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like a river rushing downhill towards a waterfall. It was nearly closing time and the whiff of desperation was rising above the smell of sweat. The DJ put another record on the deck and, as soon as the first strains were heard, there was no doubt that it was the Last Chance Saloon, the undoubted moment of truth. ‘When a Man Loves a Woman’, the perennial Klass closing number, a guaranteed smoocher.
    He saw anxious eyes looking around the room in the hope of finding someone who would agree to dance the last slow number. If they failed now, it would be the chippy and the last bus home. Eyes met eyes, lonely desperation met the same. He saw grudging shrugs of acceptance, wide-eyed nods of excitement and drunken indifference to anything other than a pulse as bodies paired off and moved together.
    Female eyes sought out his. He blanked them, watching but dodging calls for attention. They weren’t what he was looking for, not quite.
    As the last few bars of Percy Sledge trailed off into silence, newly formed couples were fixed in fervent embraces, lips locked as if they were the one and only. The lights came on and bouncers called for movement, some smoochers oblivious to the lack of song or the harsher light until they were tapped on the shoulders and told to move along. He watched them leave in their new pairs and as dispirited singles.
    There was nothing doing, not tonight, anyway. He’d be back, though, and he’d get what he wanted. He needed to.

Chapter 4
    Saturday, mid-morning
    Two hours after leaving the Necropolis, DS Rachel Narey parked up outside the multi-storey in Bridgeton, observing that the tower block’s cream-and-terracotta make-over spectacularly failed to hide the fact that it remained another ugly high-rise.
    The multi – there were three of them in all, each made up of two fifteen-storey, L-shaped towers clutching onto each other for dear life – stood precariously on the corner of Ruby Street and Baltic Street. It looked down on Dalmarnock Primary School and a warren of new-build housing that formed part of the East End regeneration. The high-rises were still there, untidy neighbours that had escaped the ASBO; slumlords of all they surveyed. The multis were supposed to have been communities on stilts but instead they’d made strangers out of people living on top of one another.
    This area seemed to change every time she visited, slowly pulling itself up by its bootstraps on the back of the Commonwealth Games cash that had been invested. There was plenty still to be done but at least more people were getting to live within touching distance of the ground.
    Narey had the new DC, Fraser Toshney, with her and it was the nearest of the tower blocks that interested them. The eighth floor was said to be home to one Robert Wylde, a.k.a. Razor, and their prime suspect as the boyfriend of the murdered girl. He was known to the police and a DS at London Road had offered Wylde up a warning: Wylde was quick on his feet and had been given the Razor moniker for a reason.
    ‘Because he likes to shave regularly?’ Toshney asked with a snigger as they sat in Narey’s car awaiting the arrival of the blue-and-yellows that held their uniform back-up.
    Narey just looked at him, expressionless, until Toshney was forced to swallow and turn his attention to the rain that was beginning to fall softly onto the windscreen. Toshney had been with them for only two months, but it had proved plenty of time for Narey to come to the conclusion that he was a pain in the arse. He was getting assigned to her far more than she liked, and she made a mental note, yet again, to have a word with Addison about it.
    Other officers were also out searching for a clue to the murdered girl’s identity. Teams were knocking up tattoo-parlour owners and asking them to check their records for jobs that matched the one on the girl’s back. Others were working their way through missing persons or going door to door in the area around the cathedral.