The Bardess house was in Aboyne Court, a group of maisonettes on the semi-derelict edge of the Tanshall estate off Aboyne Drive, a half-mile of semis under schedule of demolition. You’d to go up a dozen broken concrete steps to get to the tarmac path to the front door. It was one of the areas of Glenrothes popularly reputed to be a dumping ground for Fife Council, houses to put problem families, or challenging clients, as we in the social work department would prefer to describe them. The iron railings still stood there in front of a square of unkempt grass but were no longer connected to anything. Some kindly soul had thrown a car tyre onto the scrubby grass which had accumulated all kinds of rubbish; used pampers and newspapers blown on the wind and worse, lots of plastic cider bottles, anchored to a thicket of weed by dried-out dog turds. The building had no outer door and a cold wind whipped through the hall especially if the backdoor leading to the back greens had been left open. The front door was on the ground floor on the left where some altruist had scrawled in a heavy felt pen all along the wall Slag in among the usual spraypainted graffiti tags. There was no sound in the close, a smell of urine and I saw a dried stain against the wall. The glass panel on the door on the right had been replaced with plywood, the name J. Quinn handwritten in biro on a small patch of space between obscene graffiti. There was a musty smell of dog but no sound, no barking.
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