Iain Banks - Complicity

The fish shop has a pull-up front window. Inside there is a single slab of what looks like green granite, sloped a little off the horizontal, where the fish are displayed when the shop's open. It has stubby, rounded walls at each side and a little gutter at the bottom, near the window.

On the slab there are bits of meat, not fish. I recognise liver — ruddy chocolate-brown and silky-looking — kidneys like dark, grotesque mushrooms, what is probably a heart and various other cuts of meat, in steaks, cubes and strips. At top centre of the slab there is a large brain, creamy-grey-looking.

"Good Christ," McDunn whispers. Funny, it's that that brings the shivers, not the sight, not after that first glimpse and realisation in the taxi's headlights.

I look back at the neat, almost bloodless display. I suspect even a Sun reader would know none of this came from a fish; I'm fairly sure it's human, but just to leave us in no doubt, at bottom centre of the slab there is a man's genitalia; uncircumcised penis small and shrivelled and grey-yellow, scrotum crumpled and brown-pink, and the two testes pulled out, one to each side, little egg-shaped grey things like tiny smooth brains, connected by slender convoluted pearly tubes to the scrotal sac, so that the final effect is oddly like a diagram of ovaries connected to a womb.

"Halziel or Lingary, I wonder?" McDunn says, sounding a little croaky.

I look up at the sign. Fish.

I sigh. "The locum," I tell him. "The doctor; Halziel." I start coughing.

The lights behind us flash, just as I'm about to ask him for another fag. The car comes quickly across the street to us, turns to face down West Port, and the passenger's window opens again.

"Found one of them, sir," Flavell says. "North Bridge."

"Oh, my God," McDunn says, putting his free hand up to the back of his head. He nods down the street to the other car. "Get those lads here; the other one's lying in this fish shop, dissected." He looks at me. "Come on," he says, rather unnecessarily as we're still handcuffed together.

In the car, he unlocks the cuffs and pockets them without comment.

And so to North Bridge; slanting over the platforms and glass roofs of Waverley Station, newly painted, floodlit, the link between the old and the new towns, and barely a cobble's throw from the Caley building.

There are two cop cars there already when we arrive. They're pulled up near the high end of the bridge, on the west side where the view looks across the station and Princes Street Gardens to the Castle.

The decorated parapet of the bridge here holds a couple of large plinths, one on either side. On the east, where during the day you can see Salisbury Crags, the countryside of Lothian and the scoop of the Forth coast at Musselburgh and Prestonpans, the plinth supports a memorial to the King's Own Scottish Borderers; a group-sculpture of four giant stone soldiers. There is a similar plinth on the west side, where the cop cars are, blue lights strobing along the painted panels of the parapet and the grubby blond stonework of the plinth. Until now that plinth has been empty, sitting there unoccupied and unused except to provide temporary parking for the odd wittily removed road cone or possibly a platform for an adventurous rugby fan to demonstrate high-altitude pissing from.

Tonight, though, it has another role to play; tonight it is the stage for Andy's tableau of Major Lingary (retired), in full-dress major's uniform, but with the insignia torn off, and with his sword lying, broken, beside him.

He has been shot twice in the back of the head.

McDunn and I stand looking at him for a while.

In the morning, at Chambers Street, they feed me a fairly decent breakfast and give me back my own clothes. I was back in the same cell for the rest of the night, but this time the door wasn't locked. They're letting me go, after a few statements.

The interview room at Chambers Street is smaller and older than the one at Paddington Green; green painted walls, lino floor. I'm becoming something of a connoisseur of interview rooms and this one definitely wouldn't rate a star.

First there's a CID guy from Tayside wanting to be told the whole story about the man in the woods who became the body in the tunnel. Gerald Rudd, the man's name was; been on the Missing Persons list for twenty years, assumed to have walked into the Grampians and disappeared, and (ironically) he really was a policeman, if only part-time. A special constable and scoutmaster from Glasgow, he was already under investigation for interfering with one of the boy scouts. Coffee at eleven — they even send somebody out to get me fags — then another statement, punctuated by my coughs, to a couple of Lothian CID lads covering what I know about Halziel and Lingary.

They haven't got much from last night. Inside the fish shop the display got even more bizarre — Andy had used the doc's fingers to spell out I LIED on the counter (only the «E» gave him any problems) — and somebody saw a white Escort driving away from the plinth on North Bridge shortly before Lingary's body was discovered. The car was later found abandoned on Leith Walk. They're dusting the fish shop and the car but I don't expect they'll find anything.

McDunn comes in with another plain-clothes guy about half twelve. He introduces the other cop as Detective Inspector Burall, from Lothian. They're holding on to my passport and they still want me to keep them informed of my whereabouts, in case the Procurator Fiscal decides to prosecute on the Rudd case. I have to sign for the passport. I'm coughing a lot.

"I'd get to a doctor about that cough," McDunn says, sounding concerned. I nod, tears in my eyes from the coughing.

"Yeah," I wheeze. "Good idea." After I've had a walk and a few pints, maybe, I'm thinking.

"Mr Colley," the Lothian cop says. He's a serious-looking guy, a bit older than me with very pale skin and thinning black hair. "I'm sure you'll understand we're concerned about Andrew Gould possibly still being in the city, especially with the European Summit coming up. Detective Inspector McDunn believes there is a chance Andrew Gould will attempt to contact you, and even that he might try to attack or kidnap you."

I look at McDunn, who's nodding, mouth compressed. I have to admit the idea of Andy paying a visit had occurred to me as well, after that I LIED. Burall continues: "We'd like your permission to station a couple of officers at your flat for a while, Mr Colley; we'll put you up in a hotel if this is agreeable to you."

McDunn sucks through his teeth, and I almost want to laugh at the sound now. I don't; I cough instead.

"I would advise you to say yes, Cameron," McDunn says, frowning at me. "Of course, you'll want to pick up some clothes and things first, but —»

The door swings opens and a uniform guy rushes in, glances at me and whispers into McDunn's ear. McDunn looks at me.

"What sort of present for you would he leave at Torphin Dale?"

"Torphin Dale?" I say. The sickness comes back. Oh Christ oh Christ oh Christ. It's like I've been kicked in the balls. I have to struggle to make my mouth work. "That's where William and Yvonne live; the Sorrells."

McDunn stares at me for a moment. "Address?" he says.

"Four Baberton Drive," I tell him.

He glances up at the uniformed guy. "Got that?"

"Sir."

"Get some cars out there, and get one for us." Then he's up out of his chair, nodding at Burall and me. "Come on."

I stand up but my legs don't work too well as we walk quickly out of the station into a bright, cold afternoon. A uniformed driver runs out ahead of us, pulling on a jacket and blipping the doors on an unmarked Cavalier.

A present for me, at Torphin Dale. Oh, sweet Jesus, no.

"Come on ! Get out the way !"