Each time he shut his eyes to blink, he expected the world to be different when he opened them. It never was. A dead woman found at Susan’s. Boyd only met Roxanna once. Sanjay didn’t talk about her much and then she was history. She had kids. They were young blokes. Boyd was honestly more startled to hear that Sanjay’s ex had been in Helensburgh than that she was found dead in Susan’s house. His time in London and Helensburgh felt so separate. It was like finding a character in the wrong movie. A grey wall opposite him. A grey floor in front of him. Heat-sapping cold under his buttocks. He leaned forward again, folding the thin mattress under his bum and sitting on that. He had been alternating for thirty minutes between sweating into the rubberised plastic and freezing his balls off on the bare concrete. He shut his eyes. Question him. They needed to question him about a murdered woman? Lucy didn’t know how serious it was when they took him away. She thought Boyd got caught for getting a deal.
