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the Perthshire property that Al and Sheila Greystock had owned had found a shotgun encased in the foundations. To the police its origins were a mystery, and they could trace no record of its registration anywhere in Britain.
    That got my attention, for Oz and Susie had lived beside Loch Lomond, and indeed a shotgun had been found there when the next owner had demolished the playground they’d built for the kids. I knew this because Susie had told me about it, after the police asked her, politely, if she had any idea where it had come from. She hadn’t, but Oz had. I knew because he told me.
    Culshaw offered no theories in the early part of his story; instead he went back and gave a brief account of the so-called Al’s early life in Newport on Tay, highlighted by a story told by one of his classmates, about him going mental and beating the shit out of two guys in his year because of a casual schoolboy remark about Maureen, his childhood sweetheart. That wasn’t fantasy either; that happened, not in Newport, but in Anstruther, where Oz was raised. He told me about that too, very early in our relationship; eventually he told me everything.
    The scene changed to Edinburgh and Al’s early life there, first as a trainee fireman, and later as a self-employed journalist, as he was said to style himself, who made extra money singing with an up-and-coming rock band.
    That was the point at which I made my first appearance. ‘Phyllis’ turned up at one of his gigs, and sank her hooks in him straight away.
    ‘The boy Al was okay until he met her,’
a guy called Saeed Nawaz was quoted as saying. Saeed had to equal Ali Patel, the neighbourhood grocer in Edinburgh, and Oz’s pal.
    ‘Him and Maureen, his bird from when he was a kid in Fife, they were fine, an item, although they didnae live together. Then she turned up, that Phyllis. She was in bother of some sort or other, he helped her out, and she helped herself. They went off together on some business trip that she’d lined up, only for a week like, but when they came back everything was different. They went off again, but for a while this time, then just when I thought he was gone for good, he came back, out the blue, and things were all right wi’ him and Maureen again. They got married, he selt me the flat and they moved tae Glasgow.’

    True, all of it, and he’d got Ali’s accent right as well; but then it drifted into pure fiction.
    ‘Al made it big in the music business; he got lucky, ken, became a big star overnight. A wee bit later, Phyllis came back. Ah don’t know how, but she’d missed all that. I was in one night, there was a ring at the doorbell and it was her. She looked at me, surprised like, and asked where Al was. Ah telt her he didnae live there any more, that him and Maureen had got married and moved tae the Wild West. The look she gave me scared me shitless. Then she turned on her heel and went off. A wee bit later, Ah heard that Maureen was dead, that she’d been electrocuted by a dodgy washing machine or something. Accident? Maybe so, but the timing was a bit funny.’

    Another outright lie soldered on to some truth; that doorstep exchange never happened. The truth was that when Jan died, I was in Spain, and Oz was with me. We’d met up completely by accident, and there were people around who could prove it.
    I read on, into the night as the story moved on. In some ways it was a pretty accurate account of Oz’s life, with only the names, geography and occupations changed. There was a chapter that was based on an incident when Oz was making a movie, and a real-life drama developed, involving the kidnapping of my sister Dawn … an actress, of course, not a politician. He had some of that story right on the button, but not all of it; my guess was that his source had been Susie, and that she’d held back a part that related to her. But ‘Sheila’ came into the narrative, right on cue, paying a visit to Al and Phyllis in St Tropez, where they