

Martin feels as daft as the time he realised, after several years of using the end of a kitchen knife, that there was a jaggy bit inside the lid of a tube of tomato puree specifically for piercing the metal cover. "Of course. It was his dad's."

"His dad died six years ago. Cancer. Left the hotel to Colin. He was ill a long time, so the place was already on the slide before Coco got hold of it."

"Wasnae the classiest place to begin with," Martin observes. "A dump, in fact. Somebody must have thought that low-rise, cornflake-packet-on-its-side aesthetic looked good once, I suppose. When was it built? Mid-seventies?"

"Sixty-nine."

"So why's it coming down? Falling apart? Asbestos?"

"I wouldnae be standin here if it was asbestos, no. Coco was sellin it. Sellin the land, rather. There's a consortium who want to build a retail development on the site. Sirius, they're called. That's who's contracted the firm I work for."

"A supermarket?"

"No, not big enough. You'd need a site this size just for the parking. We're lookin at eight mid-size retail units. What the Yanks call a strip-mall."

"And your firm are building it."

"Well, yes and no. We're still at the planning stage. The deal hadnae been finalised before Colin..."

Martin nods. Neither of them wants to say it aloud if they can help it. "But if the deal wasn't finalised, what are the wrecking crew doing here?"

"Jumping the gun, that's what."

"Surely Colin would have had to..."

"Yeah. They're jumping the gun on his command," Scot confirms. "He ordered the site be cleared, which is kinda confusing for me, because it's normally the purchaser who has to worry aboot that."

"Was he trying to sweeten the deal? Speed things up?"

Scot gives him an 'are-you-daft?' look. "It's not the purchasers he'd have to sweeten. They want the site, and the price had been agreed."

"So why wasn't it finalised?"

"Well, in this game, it's never as simple as the buyer and seller agreeing a price. There's a complicating factor that's as complicating as you can possibly get. In fact, complicating things is how it justifies its existence."

"The council," Martin guesses.

"Give that man a poke of sweeties, Granny. This is classified as a residential area. In order for Colin to sell the site to this consortium, the area would need to be officially rezoned for retail, or mixed-use at least."

"But there's shops a hundred yards the other side of the railway bridge."

"Different story between what's already standing and what you want to build. The hotel site, right now, could only be sold for housing; maybe bring in a quarter-mill if you're lucky. To be honest, you'd dae better sellin it as a going concern to a hotel chain who might want to renovate it. But rezoned for retail, it suddenly becomes worth a lot more."

"How much more?"

"The price agreed wasnae a kick in the arse shy of two million."

Martin whistles. "For this dump?"

"But only if it gets rezoned," Scot qualifies. "This consortium has developed umpteen of these places up and doon the country, and they've several sites under consideration at any given time. They contract the likes of my firm to plan and build them, and we proceed provisionally so that if they get the green light from the council, everything can go ahead as quickly as possible. But it's up to the landowner to procure the rezoning or whatever other permissions are required."

"And if he doesn't, the game's a bogey?"

"Withoot missin a beat, they'd write it off and move on to pursuin an alternative site."

"So did Colin not get the green light, or what?"

"The final decision wasnae due until next month, when the planning committee were scheduled to meet. That's what I mean by jumped the gun."

"Maybe he was pretty confident of getting the nod."

"Still nothing to be gained. Well, it would allow us to start work quicker if we got the go-ahead, but you're only talkin aboot a couple of weeks. And if the application failed, he's just demolished a standing asset. I mean, Colin never struck me as the most astute businessman, but he wasnae daft."

"Did you know him quite well, then?" Martin asks, realising he has thus far ignored what Colin's death might mean to Scot.

"Naw, no really. Just to say hello to, you know, if I saw him in the street or whatever. I don't think we'd more than a ten-second conversation since school before this deal came up."

"And how did he seem? Was he doing okay, I mean?"

"A bit anxious, as you'd expect, considerin he'd be set for life if this came off. But aside fae that, same old Coco, really. Full of himself-and there was more of himself to be full of, if you follow-and a bit sleazy with it, as ever. Out-of-order remarks aboot Helen, you know the script."

"Sure do," Martin agrees. "I met him once on a train when I was a student. He was doin his usual, patronisin me and askin if I'd ever managed to get a girlfriend. Because it pissed me off, I was stupit enough to tell him I was seein this lassie...Aboot two minutes later he's askin if I'd done X, Y and Z with her, really fuckin graphic, you know?"

"Aye. He was a wank. I'm sorry the guy's deid an all that, but he was still a wank. He was a bully, as well. Not the way the bampots were bullies, but more subtly. He knew how to intimidate people."

"And would that include the planning committee, do you think?"

Scot makes a pained expression. "Any planning application I've been remotely involved with, there's rumours flying around regarding which way it's gaunny go. The higher the stakes, the mair rumours you hear. Somebody always knows somebody who heard fae so-and-so who's related tae thingamyjig. It's all best ignored, but when you're in our position, you cannae help bein interested in how the wind is blowin, especially if it might mean what you're sweatin over isnae gaunny happen anyway."

"So what way was the wind blowing?"

"Erratically. Back and forth and round in circles. I mean, that's not unusual: you hear it's goin one way fae one guy, then you talk to somebody else and they say the opposite. What was weird in this case was that there seemed to be a consensus, but the consensus kept changing. It was definitely gaunny happen. Then it definitely wasnae. Then it definitely was again. And what I heard was that there was pressure-serious pressure-comin from somewhere to block the rezoning."

"Who from? Somebody on the council?"

"Naebody knows. Or rather, naebody's sayin. And naebody's sayin on what grounds, either. You normally know what the stumblin block is gaunny be: environmental issues, residents' objections, transport infrastructure ramifications. There's been no opposition from the residents because they'd rather have a nice new set of shops on their doorstep than an eyesore of a hotel that pukes pished folk oot on tae their street every night. Environmental impact isnae really applicable in this case. It's a brownfield site, or it will be once these boys are finished. Transport issues are negligible. It's a shopping development aimed principally at passing trade on what's already a trunk road. Much as these things are never plain sailing, I'd still have put my money on it gettin approval. But the word is that people on the committee were being leant on heavily from somewhere."

Scot glances at the building, towards which a Caterpillar machine is noisily trundling with destructive intent. He lets his thoughts just hang there, loose and unconcluded. There's something more to be said, but he seems uncertain, reluctant to volunteer it. It's almost as though he's inviting Martin to make his own inferences, but Martin suspects he's assuming too much knowledge.

"Why would someone want to block the rezoning?" he asks. "Or am I missing something really obvious to you gnarled property-trade veteran types?"