Cold Grave by Craig Robertson

brought out a can of lager, immediately opening and pouring it. Shortly after, there was a brisk knock at the door and Rachel opened it to let the slightly out of breath and burly figure of Danny Neilson inside. Winter’s uncle grinned at him, enjoying the look of surprise on the younger man’s face.
    ‘All right, son?’ Danny asked him.
    Tony shrugged.
    ‘Um, yeah. I’m not sure.’
    ‘Dinner will be about ten minutes, Danny,’ Rachel told their visitor.
    ‘Fine, love. No rush.’
    Love? No one called Rachel ‘love’ without getting his ear chewed off. Winter was even more confused.
    Danny slipped into the chair opposite, raised the glass towards Tony and said cheers.
    ‘So how’s tricks, son?’ Danny asked him after a long sup on his beer, dragging a hand through his greying but annoyingly full head of hair. ‘You photographed any good deid bodies recently?’
    ‘No, it’s actually been pretty quiet on the corpse front recently.’
    ‘Ach, never fear, it’s Glasgow. I’m sure there will be another one along any minute. A nice shotgun wound to the head maybe. Or a machete attack. Maybe even a wee double murder.’
    ‘Aye, Uncle Danny, very good. Now look, what the fu—’
    Tony never got to finish his question, as Rachel reappeared and sat down at the table, a glass of white wine in her hand.
    ‘So, Danny,’ she began, ‘how are things with you? Still working the rank at night?’
    Tony’s uncle was a former policeman, thirty years on the force and most of those spent as a detective sergeant. He wasn’t a man for sitting on his backside during retirement though and had taken a job marshalling late-night revellers at a busy taxi rank. Keeping drunks in line in all weathers was no position for a man in his sixties but Danny could more than handle himself and he blankly refused all suggestions that he should give it up.
    ‘I am, love,’ he told Rachel. ‘The work of the taxi rank superintendent is never done. There were some right bampots out last night. I’m guessing they were full of the drink after watching the match on the telly. Did you see it, Tony?’
    The normality of the conversation was doing Winter’s head in. Uncle Danny, for all that he had been virtually a father to Tony after the death of his parents, was the first person ever to visit Rachel’s flat while Winter was there. Their relationship remained a secret to all except Danny and he knew only because Winter had desperately needed his help a year before. Rachel had been threatened by a vigilante sniper and rogue cop, and it was Danny Tony had turned to when he needed help to protect her. It was Danny who’d known what to do. Despite all that and knowing about Tony and Rachel, Danny had never been invited to Chez Narey. Yet, out of the blue, here he was, large as life, at the dining table. Cosy.
    ‘What the hell is going on?’ Tony finally asked them.
    Danny shrugged, seemingly amused at Winter’s confusion, while Rachel shook her head at him in exasperation. Finally she blew out her cheeks and arched her eyebrows in surrender.
    ‘Okay, okay. I’ll explain but let’s eat dinner first. If you knew how tough it was for me to cook this bloody stuff, then you’d know I don’t want it to be wasted. Another drink?’
    They ate with little more than polite, strained conversation, each appetite ruined by the anticipation or dread of what was to be said.
    ‘First of all, Danny,’ Rachel began at last, ‘I want to tell you about my dad. He was a cop, just like me, just like you were. He’s ages with you so maybe you even knew him. His name was Alan Narey and he was a chief inspector in Central Scotland. No?’
    Danny shook his head.
    ‘He was from Glasgow, born and bred, but he preferred not to work over the shop. So he worked out of Stirling, drove in every day. He figured, given the nature of the job, it would be better for me and my mum if he didn’t have too many enemies who knew where we lived. That’s the way he