Sixty-three minutes before

They say a life’s trajectory can change in an instant, transformed beyond all recognition purely by virtue of being in the right place at the right time. Or, more often than not, the wrong place at the wrong time.

The place was an unfamiliar sofa. The time had just gone 8.30 a.m. And for Alyssa Clark – waking up with the hangover from hell and breath to match – both were, beyond a shadow of a doubt, all sorts of wrong.

Swallowing a wave of nausea, she manoeuvred into an upright position and set her Wayfarers in place on the bridge of her nose, bringing her surroundings into as much focus as she was going to get given her present condition. Once the room had – for the most part – stopped spinning, she forced herself onto her feet and staggered to the door, sidestepping the slumbering form of Jenny Nicholson, prostrate on the floor and snoring contentedly. In the bathroom, Alyssa gulped down a glass of water and tried to recollect the precise order of events which had led to her waking up on someone else’s couch with half the alcohol reserve in Glasgow in her bloodstream. They’d met up at Sleazy’s on Sauchiehall Street just after nine, she recalled – her, Jenny, Gobby and Spud – and spent the next several hours drinking the place dry and hollering at each other over the deafening roar of music, before they stumbled out into the street in the wee hours and made their way, by a meandering and circuitous route, back to Spud’s flat in Cowcaddens for videogames and more drinking. Somewhere between three and four in the morning, they’d finally succumbed to the inevitable after Jenny, who’d spent much of the night alternating between trying to seduce the perennially unobservant Gobby and declaring that she was almost certainly dying of alcohol poisoning, had lain down on the floor and failed to get back up – which had seemed as good a sign as any to the rest of them that it was time to call it a night.

Alyssa squinted at the grubby mirror and stuck her tongue out at her reflection. She concluded she looked almost as bad as she felt. Almost, but not quite. Her makeup, still in place and only suffering from minimal smudging, hid the worst effects of last night’s frivolities, the bleariness in her eyes masked by the tinted lenses of her Wayfarers. And she had an infallible plan for a full and speedy recovery: catch the next bus back to Laurieston and hop straight into bed, spend the rest of the day catching up on some much-needed shut-eye and be fresh as a daisy for starting her new job tomorrow.

As she stood trying to work up the enthusiasm to actually put one foot in front of the other and make a move, her eyes strayed to the calendar on the wall. For a moment, the significance of what she was seeing failed to register. Then, with a pin-sharp clarity that belied her booze-marinated brain, she saw it. Monday the first of March. It was tomorrow today.

‘HOLY SHITBALLS!’

She was out of the flat in seconds, crashing out into the grey morning with her jacket trailing from one arm. She cast around wildly, blinking as the harsh daylight seared her poor, delicate eyeballs. Traffic roared past in both directions, the busy Cowcaddens Road already at full capacity despite the ungodly hour. Across the road, she spotted a number three bus idling at the stop. After a moment, a break in the traffic materialised, but by the time she made it to the other side the bus had already pulled away from the kerb. There then followed an ungainly dash up the pavement behind it until it came to a halt at a set of lights where, after much hammering on the door, the driver finally took pity on her and let her in. She shoved what she was sure was far too much money into his hand, snatched her ticket from the dispenser, staggered up the gangway and collapsed into the back row seat, breathless and sweaty and with a nagging sense that, sooner or later, she was going to spew.

It’s OK, she told herself. You can still make it. And even if you are late, so what? It’s an entry-level job in a public library, not fricking NASA.

* * *

Twenty-two minutes before

At just after 9.10 a.m. – or to be precise, ten minutes after her shift was due to start – the bus finally came to a juddering halt on Chancery Street. She hurried down the gangway, flashing a perfunctory smile at the young man who stepped aside to let her pass. Alighting on the pavement, she clocked the library fifty yards up ahead, then realised there was no way she was going to be able to face an entire day on the trot without first getting some form of both hydration and pain relief.

Five minutes later, she emerged from the newsagent across the road, armed with a bottle of Irn Bru and a pack of Paracetamol Plus.

‘Spare some change, wee pet?’ said the homeless guy with the matted beard and stained cagoule sitting cross-legged outside the shop as she paused to pop a couple of pills.

‘Gave it all to the bus driver, sorry,’ she said absentmindedly, and slugged back a mouthful of fizz. ‘And I’m not your wee pet.’

He held up both hands in a gesture of truce. ‘My mistake. Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.’

She crossed the road, playing cat-and-mouse with the traffic, and found herself gazing up at one of those grand old Carnegie buildings, so consecrated in the minds of the decision-makers that any attempt to bring them even vaguely into the twenty-first century with such radical notions as disabled access and properly functioning central heating were immediately met with howls of outrage and can’t-be-dones. The words ‘THORNHILL PUBLIC LIBRARY’ were engraved on the stone arch above the doorway. On the door itself was a laminated sign declaring that, owing to repeated abuse of staff goodwill, the public toilet was for service users only and that access was contingent on production of a valid library card. Alyssa hoped no one around here ever got the runs.

Stepping inside, she found herself in a low-ceilinged foyer, the marble flooring scuffed and stained by the passage of countless feet. ‘GLASGOW LOVES READING’ proclaimed a tall banner near the door, its bold assertion illustrated by a picture of a group of people, all improbably photogenic and infinitely more multi-coloured than the average Scottish family, smiling at one another as they enjoyed their suspiciously pristine books – which, much like the people themselves, looked fresh off the assembly line. Even the baby was beaming, clutching a board-book while its doting parents looked on approvingly. Alyssa strongly suspected it was a stock photo and that the family wasn’t actually Scottish at all… or, for that matter, a family.

