"People hire your services to locate missing loved ones, right? Ally isn't exactly a loved one, but he's pretty d.a.m.n important to me and to a lot of other people."

I sighed deeply. I'd promised Ros that this would be a special night. I'd been busy lately with case after case, and not to put too fine a point on it, she'd been getting more than a little narked with me.

"Can you not just find him yourself?"

"You know as well I do that the Kennedys are gonnae be looking for him," said Sandy. "And when they find him, we're going to find him dead and dumped in some council wheely bin. Let's face facts here, the bureaucracy of Tayside Constabulary is going to tie up our search for some time. We're not going to get to him first."

"So you bring in an outside contractor?"

'If you want to look at it that way."

"Who's my client? Tayside Constabulary or Sandy Griggs?" I looked at the window once more. Inside, Ros looked away from me.

I waited for an answer.

"I know your rates, Sam. This is for me. Because, let's face facts here, pal, you're not exactly Mr. Popular with the local fuzz. I can't see the chief giving up part of this quarter's budget for your services."

It was cold outside and as I talked on the phone, I could see my breath in the air. "Fine," I said. "But don't you expect a b.l.o.o.d.y discount for this!"

He didn't laugh. "I'll meet you at the Phoenix in a half hour," he said and hung up.

I put the phone away and went back inside. I took my seat across from Ros. She looked at her plate. "What is it?"

"Sandy."

"Every time," she said: "Every d.a.m.n time!"

"I wish I had a nine-to-five job," I said. "Sometimes, I really do."

She looked up, finally, and smiled. "But then you wouldn't be happy, babe," she said. And even though she was smiling, her brown eyes were tinged with a distant sadness.

Sandy was tucked in a corner booth at the Phoenix, smoking a cigarette. He had two pints all ready by the time I walked in. He'd already started drinking. His face was serious, his forehead crinkled slightly.

"Hey," I said, grabbing the seat across from him. I took the pint he'd got me and sipped at it. "What kind of time frame are we talking about?"

"As soon as possible," said Sandy. "Odds are the Kennedys'll be looking for him already. They've got contacts on the force. It's common knowledge. Either that or they've developed some psychic voodoo mystical powers. Whatever, they seem to know everything that we do. They second-guess us, clean out their c.r.a.p before we can come down on them. They'll know about Dudman and they'll know he's missing."

I sighed. "So where do I start?"

Sandy reached inside the breast pocket of his jacket and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. He pa.s.sed it over. I unfolded it.

"That's Dudman's mother's address and number," Sandy said. "Also the pubs where he tends to drink. I doubt he'll be around, but maybe someone'll know where to look. Also you have his ex- wife there as well"

"How amicable was the divorce?"

"So-so," said Sandy. "As far as these things go, anyhow." He took a deep drink of his pint. When he laid it back down on the table, he punctuated the move with a loud sigh. "Says she hasn't talked to him since the divorce."

"Any children?"

"None."

"You gave me his mother's address. What about his father?"

"Dead. Buried up at Balgay Cemetery"

"And known a.s.sociates I'm going to guess crooked wee w.a.n.kers like the Kennedys?"

"Closest he has to a family, I imagine."

"So he's got nowhere to go.

"Probably not."

"And a.s.suming he doesn't run back to the forgiving arms of Bobby and Jimmy?"

"They're going to be looking the same places we are."

"But they're not going to ask questions so politely." I took a drink of my pint. It fell heavily into my stomach, like a lead weight. "I should get going," I said. "The night is young."

"Naw, mate," said Sandy. "This one's old"

I grabbed my car-a flashy new BMW I got at a good price from a satisfied client-and headed out to Lochee, where Dudman's wife now lived in a comfortable semi with her new man. I didn't have much on him, but it was the ex-Mrs. Dudman I wanted to talk to anyway.

The semi had a small garden out front. There was a pond with fish in it. I stopped on the path for a moment to look at them. They swam around under the surface, creating patterns with their movements I doubt they were even aware of.

The front door opened and a female voice said, "Who are you?"

I looked up and saw a woman in her mid-forties standing on the front step. She wore a white dressing gown wrapped tight round her body. She was skeletally thin and her skin hung loosely about her frame. Her blue eyes were graying with age and sunken back in her skull. Her hair had been a vibrant blonde once, but now it looked like brittle straw.

"Mrs Jennifer Dudman?"

"It's Fischer," she said. "Miss Fischer."

"Of course," I said. She'd taken back her maiden name after the divorce. "Nice house."

"I guess. Are you with the polis? I already talked to some w.a.n.ker called Lindsay. b.l.o.o.d.y girl's name!"

"D.L Lindsay," I said. "Something of a prat. I'm not a copper." I took out my wallet and walked up the path. I handed her my card.

"I'm a private investigator."

"Didn't think we had those in Scotland."

"Well, there you go," I said with a shrug.

She looked me up and down. "You look like a scruffy bag of tatties," she said. "I watch those films in the afternoon, ken? With that Humphrey Bogart and all. That's a private investigator, son."

I smiled. "Can I come in?"

"No."

"It's important," I said. "It's about Ally."

'Already told that D.I., I haven't seen him in almost a year now."

The divorce was amicable.

