Free Where the Bodies are Buried by Christopher Brookmyre, Brookmyre

took
     comfort from that. If Jim had been lying there for days, then no, she really didn’t think she could handle it. Somebody had
     to, though, and she needed to know.
    She closed her car door, looking again at the unfamiliar plethora of available parking spaces, and realised the purpose of
     her visit was moot. She wouldn’t find Jim in the flat, dead or alive, as his car wasn’t here. Just to be sure, she took a
     walk back and forth along Jim’s street and then a good hundred yards around the corner, in case he had last come home at a
     busy time and been forced to park further afield, but his Peugeot was nowhere to be seen. Grateful for this minor relief,
     she decided to check out the flat anyway for what little information she might be able to glean.
    She felt oddly self-conscious about ringing the doorbell in the near-certain knowledge that nobody was going to answer it,
     but felt she had to go through the motions anyway, like some vestigial religious rite the origin of which even its believers
     had forgotten. It sounded disproportionately loud, perhaps because she was imagining the emptiness of the flat causing it
     to echo, though the absence of the normal ambient noises of an occupant probably did amplify it. Truth was, when you rang
     a doorbell, you could tell when nobody was home, perceive the emptiness behind the door. Croft had, she bet. He hadn’t phoned
     her because he thought she might have been in the shower or not heard him for the radio. He knew the place was empty.
    Jasmine pushed open the letter box, confidently unafraid of what she might discover. The sight that greeted her wasn’t comforting.
     She saw a scattering of mail and a couple of newspapers. Her angle of view only showed what had fallen a foot or so away from
     the door, so she retrieved a compact mirror from her bag and held it through the slot. There was a third copy of the
Evening Times
resting near-vertically against the inside of the door. Subtracting Sunday, when it didn’t print, that meant three deliveries
     since Jim was last home. She didn’t know if his paper-boy had been yet today. If he had, then at the absolute latest, the
     last time Jim was home was some time before his
Times
got delivered on Friday; and if Monday’s paper wasn’t one of the ones on the floor, he’d been missing for four days.
    Lies Over Breakfast
    They found Paddy Steel where their information had indicated: jogging around Strathclyde Park in the morning sunshine, his
     pace being dictated by the two burly minders accompanying him every step, neither of whom could be said to have a runner’s
     build.
    Catherine and Laura watched the troika from the Bothwell end of the loch, their car parked a few spaces from Steel’s Hummer.
    ‘He likes to keep himself fit,’ Catherine remarked. ‘He’s here most days, hits the gym too for his weight work. Guys like
     that, it’s the alpha male thing writ large: they need to know they could take a guy half their age, theoretically anyway.
     In practice, the challenger wouldn’t get near them. Most other mammals don’t have security personnel.’
    ‘Or MAMILs,’ Laura observed. ‘Middle-aged men in Lycra. He’s not exactly cut down in his grief, eh? Either he doesn’t know
     about Jai McDiarmid yet, or he’s dealing with his sorrow through the re-assurance of the familiar.’
    Catherine let out a dry chuckle.
    ‘Oh, he’ll know. Just check the nick of the minders. Do they look like they jog every morning? Paddy might not be on a war
     footing yet, but he’s moved to DEFCON Three. He’ll be loving the fact that the minders cannae hack it, though. Lets them know
     he’s not the boss just because he’s got good connections and has made a few bob.’
    ‘He won’t tell us anything, will he?’
    ‘Course not. It’s the Glasgow Omerta: the silence of the bams. But sometimes you can work out that there’s something specific
     they’re not telling you. Besides, that’s only part of the game