Crossing the foyer, she headed through another door into the main library – a roomy affair with a faintly damp smell. Straight ahead was a work area encircled by a wooden countertop, behind which three people were gathered. One – a tall, rake-thin man in his forties with a quiff and a feeble-looking excuse for a beard – was holding court while his two companions, both women, listened with weary disinterest. Beyond the desk, a wrought-iron spiral staircase in the middle of the room created a natural central well around which the bookshelves were arranged like spokes on a wheel. Dust-motes danced in light rays filtering down from a glass dome some thirty feet up, giving the place a vaguely ecclesiastical atmosphere. Alyssa counted perhaps half a dozen customers browsing the shelves, most of them decidedly on the elderly side. Not exactly heaving.

She came to a halt at the desk while the quiff-haired guy continued to pontificate.

‘I’m telling you,’ he declared, voice raised several orders of magnitude beyond what was necessary for such an intimate gathering, ‘we shouldnae let ’em divide us like this. If we adopted a united front, they’d not have a leg to stand on.’

‘Oh, hark at him!’ declared one of the two women – barrel-chested, in her late fifties, sporting granny glasses and puckered lips. ‘United front, is it? He’ll be having us all stand up shouting “I’m Spartacus!” next.’

The other woman, a good twenty-five years younger, her blonde hair in bunches, tittered into her coffee cup and said nothing, but that didn’t stop Quiff Hair shooting her an acrid look.

‘Dunno what everyone thinks is so funny,’ he snapped. ‘This is a serious matter. There’s principles at stake here.’

‘You’re right, Jason, you’re right,’ said Blondie, doing an impressive job of sounding utterly sincere even as her face simultaneously betrayed her true feelings. ‘It’s a matter of life and death. And you know that, all things being equal, I’d be first in line to take this particular bullet for you. But unless you’re willing to take over Tiny Tots for me, I’m afraid my presence here is fairly essential.’

‘Oh no.’ Jason shook his head firmly. ‘No way. If they think I’m gonnae get down on my knees to sing “Old MacDonald had a farm” with the babbies, they’ve got another thing coming.’

‘And I’m sure the babies and their mums are profoundly grateful for your strong and principled stance.’

Just then, Granny Glasses caught sight of Alyssa over Jason’s shoulder. She instantly stiffened and cleared her throat. Jason swung around to face her, eyes narrowing suspiciously. She got the distinct impression he wasn’t thrilled to discover he had an audience.

‘If it’s a computer you’re after, just away through and log yourself on,’ he said, nodding to a door off to the left. ‘There’s hunners of empty machines. We don’t need to see your card.’

‘Huh?’ Alyssa was momentarily thrown. ‘No, no, I don’t need a computer. I’m Alyssa Clark. New library assistant?’ she added hopefully.

Jason gave her a look that might best be described as scepticism laced with contempt, then glanced over at his two companions. ‘Never knew we were getting fresh meat. Either of yous hear anything about this?’

Blondie shrugged, while Granny Glasses laughed. ‘And why, pray tell, would they tell me anything? Me, a humble slave to the machine? I just do as I’m telt. They say “jump”, I say “how high?” They tell me to clean the public loos, I set off with a smile and a skip in my step.’

Jason turned to Alyssa again, his expression only marginally less hostile than before. ‘Sure you’re meant to be here? Wouldnae be the first time so-called management got their wires crossed.’

Alyssa was about to respond when a fourth person materialised alongside her, a stack of books tucked under one arm. ‘What’s the trouble?’ he inquired, pleasantly enough.

He was in his late twenties, Alyssa reckoned. Short and overweight, he reminded her of one of the Seven Dwarfs, minus the beard and pickaxe.

‘Reckons she’s meant to be working here,’ said Jason, jerking a thumb in Alyssa’s direction.

‘I don’t reckon,’ said Alyssa. She’d reached the limits of her patience with people talking about her as if she wasn’t there. ‘I am supposed to be working here. I was told to report here at nine for my induction.’

‘You get that in writing?’

‘No – they told me over the phone. I didn’t—’

Jason raised a chiding finger. ‘Always get everything in writing from that lot. If there’s a paper trail, they cannae pull the wool over your eyes and make out you signed up to something you never did.’

‘Should we get Denise on the blower?’ suggested the tubby guy. ‘She ought to be able to straighten this out.’

Alyssa perked up, recognising the name. ‘Denise? As in Denise Forsyth? She’s supposed to do my—’

‘Can’t contact a VMO about a work matter while they’re on annual leave,’ said Granny Glasses adamantly. ‘Them’s the rules.’

Jason rubbed the underside of his chin with a long finger. ‘Four of us plus new girl here puts us over capacity, and I’m buggered if I’m getting sent on relief just cos HR couldnae handle a piss-up in a brewery.’ He glanced briefly in Alyssa’s direction. ‘Nae offence, darling.’

‘None taken,’ said Alyssa, not sure she particularly liked being referred to either as ‘new girl’ or ‘darling’ – though she supposed both were a step up from ‘fresh meat’.

‘Yeah, but she won’t be counted as staff,’ pointed out Blondie. ‘New hires are meant to shadow for the first fortnight. So we’re technically still only four bodies.’

Granny Glasses shook her head. ‘Not true. Safe operating levels guidelines are purely about how many bodies you have in the building, not how many of those bodies are fully qualified. Check the Business Processes folder if you don’t believe me.’

As an uneasy silence descended, the tubby guy turned to Alyssa with the first genuine smile she’d received since arriving. ‘Well, never mind. You’re here now. Might as well muck in. C’mon, I’ll give you the grand tour.’

Not trusting herself to say anything – and not convinced anyone would listen if she did – Alyssa allowed herself to be led away, following him as he set off at a surprisingly brisk pace for one so short and stocky.

‘Welcome to Thornhill Library,’ he said, doing a passable imitation of a flight attendant running through the emergency landing procedure. ‘There’s not a whole lot to it, but I’d consider it a dereliction of duty if I didn’t subject you to the full carnival of delights. What did you say your name was, again?’

