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“Let’s go and take it out on Duart and his monkey.”
    Davie was right behind me. “Hold me back,” he said with grim satisfaction.
    The two Glaswegians had been accommodated on the first floor. I sent Davie to talk to the assistant so we could compare stories afterwards. He pounded on the door with regulation guard diplomacy.
    I gave Andrew Duart’s door a slightly more restrained knock. After a minute I heard the chain being drawn back.
    â€œQuint Dalrymple,” the first secretary said, rubbing his eyes. He was wearing an expensive-looking silk dressing-gown with a pink and black Charles Rennie Mackintosh design. He peered at his heavy gold watch. “Don’t tell me. You want to have that word now.”
    â€œCorrect.”
    He let me in and took me over to the lounge area. His accommodation wasn’t quite as vast as Raphael’s, but it would still have put up half a dozen citizen families. Before he sat down, Duart took a couple of pills from his pocket and swallowed them, washing them down with liquid from an insulated flask.
    â€œGlasgow water,” he said apologetically. “I don’t trust the stuff you people drink.”
    â€œAre you all right?” I asked.
    He looked at me. “Oh, you mean the pills. Migraine. I had a terrible one earlier in the evening.”
    I’d thought his face beneath what I was sure was dyed black hair looked unnaturally pale. “Is that why you didn’t go to the reception?”
    He peered at me curiously. “How do you know I was invited?”
    I shrugged. “You told me you’d been invited to the prison inauguration. It’s a reasonable conclusion that you were on the guest list for tonight as well.”
    â€œYou’re right,” he conceded, smoothing his hair back. “I couldn’t see straight and the idea of going to a party brought me out in even more of a sweat than I was already experiencing.”
    I glanced at my notes. “Yet you were logged arriving here at eight thirty-one. That was an hour after the reception began.” I held him in my gaze. “Something go wrong with your travel arrangements?”
    Duart looked straight back at me. “Yes, as a matter of fact we did have a problem. Or rather the helijet did. There was a delay while they cleaned a seagull out of a turbine.”
    â€œYou came in a helijet? One of those Oxford contraptions?”
    He nodded, a faint smile on his lips. “Don’t look so amazed, Quint. Glasgow and New Oxford have many joint interests. The Hebdomadal Council is sometimes gracious enough to afford me the use of its aircraft.”
    I stored that away for future consideration. “So you stayed here all evening nursing your migraine?”
    â€œIndeed. I was past the worst when I heard the administrator’s scream.” He shook his head. “Pretty disgusting thing to find in your bath.”
    I was watching him closely again. “You haven’t had any similar cases in Glasgow, have you?”
    He knew immediately what I was getting at. In 2026 the trip I’d taken to his city had involved plenty of mutilation. Not to mention murder.
    â€œNo, my friend,” he replied firmly. “The Major Crime Squad has been relatively underemployed since you honoured us with your presence.”
    â€œHow about the guilty parties?”
    â€œSafely locked up in Barlinnie.”
    I sincerely hoped he was being straight with me. The people behind those killings were capable of anything.
    We chewed the fat for a bit longer but that didn’t get me anywhere. I was pretty sure Duart was being straight with me about his lack of involvement in events on the floor above.
    The first secretary looked at his watch again. “Are we done, Quint? I need some sleep.” He gave me a cautionary look. “I have a meeting with the senior guardian at nine o’clock.”
    I got to my feet. “I wish you joy of it,