Out in the Cold About the author

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Alyson was obviously doing well for herself. Her email prefix showed she was now Govan CID. Becoming a detective was something she’d aspired to from the beginning. We’d joined on the same intake and been assigned to the same station and shift. I was glad to have someone to trade notes with.

We were introduced to our tutor constables on day one. Alyson was paired with a solid, serious- looking guy, complete with cop- tash; the kind of facial hair abandoned several decades before by all but those in law enforcement. Still, he had an air of competency about him. I got John, as one gets the flu, or the shaft – or so I thought. He was a small, round man. Jolly as a dog with two tails and slovenly in appearance. What little hair he had, spiked electrically from the sides and back of his head. His uniform was more grey than black, having absorbed months, if not years, of dandruff, sweat and whatever else he had come into contact with in the course of the job. Everything sat at a sort of jaunty angle with him – the skin- dusted armour, his hat and of course his ever- present smile. Suffice to say I was not pleased with my allocated mentor. I felt I was at an immediate disadvantage and I was sure Alyson would find herself streets ahead of me.

However, very quickly the noises coming out of camp Alyson were not good. Her tutor, Phil, she told me at the first night out in Glasgow about a month after joining the shift, was a spectacular prick; her words. A misogynistic control freak with a short temper. In the first few weeks she hadn’t been allowed to open her notebook once. Alyson had to laugh off his clumsy, unctuous advances on a daily basis. She told me this in the corner of the pub and had cried a little. It forced me to re- evaluate my working relationship with John.

While Phil did his best to keep Alyson sitting in the car, John had me talking and taking notes in almost every scenario. Unless it was clear the situation required a more experienced hand, he stood patiently aside while I learnt by doing. What I had misconstrued as laziness was actually good tutorship.

Stuart Johnstone worked as a police officer just outside Glasgow for ten years, and he now runs a shop for dogs in Stockbridge. His debut novel, Out in the Cold, is published by Allison and

Busby, price £ 12.99. The follow- up, Into the Dark, will be published in the spring.