‘Alyssa.’

‘Pleased to meet you, Alyssa. I’m Davy. Is that “Alyssa” with a “Y” or an “I”? You’ll have to excuse Jason, by the way. He’s our union rep. Takes his role dead seriously.’

‘I can tell.’

His strident, overly cheerful tones would have been tough to endure at the best of times. In her present state, they were about as pleasurable as having her teeth pulled with rusty pliers.

‘And his sparring partner with the oh-so-stylish bifocals is Eva. Nearly three decades’ service and still as upbeat and positive as the day she started. We also have the lovely Laura with us today. Anything to do with entertaining the kiddies, she’s your girl. Ask nicely and she’ll also stretch to birthday parties, christenings and baby showers.’

Davy turned to face Alyssa, arms spread wide, which only added to his impression of a flight attendant. ‘Now, to your right and to your left are the children’s library and the reading room respectively. Not that much reading goes on in there these days. Nowadays it’s your de facto internet café, which makes up the bulk of our footfall. Word to the wise: do not, under any circumstances, be tempted to set foot in there. Step through that door and you’ll be in there all day helping folk download boarding passes and supermarket vouchers.’

Alyssa wondered how it was possible, in this day and age, for a human being to function without basic IT skills.

‘Up there,’ continued Davy, pointing up the spiral staircase as they wound their way past it, ‘are all the non-fiction and reference books. ‘Not to be tackled if you suffer from vertigo. You don’t suffer from vertigo, do you? The office is up there too, where our boss, the Mistress of Pain, spends her time plotting our demise and lord knows what else. When she’s not off living it up in sunny Barbados, that is.’

They’d reached the back of the library now and were facing a door labelled ‘STAFF ONLY’. Alyssa, who’d long since concluded that Davy was someone who did a lot of talking and next to no listening, abandoned any thought of interjecting as he rabbited on about the staff toilets, the kitchen and the ins and outs of the milk rota, wondering when he was going to finally shut up and give the pneumatic drill inside her skull a rest.

‘And here we have the break room,’ he went on, ushering her into a low-ceilinged room with a table, an assortment of mismatched chairs and, at the far end, a row of metal lockers. ‘Your stuff should be safe enough in here, but we’ll get you a locker just as soon as. Shame we didn’t have advance notice of your coming or we’d’ve had everything all set up.’

‘What about this one?’ Alyssa pointed to the locker at the end of the row. Its door, emblazoned with a dog-eared ‘SCOTTISH SURVIVALISTS SOCIETY’ sticker, lay slightly ajar.

Davy eyed it dubiously. ‘Probably best if we leave that one be for now.’ A shadow seemed to fall on his face. Then, as quickly as it had come, it passed and his expression brightened. ‘Hey, nice ink-work.’

‘Oh… right. Thanks.’

She rubbed her bare arms self-consciously, aware that the baggy T-shirt she had on showed off her sleeve tattoos – just some of the many pieces of body art, of varying designs and levels of quality, that festooned her person – in all their glory. She wasn’t sure how her new employers felt about tattoos and had planned on keeping hers covered, at least until she’d settled into the job and it would be harder for them to get rid of her on a whim. But then, she hadn’t reckoned with rucking up to her first shift in last night’s clothes.

‘Always fancied getting one myself. Nothing too in-your-face – just something small and tasteful, somewhere nobody can see it except me.’

‘So why don’t you?’

Davy made a sheepish face. ‘Scared of needles.’ A moment elapsed, then his brain appeared to shift gears again. ‘Love the accent, by the way. Which part of the States you from?’

‘I’m not,’ said Alyssa flatly.

‘Oh. I thought—’

‘You thought wrong. I’m from Canada.’

‘Well, which part of Canada are you from, then?’ he said impatiently, as if the distinction was of no importance.

‘You won’t have heard of it.’

‘I might’ve.’

‘My dude, trust me – you won’t.’

Davy thought about it for a moment, then shrugged. ‘Fair enough. Odds are I’ll winkle it out of you one way or another before long. I’m persistent that way. Now then, what’s it to be? Officially, there’s a whole heap of boring paperwork you’re supposed to go through before I let you loose on the poor, unsuspecting public, but I always say it’s better to just get stuck in and get your hands dirty. There’s nothing in those dusty old tomes you won’t pick up a gazillion times faster learning by doing. What say you?’

The idea of sitting in some secluded corner working her way through a stack of instruction manuals didn’t sound to Alyssa like the worst thing in the world. At least, if she was left to her own devices, she could get through her hangover without having to suffer Davy’s incessant running commentary. But then, she wasn’t sure she trusted herself to keep her eyes open without serious stimulation. Odds were she’d be passed out on the floor long before the clock struck ten.

In any event, Davy, taking her silence as acquiescence, made the decision for her. ‘Knew we’d be on the same page. No time like the present, then!’

* * *

Eleven minutes before

They got back to find Jason and Eva still at each other’s throats. Laura was nowhere to be seen, and a small queue had begun to develop at the counter, which clearly neither Jason nor Eva had any intention of seeing to anytime soon.

‘It’s the boiled frog phenomenon,’ Jason was saying. ‘We should’ve put our feet down years back when it first started, refused all they extra responsibilities and they’d’ve had no choice but to go back to the drawing board. ’Stead, everyone’s just got used to it and now, when you even so much as mention industrial action, their eyes just glaze over.’

‘Can’t imagine why that could be,’ said Davy. He flashed Alyssa a conspiratorial wink. ‘Mark me, he’ll still be banging on about this by lunchtime.’ Slipping behind the counter, he turned to face the elderly woman at the front of the queue. ‘Morning, Mrs Mackie. Find everything you were looking for…?’

