A moment later, a slow smile spread across Driscoll’s face. ‘We’re on,’ he said, turning the screen towards Fleck.

‘No where or when, though,’ Fleck commented, having read the curt message.

‘I reckon he won’t give much notice – less chance of me bringing a posse.’

‘Well done anyway. I’d buy you a drink if I hadn’t just had a skinful.’ A taxi with its orange light illuminated was approaching. Fleck lifted his hand towards it. ‘Treat you to a lift somewhere instead?’

‘My car’s around the corner.’

‘After the amount you’ve put away?’

‘I’m teetotal, though – says so on all those insurance forms.’

Fleck gestured towards Driscoll’s phone. ‘Sooner rather than later, eh, Rob? And if a carrot’s not going to tempt him …’

‘Don’t worry, I know how to wield a stick.’

Driscoll watched Alan Fleck climb into the back of the black cab, starting up some chat with the driver as the vehicle eased into the flow of traffic, just another businessman on his way home at shift’s end. He wondered if that might be his own future, too. Full pension, out of the job while still young enough, new vistas and experiences waiting. Fleck had even dropped a hint about a possible partnership. He hoisted his phone again, began composing a reply to his old comrade Francis Haggard. The smile was back on his face, though there was no trace of humour in his eyes.

Though he lived in Edinburgh, Malcolm Fox’s daily commute took him far to the west, to where the Scottish Crime Campus had been built on industrial land next to the village of Gartcosh. The place was a modern-day fortress styled as a college and housing everything from forensic labs to Inland Revenue fraud inspectors, Major Crimes to Anti-Terrorism. Fox’s remit was Specialist Crime, which gave him access to every database going, including Internal Affairs, known in his day as the Complaints.

The building around him emptied as Fox sat at the computer terminal in his glass box of an office. He had removed his jacket and draped it over the back of his chair. A half-eaten cheese and ham baguette sat forgotten next to two emptied coffee beakers. He had already run checks on Francis Haggard and Alan Fleck, but had widened his search to include other officers currently serving at Tynecastle, as well as those who had retired in the past decade. Then there was John Rebus, though the paperwork on him was so voluminous that Fox almost lost heart at the prospect of wading into it.

Almost.