eye on her. Did you see anybody hanging around her that you didn't like the look of?" Janice started the engine, shivering as a blast of cold air gusted out of the vents. Christ, but it was a bitter morning.
"There were always lowlifes sniffing around. But everybody knew they'd have me and Colin to answer to if they bothered Rosie. So they kept their distance. We always looked out for her." He suddenly slammed one fist into the palm of his other hand. "So where were we last night when she really needed us?"
"You can't blame yourself, Brian." Janice edged the panda out of the car park on to the glassy compressed snow of the main drag. The Christmas lights looked sickly against the yellowish gray of the sky, the glamorous laser laid on by the university physics department an unremarkable pale scribble against the low clouds.
"I don't blame myself. I blame the bastard that did this. But I just wish I'd been there to stop it happening. Too fucking late, always too fucking late," he muttered obscurely.
"So you didn't know who she was meeting?"
He shook his head. "She lied to me. She said she was going to a Christmas party with Dorothy that she works with. But Dorothy turned up at the party I was at. She said Rosie had gone off to meet some bloke. I was going to give her what for when I saw her. I mean, it's one thing keeping Mum and Dad out of the picture. But me and Colin, we were always on her side." He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. "I cannae bear it. Last thing she said to me was a lie."
"When did you see her last?" Janice slewed to a halt at the West Port and edged forward onto the Strathkinness road.
"Yesterday, after I'd finished my work. I met her in the town, we went shopping for Mum's Christmas present. The three of us clubbed together to get her a new hairdrier. Then we went to Boots to get her some nice soap. I walked Rosie to the Lammas and that's when she told me she was going out with Dorothy." He shook his head. "She lied. And now she's dead."
"Maybe she didn't lie, Brian," Janice said. "Maybe she was planning to go to the party but something came up later in the evening." That was probably as truthful as the story Rosie had offered up, but Janice knew from experience that the bereaved would grasp at any straw that kept intact their image of the person they'd lost.
Duff acted true to form. Hope lit his face. "You know, that's probably it. Because Rosie wasn't a liar."
"She had her secrets, though. Like any girl."
He scowled again. "Secrets are trouble. She should have known that." Something struck him suddenly and his body tensed. "Was she?you know? Interfered with?"
Nothing Janice could say would offer him any comfort. If the rapport she appeared to have established with Duff was going to survive, she couldn't afford to let him think she too was a liar. "We won't know for sure until after the post mortem, but yes, it looks that way."
Duff smashed his fist into the dashboard. "Bastard," he roared. As the car fishtailed up the hill toward Strathkinness he turned in his seat. "Whoever did this, he better fucking hope you catch him before I do. I swear to God, I'll kill him."
The house felt violated, Alex thought as he opened the door into the self-contained unit the Laddies fi' Kirkcaldy had turned into their personal fiefdom. Cavendish and Greenhalgh, the two English former public schoolboys they shared the house with, spent as little time there as possible, an arrangement that suited everyone perfectly. They'd already gone home for the holidays, but today the braying accents that sounded so stridently posh to Alex would have been far more welcome than the police presence that seemed to dominate the very air he breathed.
Maclennan at his heels, Alex ran upstairs to the room where he slept. "Don't forget, we want everything you're wearing. That includes underwear," Maclennan reminded him as Alex pushed the door open. The detective stood on the threshold, looking mildly puzzled at the sight of two beds in the tiny room that had clearly been designed for only one. "Who do you share with?" he demanded.
Before Alex could reply, Ziggy's cool tones cut through the atmosphere. "He thinks we're all queer for each other," he said sarcastically. "And