Alyssa stepped behind the counter and plonked herself on a vacant stool, seemingly forgotten by all and sundry. She’d always imagined libraries as oases of calm; sacred, peaceful places where time stood still and the denizens consisted of obsessive bookworms, the elderly and people who hadn’t yet discovered Google. This one appeared to be a hotbed of insanity that served as a homing beacon to society’s most profoundly dysfunctional – and that was just the staff.

As Alyssa sat there, acutely conscious that her clothes reeked of cigarette smoke, booze and her own sweat, Laura emerged from the reading room off to the left, a rolled-up floor-mat over her shoulder, and stormed over to the desk with a face like thunder.

‘Just so you know,’ she announced, ‘that creep’s in again, and he’s on a computer.’

Her assembled colleagues exchanged sighs and exclamations of exasperation.

‘I thought you changed his pin-code,’ said Jason, looking accusingly at Davy.

Davy turned to face him as Mrs Mackie departed, her books successfully checked out. ‘Aye, well, someone obviously changed it back.’

‘You can’t change a service user’s pin-code without their permission,’ said Eva. ‘Says so in the Business Processes folder.’

‘It’ll be they pricks at Tollcross Library,’ said Jason, ignoring her – something, Alyssa was coming to realise, he was extremely good at. ‘Bloody free-for-all there, so it is. They let the punters away with murder. Don’t want to pay your late fees? Fine, we’ll wipe ’em. Barred from libraries for a year? It’s OK, we’ll set you up with a brand new card…’

‘What’s this guy supposed to have done that’s so bad, anyway?’ Alyssa asked.

Four pairs of eyes instantly turned to face her, and she was once again left with the impression that she’d said something she shouldn’t.

‘Who did you say you were again?’ said Jason.

‘Alyssa. Alyssa Clark.’

‘And you’re sure you’re supposed to be here?’

‘Positive,’ she said. Though she was starting to wonder.

‘Porn,’ said Laura flatly. ‘He spends all day looking at porn. And it’s, like, a public computer? In any sane organisation, he’d’ve been out on his ear before he knew what hit him.’

‘Ah.’ Jason raised a finger. ‘But you forget, this isn’t a sane organisation. This is North Kelvin District Libraries. We provide a vital service to this fair city and must have reasonable grounds to deny it to any of its citizens.’

‘He was caught looking at smut in a place used by families and children. I’d call that reasonable grounds.’

‘Hey, I don’t make up the rules. Dinnae shoot the messenger.’

‘Yeah, well, I doubt the mums coming to Tiny Tots would be too happy to learn there was a pervert in the building.’

Davy piped up, ‘Denise said, if he came in again, we weren’t to antagonise him. We’re to contact Head Office and let them deal with it.’

Laura, ignoring him, continued to stare Jason down with a steely gaze. ‘Well, if he’s still here when the little ones start to arrive, I’m cancelling the entire session.’ There was an unspoken and THEN you’ll be sorry buried in there somewhere.

‘Ah, for Christ’s sake,’ muttered Jason. Then, brushing past Alyssa like she wasn’t even there, he commandeered the nearest computer and began tapping at the keys.

Davy turned to Eva. ‘Gonnae give North Hanover Street a bell? Tell ’em we’ve got a developing situation.’

‘Why me?’ Eva retorted, adopting an arms-folded, standoffish pose. ‘It was me who spoke to ’em last time. Me who got an earful off of bloody Nikki Wyatt for not using my initiative.’

‘Yes, but you always manage to sweet-talk her so beautifully. It’s a joy to behold.’

Eva was momentarily tongue-tied and, to Alyssa’s eyes, seemed to be on the verge of blushing. Eventually, muttering a rather flustered ‘Well all right then’, she made her way over to the phone, lifted the receiver and began to dial.

Jason, meanwhile, looked up from his computer screen with a sly, satisfied smile. ‘Here we go. Meltdown in five, four, three, two…’

As if on cue, a large man in his mid-forties came storming out of the reading room and made a beeline for the desk, fists clenched by his sides. He had pock-marked skin and tufts of badly cut hair sticking out from under a navy-blue beanie hat emblazoned with a Scotland flag. He stomped up to the desk and stood there, breathing loudly through flared nostrils. Laura, still standing on the same side of the counter as him, edged away from him, eyeing him the way one normally would shit on a shoe.

‘My–my–my computer’s broke,’ he announced.

Jason gazed at him laconically. ‘That seems highly improbable.’

‘It went off and–and now it won’t let me back on. I tell you, it’s broke.’

Jason raised an eyebrow. ‘Mr Ramage, were you, by any chance, looking at things you weren’t supposed to again?’

‘No!’ Ramage’s face, including the tips of his very prominent ears, flushed scarlet. Alyssa half-expected steam to rise from his head.

‘You sure about that?’

‘I–I–I wasn’t. You–you–you trying to make out that I’m some sort of a, that I’m a liar?’

‘No one’s trying to make out anything, Mr Ramage. But if you think we can’t see what you’re looking at just cos you sit at the back of the room, you’re sorely mistaken. We’ll get someone from Head Office to deal with your inquiry just as soon as. In the meantime, may I suggest perusing the contents of one of our many fine books?’ He pointed toward the rows of shelves to the back of the library. ‘Preferably over there and downwind of the desk.’

Ramage eyed each of the assembled staff in turn, his eyes coming to rest on Alyssa. She swiftly wiped anything approaching a smile from her face.

‘You… you… bastards!’ he spluttered, his voice rising to a crescendo. ‘Stuck-up, evil, spiteful bastards!’

Davy stepped forward with hands raised in a plea for calm. ‘Now, now, Mr Ramage, there’s no need for language like that. As my colleague said, we’re on the phone to Head Office as we speak. If you’ll just be patient a bit longer—’

Ramage jabbed a trembling finger at Davy, extending his entire arm across the desk so that the tip came close to touching his nose. ‘Just yous wait. A reckoning’s coming. One of these days, yous’ll bite off more than yous can chew. Then yous’ll be s–s–sorry.’

