Where the Bodies are Buried by Christopher Brookmyre, Brookmyre Page A

younger brother,
     Charles, who has been known pretty much from birth as Chick. Which is a shame, as Charlie would have been a serendipitous
     choice of name for a Class A dealer specialising mainly in the eponymous. More significantly, Chick has in recent years mixed
     business with pleasure sufficiently to have ended up marrying Evelyn Cassidy, youngest sister of Michael, Gerard and, of course,
     Grant.’
    ‘Ooh, said the crowd,’ Catherine remarked, making a note. Beano grinned boyishly, appreciative of the pat on the head. She’d
     task someone to follow up his information later.
    ‘Now, what do we have on the timeline?’ she asked the room.
    ‘It’s coming into focus,’ said Laura. ‘Albeit by degrees. I talked to McDiarmid’s girlfriend, Arlene Ross. She was weeping
     up a storm – “How could this happen, why would anybody want to hurt my Jamie?” – in complete and utter denial about who he
     was. She was tearing into me for the polis harassing him in the past, telling me he was a legitimate businessman, making money’s
     not a crime, works all thehours, keeps a close eye on the salon and the taxi firm he owns, blah blah blah. In between bouts of greetin’ her eyes out
     and reapplying mascara, she gave us the last time she saw him, and his intended destination. He left just after ten, heading
     for the gym, goes there every day she said, and then to his tanning salon afterwards, which doesn’t normally open until twelve.’
    With this, Laura gave a rather girlishly conspiratorial cue to DC Zoe Vernon.
    ‘I checked with the gym,’ said Zoe, ‘which has a swipe-card system, and according to their log, he’s only been in once in
     the past month, just under two weeks ago. I spoke to the manageress at the tanning salon, Lisa Bagan, and she told me he put
     his head around the door most days, but not yesterday. However …’
    ‘I also spoke to McDiarmid’s ex-wife,’ resumed Laura. ‘Paula Graham, her name is. I reckoned she wouldn’t be playing keeper
     of the flame. Sure enough, the scales have long since fallen from Paula’s eyes and she was a lot more forthcoming. She said
     it was true he’d been spending a lot of time at the tanning salon, but only because he was pumping the manageress.’
    ‘Armed with this wee snippet, we went back together and had another pass at Ms Bagan,’ said Zoe. ‘Amidst copious tears and
     earnest entreaties not to tell anybody – so everybody hold your ears, because we promised – she admitted that McDiarmid’s
     morning workout tended to be at the salon rather than the gym. They would have a wee sesh before the place opened, then he’d
     pop in later in the day, all business, acting like nothing was going on. Yesterday morning apparently went to form, except
     that when McDiarmid nipped out the back door for a post-coital fag, he never came back in. Lisa thought he had just taken
     off because it was getting on for opening time and they didn’t want to risk being seen together out of hours, as it were.’
    ‘Because of Arlene?’ Catherine asked dubiously.
    ‘No,’ said Laura. ‘Because Lisa Bagan is in an on-off relationship with Gary Fleeting: Class A drug dealer, Class A bampot
     and long-term close associate of one Francis Callahan.’
    ‘Is she now?’ said Catherine, glancing down at the name circled on her list. She wrote Fleeting’s name next to Callahan’s,
     but something about the former jarred for reasons she couldn’t quite recall.
    ‘Lisa seemed to think it was their big romantic secret, but it appears they weren’t quite as discreet as they thought. Everyone
     in the salonknew. In fact, according to Paula Graham, the only two folk in Glasgow who
didn’t
know were Arlene Ross and Gary Fleeting.’
    ‘And perhaps in light of developments, we may have to revise that estimate down by one,’ Catherine stated, though there was
     something about this latest revelation that still didn’t sit right. She couldn’t place what it