“Come on,” he told Terry. “Let’s go.”

Bosie lived in the ground floor flat of a converted house on the corner of the main road. They didn’t know what Bosie’s first name was, or even if Bosie was his surname. Bosie didn’t sell to just anyone. He had enough mates that had been stung by undercover cops to put him off strangers after a fix. To become one of Bosie’s clients you had to be introduced by somebody he knew and trusted. Rob and Terry had been introduced by Jeff, who was a friend of Bosie’s as well as a customer.

Rob knocked on the door to the flat.

There were plenty less paranoid people they could have visited, and plenty cheaper people too. Rob didn’t understand why Bosie had upped his prices so substantially and so suddenly. But it was worth it. Bosie was reliable. Once he trusted you, you could trust him. He never ripped you off or sold you dodgy merchandise. You got your money’s worth, and Bosie knew it. He saw no reason to undercut anyone else. As far as he was concerned, you got what you paid for.

There was no answer. Rob knocked again.

“All right, all right,” came the voice.

A few moments later they heard a key turn in the lock, a bolt open at the top of the door, another bolt open at the bottom, and a chain released. The door opened. Bosie was wearing an untucked shirt that was creased and open at the neck and looke like he had slept in it.

“Got the money?” he said.

“Yeah.” Rob noticed Bosie wasn’t looking at them. He was looking out onto the street, eyes flitting back and forth. He didn’t step over the threshold.

“Something wrong, dude?” asked Terry.

“No. Give me the money.”

Rob counted out thirty in a couple of notes and a handful of loose coins. “Why are you charging so much all of a sudden?”

“That’s none of your business.”

Rob knew better than to argue. He shrugged and held the money out like he was feeding a donkey.

NOTES:
At this point in the story I was starting to get concerned that the coin had been stuck in the same city for almost half its length. The intention was always to visit several locations in the course of one day, yet it's almost midnight now, so my preoccupation at this point was to get the coin into the hands of somebody who was going to be leaving Glasgow (preferably for somewhere far, far away) as quickly as possible.