Davy, for his part, did an admirable job of not appearing fazed by either the threat or the invasion of his personal space. ‘Like I said, the matter’s being dealt with. I’m sure this can all be resolved perfectly amicably.’

Ramage made what Alyssa initially assumed was merely a noise of disgust at the back of his throat. Her illusions were swiftly shattered as a gob of phlegm landed a few inches from her elbow on the countertop. She leapt off the stool and backed off to the other side of the work area.

Ramage pointed at each of the assembled staff, once again leaving Alyssa till last. ‘J–j–just wait,’ he repeated, then turned on his heel and stormed out.

An uneasy silence lingered in the wake of his departure. The various customers, who’d stopped to watch the unfolding encounter, continued to stare apprehensively in the direction of the desk. Then, almost as one, they returned to browsing the shelves, a low murmur of conversation once again rising.

Laura was first to speak. ‘What an arse! Well, that’s it. They’ll have to bar him now. You can’t go around making threats against people and not expect to face the consequences.’

‘Ah, it was never a threat,’ said Jason. ‘The man’s all mooth and nae troosers. He’s just raging cos he got caught with his pants down.’

‘Well, I’m glad you can be so blasé about it, but if you ask me, someone should be calling the police right this minute.’

Jason made a sweeping gesture with his hand. ‘You go right ahead – just as soon as madam gets off the blower to our lords and masters.’

Eva, who still had the phone clamped between ear and shoulder, made an obscene-looking gesture before turning her back on him.

With the drama having subsided, staff and punters alike started to go about their business once more. Davy began to gather up the books lying on the returns trolley at the foot of the desk. Jason produced a packet of digestive biscuits from under the counter and proceeded to cram one into his mouth whole. Eva, still waiting for someone to deal with her enquiry, began to hum the tune to ‘Take This Job and Shove It’.

At that moment, there was a sound of footsteps on the marble floor in the foyer. The hinges on the door to the main library squeaked as it swung open. Laura glanced in the direction of the new arrival, then gave a squeak of horror and dropped her floor-mat. Alyssa lowered her phone and turned to see what the fuss was about.

A man stood facing the desk. He was dressed all in black. A balaclava covered most of his face, leaving only his eyes visible through a narrow slit. In his right hand, he held a black plastic handgun.

For the next few seconds, time seemed to stand still. No one moved or spoke. A few stray crumbs fell from Jason’s mouth. At the other end of the phone line, a woman’s voice could be faintly heard, asking Eva if she was still there.

Alyssa felt a nervous laugh bubbling up in her diaphragm. It got as far as her mouth before the man raised the gun and opened fire.

The first blast exploded into Jason’s face, spraying an arc of blood and biscuit into the air.

The second hit Laura in the chest. She dropped like a sack of potatoes.

The third took out Eva, the bullet entering the centre of her forehead. She was still holding the phone when she went down.

The fourth hit Davy in the back as he made a run for it. He crumpled to the floor and lay still.

The shooter turned to Alyssa. Their eyes met, the distance between them less than an arm’s length. For a moment, they just stared at one another. Alyssa could hear her own heart beating a totem against her ribcage. She felt something warm and wet running down the inside of her leggings.

‘Please,’ she said. ‘I’m only new.’

The man raised his gun and pulled the trigger.

Three minutes after

Detective Chief Inspector Claire Metcalfe glanced at the phone nestled in the docking station on the dashboard of her VW Golf and swore under her breath. Google Maps had told her this was the most efficient route to Strathkelvin Police’s city centre headquarters – which, under normal circumstances, it would have been. Today, however, a spot of unscheduled gas mains repair had turned the A814 into something resembling one of those endless lorry parks at ferry ports. So much for making it to the Chief Super’s morning briefing at ten. There’d be hell to pay when her absence was noted, as it undoubtedly would be.

As she sat there, drumming her fingers against the wheel, the police radio below her phone crackled into life. The voice of the on-duty dispatch drowned out the audiobook on the CD player:

‘Attention all units. Multiple reports of shots fired inside Thornhill Public Library, over.’

For a moment, Metcalfe wondered if she’d heard correctly. She replayed the dispatch’s words in her head, decided she had and snatched up the receiver. ‘This is DCI Metcalfe, Major Investigations Team. Sorry, but I distinctly heard you say shots fired in a public library. Can you confirm, over?’

‘Affirmative, ma’am. Thornhill Public Library on Chancery Street. We’ve had three calls now. Most recent claims to have been in the building when the shooting started, over.’

‘Is the incident still ongoing? Any indication as to whether it’s a single shooter or multiple, over?’

‘Not clear, ma’am, but the most recent caller says there are casualties, over.’

‘Who’s been assigned incident commander, over?’

‘No one at present, but ARVs are en route, over.’

Metcalfe crunched the logistics. Chancery Street was close. Serendipitously close. The odds of there being another officer of her rank in such close proximity were slim to non-existent.

‘Put me down as IC,’ she said. ‘I’ll be there in five minutes.’

She replaced the receiver, flicked on her siren and emergency lights and did a hard turn onto the grass verge. With her tyres kicking up great clods of earth, she reversed past the queue of vehicles until she came to the turn-off for Chancery Street. Ignoring the barrage of horns that greeted her, she backed down the turn-off, one set of wheels on the verge, the other on the road, spun the car one hundred and eighty degrees and set off like the clappers.

* * *

In the time it took Metcalfe to reach the library, a flurry of updates came through, including one report from a squad car which had arrived at the scene ahead of her. The two officers in attendance reported that all appeared quiet inside the library, with no further shots fired, but had remained at a safe distance and made no attempt to enter the building – for which Metcalfe, who had long held the belief that heroes were people who got themselves and occasionally others killed, was profoundly thankful.

