‘Everything all right?’ Brian Holmes said nervously.

‘The story is, I came by with a message. I sat in on the interview.’

Holmes exhaled noisily. ‘That’s it then?’

‘That’s it.’

Perhaps it was the tone of voice that alerted Holmes. He met John Rebus’s stare, and was the first to break contact. Outside, he put out a hand and said, ‘Thanks.’

But Rebus had turned and walked away.

He drove through the streets of the empty capital, six-figure housing huddled either side of the road. It cost a fortune to live in Edinburgh these days. It could cost you everything you had. He tried not to think about what he’d done, what Brian Holmes had done. The Pet Shop Boys inside his head: ‘It’s a Sin’. Segue to Miles Davis: ‘So What?’

He headed in the vague direction of Craigmillar, then thought better of it. He’d go home instead, and pray there were no reporters camped outside. When he went home, he took the night home with him, and had to soak and scrub it away, feeling like an old paving slab, walked on daily. Sometimes it was easier to stay on the street, or sleep at the station. Sometimes he drove all night, not just through Edinburgh: down to Leith and past the working girls and hustlers, along the waterfront, South Queensferry sometimes, and then up on to the Forth Bridge, up the M90 through Fife, past Perth, all the way to Dundee, where he’d turn and head back, usually tired by then, pulling off the road if necessary and sleeping in his car. It all took time.

He remembered he was in a station car, not his own. If they needed it, they could come fetch it. When he reached Marchmont, he couldn’t find a parking space on Arden Street, ended up on a double yellow. There were no reporters; they had to sleep some time, too. He walked along Warrender Park Road to his favourite chip shop – huge portions, and they sold toothpaste and toilet-rolls too, if you needed them. He walked back slowly, nice night for it, and was halfway up the tenement stairs when his pager went off.

2

His name was Allan Mitchison and he was drinking in a hometown bar, not ostentatiously, but with a look on his face that said he wasn’t worried about money. He got talking to these two guys. One of them told a joke. It was a good joke. They bought the next round, and he bought one back. They wiped tears from their eyes when he told his only gag. They ordered three more. He was enjoying the company.

He didn’t have many pals left in Edinburgh. Some of his one-time friends resented him, the money he still made. He didn’t have any family, hadn’t had for as long as he could remember. The two men were company. He didn’t quite know why he came home, or even why he called Edinburgh ‘home’. He had a flat with a mortgage on it, but hadn’t decorated it yet or put in any furniture. It was just a shell, nothing worth coming back for. But everyone went home, that was the thing. The sixteen days straight that you worked, you were supposed to think about home. You talked about it, spoke of all the things you’d do when you got there – the booze, the minge, clubbing. Some of the men lived in or near Aberdeen, but a lot still had homes further away. They couldn’t wait for the sixteen days to end, the fourteen-day break to begin.