Dougal Walsh was later found hanged in his cell.
The disappearance of Mr McRitchie was never satisfactorily explained. Honey was left to wonder whether he had been an innocent whose involvement with Cheryl had sealed his fate or an accomplice who had been spirited out of harm’s way. The question was put to Ravitski at his trial but he denied all knowledge of the journalist.
Honey’s name was put forward for a Queen’s Medal. The media again made a meal of it.
The glow surrounding her was only a little tarnished in the eyes of Mr Blackhouse when she pointed out to him that she had had some sick leave and a period of suspension on pay but that she had still not taken the maternity leave to which she was entitled and which he had agreed in writing to defer.
During the period while the media were reporting the pursuit, the confrontation, the arrest, Walsh’s trial and Honey’s hearing, Kate Ingliston had kept her head down and her profile low. Later, she admitted to a feeling that any mention of the memory card might bring the card and its contents to the attention of the lawyers, the media and the waiting world. When the tumult and shouting were beginning to die down, an enterprising journalist decided that there would be a book in the twin subjects of the oil refinery (which by then was under construction but on a different site) and the attempted resurgence of organized gang culture in Glasgow.
Honey had assured Kate many times that the memory card was safely destroyed, but Kate returned to the subject once too often. ‘And there are no copies?’ she demanded.
‘I’ve told you and told you,’ Honey said. ‘There are copies in police files, in legal files, in computers, in media libraries, but none with your faces to be seen. Most of the copies that found their way into the papers and on to the TV screens were oblique shots of prints held in people’s hands.’
‘So there’s no risk of this writer getting his hands on any copies with my face on them?’
Honey’s patience was at last exhausted. ‘No. But you’d better keep your knickers on in the future,’ she said. ‘That bum of yours is unmistakable.’
Kate gasped. ‘In what way?’
‘If you don’t know, I’m not going to tell you.’
Kate dashed home where she was discovered by her husband, making unconventional use of several mirrors.
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In Loving Memory Page 21