She parked next to Cash Converters and continued for the remaining hundred yards or so on foot, conscious all the while that the street was positively milling with people – local shopkeepers and residents, alerted either by the sounds of gunfire or the ensuing hullaballoo and determined not to miss anything.

‘Police officer!’ she shouted, holding her warrant card aloft as she continued up the street. ‘Please go back indoors and await further instruction. I repeat, go back indoors!’

One man, a burly apron-clad giant leaning on the doorframe of a barber’s shop, made some pithy comment about the Gestapo before reluctantly retreating indoors in the face of Metcalfe’s razor-sharp glare. Most of the assembled throng did likewise, though a few more foolhardy souls remained in the street. Metcalfe figured that, if the combined forces of her warrant card and the prospect of being mowed down by a stray bullet weren’t enough to make them shift, nothing would. So she left them to it and covered the rest of the ground in double-quick time, ducking behind the squad car where the two uniforms were sheltering, just feet from the library.

‘DCI Metcalfe?’ enquired one, who looked to be in the process of shitting bricks.

‘The same,’ she said. ‘What can you tell me?’

In the three and a half minutes it took for the armed response unit to arrive, the two officers gave Metcalfe a surprisingly coherent rundown of the order of events, as far as they were currently understood. At around 9.35 a.m., passersby on Chancery Street had heard a series of loud pops coming from within the library. Moments later, a figure in dark clothes was observed emerging from the building at considerable speed. According to eyewitnesses, he – and the current hypothesis was that he was a ‘he’, having been universally described as such – ran along Chancery Street in a westerly direction before turning off onto Edgehill Drive. Less than a minute later, several more people began to emerge from the library, many in a state of considerable distress. They were reckoned to number six or seven, though an exact figure could not be determined, for amid the panic and confusion, all but three had fled the scene. These three had been instructed to take cover inside the newsagent across the street – a commendable bit of quick thinking by the two officers to ensure that they too didn’t simply scatter to the four winds. Several others, it had subsequently emerged, had escaped via the fire exit onto nearby Alderbrook Street. These were believed to be computer users from the adjoining reading room, where the fire exit was located. Again, their precise number could not be ascertained. Metcalfe hoped the computer logs would prove more enlightening.

Those that had remained behind had been consistent about what had occurred. At some point after nine-thirty but before nine-thirty-five, a figure in a black coat and balaclava had entered the main library, produced a handgun and begun to shoot the employees gathered at the issue desk. There had been five members of staff and five shots fired – all of them direct hits. One of the three who had remained at the scene, a retired security guard, described it as ‘a fucking bloodbath’. The gunman had then pocketed his weapon and fled the building. The security guard, having confirmed the coast was clear, had marshalled his fellow customers into making a swift and orderly exit, remaining behind to ensure the building was empty and that there were no signs of life from the bodies at the desk. Though, as he had rather tersely informed the officers when asked whether, in his opinion, all five victims were dead, ‘I wasnae sticking around to go looking for a bloody pulse.’

* * *

It took a veritable eternity for the armed officers to certify the building as safe to enter, during which time several more squad cars arrived, alongside a trio of ambulances, whose crews were instructed to wait behind the hastily erected cordon amid much grousing and griping. When the cordon was finally lifted, Metcalfe accompanied the paramedics into the building, though she only went as far as the foyer, concluding that her presence was neither required nor would it be gratefully received. As she waited for them to do what was necessary, she clocked a security camera mounted in the corner of the ceiling overlooking the entrance doors. With any luck, the footage it had captured would provide some pointers as to the shooter’s identity.

In the meantime, she set about updating the Chief Super, whose increasingly insistent messages were steadily clogging up her answerphone. She was in the process of filling her in on the latest developments when a shout went up from inside the library proper.

‘We’ve got a live one here!’

Metcalfe spun around, almost dropping her phone. With bated breath she waited, ignoring the Chief Super’s demands to know what was happening, until the doors swung open and two paramedics emerged, escorting a heavily tattooed woman in her mid-twenties between them like a condemned prisoner. Long black hair framed a chalk-white face sporting a pair of rectangular glasses perched at a crooked angle on her nose, the left lens exhibiting a spider’s web pattern of cracks. Blood streamed down the left side of her face from a wound to her temple in spite of a hastily taped-on compress, while the dark patch on the crotch area of her leggings indicated that, at some point during the ordeal, she’d lost control of her bladder. For a few brief seconds Metcalfe and the girl’s eyes met from opposite sides of the hallway, before the moment abruptly passed and the girl was ushered out by her two minders.

Metcalfe headed over to the door to the main library and peered through the narrow glass window. She could make out the issue desk, the gleaming bald head of one of the paramedics visible as he knelt behind it. At first, Metcalfe could see no evidence of the carnage that had supposedly taken place there. It took her a moment to notice the limp, lifeless hand protruding from behind the desk, lying in a pool of congealed blood.

As Metcalfe drank in the grisly spectacle, too transfixed to look away, she remembered the phone in her hand and once again became aware of the Chief Super’s tinny, distorted voice, demanding an explanation for her silence. Forcing herself to wrest her eyes away, Metcalfe turned her back on the door and held the phone to her ear.

‘Hello? Yes, ma’am, still here…’

* * *

By the time Metcalfe emerged from the building, the ranks of the uniforms at the scene had been bolstered by a number of her colleagues from CID – as well as a plethora of rubberneckers who, having got wind that something dramatic was happening, had come along to get a glimpse of the action. She also spotted a handful of vans parked beyond the cordon, bearing the insignias of the local and national news networks, and an alarming number of people rushing to and fro armed with cameras, microphones and other broadcasting equipment.

