Free Naming the Bones by Louise Welsh

generally been drinking.’
    ‘That’s a prime example of why I didn’t tell you. You can be such a fucking puritan, I thought you wouldn’t approve.’ He gave a low laugh. ‘And then you told me that you and she . . . Well, I was jealous, I admit, but not jealous enough to throw it back in your face.’ Rab raised his pint to his lips and then wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. His tone slipped from apologetic to defensive. ‘I don’t see what you’re getting so hot under the collar for, anyway. She’s another man’s wife. She doesn’t belong to you, me or anyone else in the department she might have fucked, except maybe Fergus, and if so I’d say he’s doing a very poor job of holding onto his property.’
    It was the female player’s turn again. Rab moved his drink as she pulled the cue back then fired a white ball across the baize. Murray watched it sail into the depths of a corner pocket, sure as death.
    He imagined taking the pool cue from her hand and smashing it into Rab Purvis’s beer-shined face. Teeth first, then nose. He’d leave the eyes alone. He’d always been squeamish about that kind of thing.
    Lyle said, ‘Are you okay, Murray?’
    He didn’t answer, just got to his feet and left before any more damage could be done.
    Murray had been walking for a long time. Once a police car slowed and took a look at him, he ignored them and they drove on past, but their interest seemed to be the signal for his feet to start a winding route home. He left the main road and wandered uphill into the confluence of wide lonely streets that made up Park Circus, the jewel in the crown of Glasgow’s West End. Sometime after parlour maids and footmen decided they’d rather risk their health in munitions factories or the battlefield, the smart residences had been converted into hotels and offices. Now they’d been deserted for city centre lets and were slowly being reclaimed by speculative builders. Murray drifted past the weathered To Let signs, half-seeing the sycamore shoots sprouting from neglected guttering, the broken railings and chipped steps that might tumble the unsuspecting into the dank courtyards of window-barred basements. The plague-town atmosphere of the shuttered houses and empty streets matched his mood.
    He took his mobile from his pocket and accessed the number he’d taken from a list in the front office and stupidly promised himself he’d never use. The night was starting to turn. He’d reached the top gate of Kelvingrove Park. Down below in the parkland’s green valley, birds were beginning to sing to each other. Murray pressed Call and waited while his signal bounced around satellites stationed in the firmament above, or whatever it did in that pause before the connection was made. He let it ring until an automated voice told him the person he was looking for was unavailable, then hung up and pressed Redial. This time the other end picked up and Professor Fergus Baine’s voice demanded, ‘Do you know what time it is?’
    Murray cut the call. He sat on a wall and listened to the birds celebrating the return of the sun, then after a minute or two his phone vibrated into the stupid jingle he’d never bothered to change. He took it out, glanced at the caller display and saw the unfamiliar number flashing on the screen.
    ‘Hello?’ His voice was slurred.
    ‘Is that you, Murray?’ Fergus sounded wide-awake. Did he never sleep? ‘What do you want? Something urgent, I imagine?’
    ‘I wanted to speak to Rachel.’
    It was ridiculous, all of it, stupid.
    ‘Rachel is asleep. Perhaps you can call back in the morning?’ The professor’s politeness was damning.
    Somewhere in the recesses of Murray’s brain was the knowledge that now was the time to quit, while he still had the slim chance of writing the call off as a drunken indiscretion. But in the morning he would have lost his courage.
    ‘I need to talk to her now.’
    ‘Well, you can’t. Call back at a decent hour.’
    The