end up looking like a bad boxer."
"I'll take my chances."
"At least you've not got a broken jaw," he said, bending over Weird's face. He took his nose in both hands and twisted it, trying not to feel nauseous at the grinding crepitation of cartilage. Weird screamed, but Ziggy carried on. There was sweat on his lip. "There you go," he said. "Best I can do."
"It was Rosie's funeral today," Alex said.
"Nobody told us," Ziggy complained. "That explains why feelings were running so high."
"You don't think they're coming after us, then?" Alex asked.
"Cops warned them off," Weird said. It was getting harder and harder to speak as his jaw stiffened.
Ziggy studied his patient. "Well, Weird, looking at the state of you, I hope to Christ they were listening."
Chapter 14
Any hopes they'd had of Rosie's death being a nine-day wonder were dashed by the newspaper coverage of the funeral. It was all over the front pages again, and anyone in the town who had missed the initial coverage would have been hard pressed to avoid the reprise.
Again, it was Alex who was the first victim. Walking home from the supermarket a couple of days later, he was taking a short cut along the bottom of the Botanic Gardens when Henry Cavendish and his chums ran up in a ragged bunch, dressed for rugby training. As soon as they spotted Alex, they started catcalling, then surrounded him, pushing and shoving. They formed a loose ruck around him, dragging him to the grass verge and throwing him to the slushy ground. Alex rolled around, trying to escape the prodding of their boots. There was little danger of real violence such as Weird had experienced, and he was more angry than frightened. A stray boot caught his nose and he felt the spurt of blood.
"Fuck off," he shouted, wiping mud, blood and slush from his face. "Why don't you all just fuck off?"
"You're the ones who should fuck off, killer boy," Cavendish shouted. "You're not wanted here."
A quiet voice interjected. "And what makes you think you are?"
Alex rubbed his eyes clear and saw Jimmy Lawson standing on the fringe of the group. It took him a moment to recognize him out of uniform, but his heart lifted when he did.
"Push off," Edward Greenhalgh said. "This is none of your business."
Lawson reached inside his anorak and pulled out his warrant card. He flipped it open negligently and said, "I believe you'll find it is, sir. Now, if I could just take your names? I think this is a matter for the university authorities."
At once, they were small boys again. They shuffled their feet and stared at the ground, muttering and mumbling their details for Lawson to write down in his notebook. Meanwhile, Alex got to his feet, sodden and filthy, contemplating the wreckage of the shopping. A bottle of milk had erupted all over his trousers, a burst plastic jar of lemon curd was smeared down one sleeve of his parka.
Lawson dismissed his tormentors and stood looking at Alex, a smile on his face. "You look terrible," he said. "Lucky for you I was passing."
"You're not working?" Alex said.
"No. I live round the corner. I just popped out to catch the post. Come on, come back to my place, we'll get you cleaned up."
"That's very kind of you, but there's no need."
Lawson grinned. "You can't walk the streets of St. Andrews looking like that. You'd probably get arrested for frightening the golfers. Besides, you're shivering. You need a cup of tea."
Alex wasn't going to argue. The temperature was dropping back toward freezing point and he didn't fancy walking home soaking wet. "Thanks," he said.
They turned into a brand new street, so new it still didn't have pavements. The first few plots were completed, but after that, they petered into building sites. Lawson carried on past the finished homes and stopped by a caravan parked on what would one day be a front garden. Behind it, four walls and roof timbers covered in tarpaulin offered a promise of something rather more palatial than the four-berth caravan. "I'm doing a self-build," he said, unlocking the door of the caravan. "The whole street's doing it. We all contribute labor and skills to each other's houses. That way, I get a chief superintendent's house on a constable's salary." He climbed up into the caravan. "But for now, I live here."
Alex followed. The caravan was cozy, a portable gas heater blasting out dry warmth into the confined space. He was impressed