As she stood on the library steps, surveying the scene unfolding before her, she spotted the familiar figure of Detective Sergeant Renshaw standing in the middle of the road like a lost child, wearing the perpetually pained expression that was his hallmark. She made her way down the steps and strode across to him.

‘Sergeant! Fancy running into you here! Contemplating life’s great mysteries?’

Renshaw snapped to attention, all but saluting her. ‘Ma’am. Sorry. Just… well, I mean, bloody hell.’

Under the circumstances, she supposed Renshaw could be forgiven for a momentary lapse in concentration, provided it was indeed momentary. But she knew she couldn’t afford to carry anyone on this venture. It was going to be all hands to the pump, and time was of the essence.

‘Right,’ she said, ‘I want the eyewitnesses holed up in the newsagent over the road interviewed ASAP. I want their recollections while they’re still fresh in their minds, and before they’ve had time to compare notes. Can you see to that?’

Renshaw whipped out his notebook and began to write. ‘Got it.’

‘Also, I spotted a security camera in the foyer. Get onto the council or whoever’s responsible for these things and have them hand over this morning’s footage.’

Renshaw continued to scribble in his notebook, nodding vigorously.

‘And I want the particulars of the library staff on duty today: names, next of kin, anyone they may or may not have pissed off recently. And find out everything you can about the girl who survived. About twenty-five, yea-high, dark hair and glasses, tattoos up the wazoo. Got all that?’

Renshaw scribbled some more, his pen virtually a blur as he struggled to keep up with Metcalfe’s list of demands. ‘Yes, ma’am. Got it.’

‘Good. Bell me with any updates.’ She was already off, striding up the road towards her car.

‘Right-o. Er… where are you off to, ma’am?’

‘To see the Chief Super. She’s requested an urgent briefing… in person.’

* * *

Gillian Langley was not the worst boss in the world to have, though she had an annoying tendency to demand certainty where none could reasonably be expected. ‘We’re keeping an open mind’ was not a phrase you uttered in her presence if you knew what was good for you. She favoured decisive action and wholesale commitment to a single, airtight hypothesis. Which, given that for the time being they had the square root of bugger all to work with, meant Metcalfe didn’t particularly relish this encounter.

‘How long have you been with us here in MIT, Claire?’

Wrong-footed by this opening gambit, Metcalfe hesitated before responding. ‘Er… just over a year, ma’am.’

‘And before that you were attached to the Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery taskforce.’

‘That’s correct.’ Wondering where this was heading.

‘During which you spearheaded a two-year operation to dismantle a network of traffickers operating in our own fair city of Glasgow’ – Langley fingered a dossier lying in front of her on her desk – ‘resulting in a string of arrests of high-ranking people-smugglers and brothel-keepers – and securing your promotion to DCI.’

‘And a commendation from the Cabinet Secretary for Justice,’ Metcalfe couldn’t help adding.

‘Hmm, yes.’ Langley seemed less impressed by that particular detail. ‘I’m just off the phone from him, actually. Both he and the First Minister are following this morning’s events closely and expect to be kept firmly abreast of all developments.’

‘That’s understandable, given the circumstances.’

‘Quite. He wanted to know who was heading up the investigation. I explained that an SIO had yet to be appointed.’

So this is it, Metcalfe thought. I’ve been called in here to be told I’m getting the boot. Shunted aside in favour of one of the ACC’s golden boys – someone with a track record in schmoozing the nation’s media with PR-friendly soundbites.

‘Since news broke, the matter has been the subject of much debate between myself and the rest of senior management,’ Langley continued. ‘A number of voices expressed a belief that the job should go to someone with experience dealing with firearms offences, and mass shootings in particular. As you’ll appreciate, such people are fairly thin on the ground in this part of the world, though a handful of names were put forward.’ She took a clearly rehearsed pause for dramatic effect. ‘Be that as it may, on this occasion I felt it best to trust to aptitude rather than to experience. For that reason, my recommendation is that you remain in overall command of the investigation.’

Metcalfe opened her mouth to speak, but didn’t get anywhere.

‘I want to make it clear that this decision had nothing to do with any past history between yourself and the Justice Secretary. Your name didn’t come up in our discussions; nor did he make any recommendation as to who to appoint. I do, of course, value the minister’s judgement in all matters of operational policy, but this unit’s independence is jealously guarded. We can’t be seen to have government bureaucrats interfering with our ability to do our jobs.’

‘Perish the thought.’

‘I’m saying all this so you can rest assured that your appointment is based entirely on your own merits. You’ve a strong record when it comes to getting results, even if they don’t lie in this particular field. Plus, you do have certain advantages over the old-timers. Politically neutral; untainted by any of the scandals that have plagued the Strathkelvin force in recent years.’

‘I do my best to keep my nose clean, ma’am.’

Langley’s eyes narrowed, this brief attempt at levity clearly not having gone down well. ‘I’m putting my neck on the line here, Claire. I trust that I won’t have cause to regret it.’

This time, Metcalfe determined that the best course of action was for her to say nothing. Best to let the vote of confidence – and the implied threat – pass without comment.

‘So.’ Langley folded her hands on the desk. ‘What’s your working hypothesis?’

Ah, yes, the infamous working hypothesis of which the Chief Super was so fond.

‘Well,’ Metcalfe chose her words carefully, ‘I of course want to avoid jumping to any conclusions without a full picture of what happened, but if the initial eyewitness accounts are accurate, we know two things about the shooter. One, he was a crack shot, so we’re most likely looking for someone with extensive firearms experience. Two, despite the place being chock full of customers, he only shot at the staff. It therefore seems reasonable to assume he was deliberately targeting library employees. For that reason, my immediate priority – besides tracing the missing witnesses – is to interview everyone on the staffing rota to establish whether they’re aware of anyone with reason to hold a grudge against either an individual employee or the staff collectively.’