"Aye; doesn't mean I want to see the toerag again."

"Sure," I said, "but I need to talk to him, Miss Fischer. And besides, this is definitely going to concern you."

She sighed. "I'm no going tae get rid of you, am I, son?"

I shook my head.

"Christ," she said. "Come inside, then. But wipe your b.l.o.o.d.y feet! No one trails mud round my house, you got that?"

Jennifer Fischer's front room was fairly small and free of clutter. The bookcase set into one wall was filled with a few videos and some pot plants. There were a couple of books there as though in concession to the actual purpose of the cavity. They looked new and I guessed she wasn't much of a reader.

She threw herself into a ragged brown armchair. She didn't bother inviting me to sit. I stood, anyway.

"Like I said, I haven't seen him." She looked at me with hard eyes, as though she was challenging me to contradict her. "In over a year," she said, emphasizing each word in case I hadn't caught that information outside the house.

"Sure," I said. "The two of you didn't talk, right?"

"b.l.o.o.d.y toerag!" she said, condensing her feelings toward Ally in four forceful syllables. "What do you think?"

I nodded. There was a small coffee table with an ashtray sitting in the middle of the room. Two cigarettes were crumpled in there. It made me wish I could spark up. I'd been trying to give up lately-Ros's idea-and now I was starting to see temptation round every corner.

"So I haven't seen him," she emphasized once more.

"Okay," I said. "But you know him better than most people. I mean, where else would he go if he needed a place to hide?"

She shrugged. "Just about any b.l.o.o.d.y pub," she said. "That'd be a good start. Or the bookies."

"You know he's in danger," I said.

"What? From, the polis?"

I shook my head. "He was working with the police," I said. "Maybe he was trying to turn his life around, I don't know. But he was working with them, and now that he's done a runner, the people he was helping the police to nick are probably going to be after him."

I walked to the bookshelf I scanned the unbroken spines. A few Grishams, a Guinness. .h.i.t Singles, and The Atkins Diet.

"They're not nice people," I said. "They're pretty dangerous people, actually." I kept my tone light and airy like I did this kind of thing all the time, like it didn't matter to me really one way or the other whether the Kennedy brothers got their hands on wee Ally Dudman.

"That's too bad," said Jennifer Fischer. "For Ally, I mean." But her tone trembled slightly.

The front door opened. "Jennifer?" shouted a gruff man's voice.

"You in there?"

A burly ball of sweat came into the living room. He stopped and looked at me suspiciously, his small eyes narrowing. "Who're you?"

"Sam Bryson," I said. "I'm a consultant with the police force. Just here to ask Miss Fischer a few questions about her ex-husband."

"Can't you b.l.o.o.d.y people leave her alone?" thundered the ball of sweat. I tried not to look at him directly. He was a hard man in the worst sense of the word; direct eye contact would be like a red flag to a bull. And I was no matador "I'm sorry to intrude," I said. "I didn't mean to cause Miss Fischer here any trouble."

"I think you should leave," he said.

I glanced at Jennifer Fischer out of the corner of my eye. She was trembling. It was barely perceptible, but I could see it. It was a look I'd see many times. She was petrified of this man. I wondered what would happen after I was gone.

I walked past the big man and out of the house. I turned when I got to the gate and looked at the living room window. Jennifer Fischer knew something. Given time, she might even have told me. But now that the bruiser had walked back into her house, she'd just clammed up. It would give him just one more reason to beat the snot out of her.

I called Sandy from my mobile.

"Hey," he said. 'Any word?"

"I think he's been to see his ex," I said. "But she's not saying anything."

"Still sweet on him?"

"I just don't think she wants her new man to find out," I said. Sandy was silent on the other end of the phone. I could sense his body tense, his fists close together. I knew the look he'd have in his eyes. His weakness, the one thing he couldn't handle in a calm and rational manner, was wife beaters, child-batterers. To Sandy they were the worst possible kind of criminal. It was personal. His own father had killed Sandy's mother. Sandy may even have killed his own father; it was a part of his life I'd never fully understood, a place he'd never let me into. All I knew was that it was an aspect of his police work he took seriously enough to bend more than a few rules to bring a conviction against anyone guilty of domestic abuse. The current advertising campaigns by the Scottish Exec advocate a zero tolerance of domestic violence: Despite his deceptively skinny frame and thinning har Sandy could be the embodiment of true zero tolerance.

"Okay," he said, eventually. "Try the mother, see if you can get anything from some of the bars. The Crow and Claw perhaps. Maybe Big Ian'll know something."

"What are you going to do?"

"I might pop in and see if J can get Miss Fischer to be more cooperative"

"What about her man?"

"He's just going to have to lump it," said Sandy. "Official police business and all."

After i hung up I looked back at the house. The curtains had closed. The house had swallowed Miss Fischer and what had been a promising initial inquiry.

There was no answer at Dudman'S mother's house. She lived in a purpose-built council semiin a small cul-de-sac of Identikit houses, separated only by the colour of the front doors. I persistedfor a few minutes.

The door of the house next door opened. An old man in a dressing gown stepped onto the front step and looked at me. "What do you want there?"

"1 need to speak to Mrs. Dudman."