Free The Blood of Crows by Caro Ramsay

So she pulled out, got up level with him and forced him to pull over. She’s a good witness, saw a lot.’
    They watched as a spinal board was passed from hand to hand up the side of the truck with much shouting, but they were too far away to make out anything in particular.
    ‘Dorothy is very definite that they didn’t drop him,’ Lambie said.
    ‘They threw him?’
    Lambie shook his head. ‘They had him by the ankles, dangling him over the bridge, then he kicked himself free. She saw him jerk just before he fell.’
    Anderson looked back at the bridge and nodded slowly. ‘If he kicked himself free, that explains why he landed on top of the truck rather than in front of it.’
    9.30 A.M.
    Due to the early call-out, Anderson was due some down time so he went home for breakfast on the pretence of thinking about the incident on the expressway, but he knew it was more about avoiding the eyes of his Partick colleagues. The late edition of the Daily Record lay on the kitchen table, neatly folded at one end, the other end having entered the shredder of Nesbitt’s canines. Being a dog of some discernment, he had chewed off Skelpie Fairbairn’s face.
    He had tried not to read it but it was there in its technicolour glory. Fairbairn, the evil predatory paedophile, was back on the street. That was the point that most of them seemed to be missing.
    Underneath photos of the three men shot at Balfron, a headline screamed Gang Murder! and the article leaned heavily on the threat of a full-scale gang war breaking out on the streets of Glasgow. The men had shaved heads, wary eyes, their faces carrying the scars of short lives lived swimming with sharks. The paper had printed their nicknames: the Hamster, Speedo and Smoutie. Anderson was tempted to rip out that bit as well and feed it to Nesbitt, who probably had a greater sense of self-preservation than all of them put together.
    The ‘Bridge Boy’ had made the headline on Radio Clyde’s nine o’clock news. Just the bare facts and an appeal for anyone who had seen a white Transit in the vicinity to come forward. It had been a disciplined operation; it had needed teamwork. It had a sense of organized crime about it, and he wondered what the Bridge Boy had done to deserve such a traumatic fate. Anderson glanced at hiswatch; he had time to call in to the hospital and see how the boy was doing before he was taken off that case as well. His phone had been quiet – no messages, no missed calls. No news was good news.
    Brenda was still in bed. She had come back late from her friend’s house and immediately gone online, contacting another old friend who had recently emigrated to Oz. They had been chit-chatting by email for a few weeks now, much friendlier since they were thousands of miles apart. Brenda wanted the family to go out to the Gold Coast for four weeks over the winter holidays, to get Australia ‘at its glorious best’.
    It’d be too bloody hot, he knew – hotter than here. God knows why she wanted to go. She always burned painfully in no time, having red hair and pale skin, and Anderson, being blond and fair-skinned, didn’t fare much better.
    All he did know was that she wanted to get away from Glasgow, wanted to get him away, and hoped moving might make it all better. He was still young enough to apply to emigrate, and he couldn’t deny the kids would have a better life in the sun. Brenda’s friend’s brother was a cop out there, and he said there was a lot of security consulting work going. A guy like Anderson would find it a doddle. He wondered how her dreams would pan out if he was made the official scapegoat in the appeal and the subsequent enquiry. Brenda had visions of swapping their three-bedroomed semi for a six-bedroomed house in the suburbs of Brisbane and there was no fault in her plan, no reason not to go.
    Except he didn’t want to.
    He liked his job, he liked sitting thinking about the next move on the case.
    He needed to get the Bridge Boy’s