Langley nodded her approval. Metcalfe allowed herself to relax slightly. So far, so good.

‘There is one major consideration we haven’t discussed,’ the Chief Super said after a moment, ‘and that’s whether we treat this as a terrorist incident.’

Metcalfe swallowed, the ‘T’ word settling in her stomach like a lead weight. She saw what would come next with Ultra High Definition clarity. If a terrorist incident was declared, public hysteria would go through the roof and reprisals against the usual targets would begin as surely as night followed day. All of which would lead to further hysteria, and the allocation of already thinly spread resources to quell any unrest.

‘For the time being,’ she said, once more selecting her words carefully, ‘I feel it would be better to treat this as a common-or-garden murder case. We’ve no evidence to suggest the attack was ideologically motivated, and until that picture changes I see no sense in frightening the horses.’

‘Mm.’ Langley nodded her approval. ‘Plus, this being declared a terrorist incident would almost certainly lead to ceding at least partial authority to Counter Terrorism Command. And the last thing anyone wants is a gaggle of know-nothing toffs from down south coming stomping up here in their jackboots and telling us what to do.’ She winced, realising her faux pas as the words left her mouth. ‘No offence intended, of course.’

Metcalfe gave a thin smile. ‘That’s all right, ma’am. I’ve always thought of myself as more of an “up north” girl.’

Langley appeared relieved. ‘That’s right. Leeds, wasn’t it?’

‘Rochdale.’

Langley’s expression indicated that she considered the distinction to be of little relevance. ‘All right, then. We’ll treat it as straightforward homicide for now. But bear in mind, that position will be harder to sustain the more time passes without establishing a motive and a suspect.’

‘Duly noted, ma’am. And I appreciate being given this opportunity.’ Metcalfe began to edge pre-emptively towards the door. ‘If there’s nothing else, I’d like to get back out there and see if I can’t knock some heads together.’

Langley nodded. ‘Needless to say, I’ll expect detailed progress reports on my desk by close of play each day.’

‘Of course,’ said Metcalfe, reflecting, as she turned to go, that ‘close of play’ was a phrase which, in this line of work, held little meaning to all but the most senior of managers.

‘Oh, and Claire?’

Metcalfe stopped in her tracks and turned to face Langley. ‘Ma’am?’

‘Allow me to once again stress that rather a lot of very important people are expecting a speedy and decisive result. Don’t let them down.’

Metcalfe nodded her assent and, not trusting herself to say anything more, turned and slipped out, shutting the door to Langley’s office behind her.

* * *

Stepping out onto the pavement, Metcalfe rang Renshaw on his mobile.

‘Ma’am?’ The DS sounded breathless and flustered.

‘Good news, Sergeant. They’ve given me the keys to the kingdom.’

‘Sorry?’

‘I’ve been appointed SIO, and you’re my lady-in-waiting. What have you got for me?’

She pictured Renshaw with his phone clamped between shoulder and ear as he rifled through his notebook. ‘Not a whole lot, I’m afraid. I rang the libraries’ central office on North Hanover Street and got put through to the Director of Library Services – one Nikki Wyatt. She was, needless to say, anxious to let us know how eager she was to assist with our enquiries. I asked about accessing the footage from the security cameras.’

‘And?’

‘It’s… not great news. She told me security cameras were recently installed in several buildings operated by North Kelvin District Council following complaints by staff about intimidating behaviour from members of the public, but that only the worst hotspots got the real thing. Thornhill was officially designated a moderate-risk venue, so the ones there are non-operational replicas.’

Metcalfe bit back a curse. Something told her that, somewhere on the upper floors of North Hanover Street, several highly paid individuals were now deeply regretting this decision. ‘What about the computer logs? Any luck with those?’

She heard Renshaw exhaling heavily. ‘Marginally more. I managed to establish that records do exist, but the same Nikki Wyatt gave me a whole lot of guff about data protection and insisted she could only countenance authorising their release if the proper application was made in writing. Same deal with the register of employees.’

‘For Christ’s sake! What goes through these people’s heads? You’d think…’

She stopped herself before she said something she’d regret. An in-person visit to this Nikki Wyatt was clearly going to be in order, with or without a written application.

‘What about further down the chain of command? I’m assuming there’s someone who handles the day-to-day operations at the library. A foreman or a supervisor or whatever.’

‘That would be the VMO.’

‘The what?’

‘That was my reaction too. Stands for Venue Management Operative. One Denise Forsythe. Forty-two years of age; in the post five years and counting.’

‘Well, have we set about arranging a chat with her, then? Maybe she’ll be more forthcoming.’

‘That’s the thing, ma’am. She flew out to Barbados on Saturday night for a two-week holiday.’

Metcalfe once again had to bite back the urge to swear with abandon. ‘You’re killing me here, Renshaw. Please tell me you’ve got something for me.’

‘Well…’ There was a note of something approaching pride in Renshaw’s voice. ‘I haven’t had a whole lot of luck tracking down the absentee eyewitnesses, but I did manage to identify the girl with the tattoos.’

‘Let’s hear it.’

‘Name’s Alyssa Marie Clark. Canadian national, twenty-four years of age. Came over here on an ancestry visa back in 2013. Doesn’t seem to have done much of any note since then – a bunch of low-level part-time jobs, most of them lasting a few months at most. Oh, and get this – today was her first day working at Thornhill Library.’

Metcalfe let out a low whistle. ‘Talk about your bad luck.’

But even as she spoke, a thought occurred to her. Was it just luck, or was there more to this seeming coincidence?

‘Well then, Sergeant,’ she said, ‘it seems you and I will be paying a visit to this Alyssa Clark at the earliest possible opportunity.’

‘There’s one other thing,’ said Renshaw, ‘and you’re going to want to prepare yourself for this…’