Clickety-click.

‘Does it mean anything to you?’ she said.

Yes, he thought, it means I’m up here working at least two cases, maybe three.

‘You said a payphone?’

‘A public phone. I know because I called it. Not far from the bar by the sound of it.’

‘Give me the number.’ She did. ‘Anything else?’

‘The only fingerprints found belonged to Fergie himself. Nothing interesting on his home computer, except that he was trying a few tax dodges.’

‘Hold the front page. And his business premises?’

‘Nothing so far. John, are you OK?’

‘Fine, why?’

‘You sound … I don’t know, sort of distant.’

Rebus allowed himself a smile. ‘I’m right here. Get some sleep, Gill.’

‘Night, John.’

‘Night-night.’

He decided to try phoning Lumsden at the cop-shop. Conscientious: nearly three a.m. and he was there.

‘You should be in the land of Nod,’ Lumsden told him.

‘Something I meant to ask earlier.’

‘What?’

‘That club we were in, the one where Michelle Strachan met Johnny Bible.’

‘Burke’s?’

‘I just wondered,’ Rebus said. ‘Is it above board?’

‘Moderately.’

‘Meaning what?’

‘It skates on thin ice sometimes. There’s been a bit of drug dealing on the premises. The owners tried to clean it up, I think they’ve done a pretty good job.’

‘Who owns it?’

‘A couple of Yanks. John, what’s this about?’

Rebus took less than a second constructing his lie. ‘The Edinburgh jumper, he had a book of matches in his pocket. They were from Burke’s.’

‘It’s a popular spot.’

Rebus made a sound of agreement. ‘These owners, what were their names again?’

‘I didn’t say.’ Cagey now.

‘Is it a secret?’

A humourless laugh. ‘No.’

‘Maybe you don’t want me bothering them?’

‘Jesus, John …’ A theatrical sigh. ‘Erik-with-a-k Stemmons, Judd Fuller. I don’t see the point in talking to them.’

‘Me neither, Ludo. I just wanted their names.’ Rebus attempted an American accent. ‘Ciao, baby.’ He was smiling when he put down the receiver. He looked at his watch. Ten past three. It was a five-minute walk to College Street. But would the place still be open? He got out the phone book, looked up Burke’s – the number listed was the same one Gill had given him. He tried it: no answer. He decided to leave it at that … for the moment.

Spinning in a narrowing gyre: Allan Mitchison … Johnny Bible … Uncle Joe … Fergus McLure’s drug deal.

Beach Boys: ‘God Only Knows’. Segue to Zappa and the Mothers: ‘More Trouble Every Day’. Rebus picked his pillow off the floor, listened to it for a full minute, threw it back on to the bed, then lay him down to sleep.

He was awake early and didn’t feel like breakfast, so went for a walk instead. It was a glorious morning. The seagulls were busy hoovering up the night before’s leftovers, but the streets were otherwise uncrowded. He walked up to the Mercat Cross, then left along King Street. He knew he was heading in the vague direction of his aunt’s house, but doubted he could find it on foot. Instead, he came to something looking like an old school building but calling itself RGIT Offshore. He knew RGIT was Robert Gordon’s Institute of Technology, and that Allan Mitchison had studied for a time at RGIT-OSC. He knew Johnny Bible’s first victim had studied at Robert Gordon’s University, but not what she had studied. Had she taken classes here? He stared at the grey granite walls. The first murder was in Aberdeen. Only later did Johnny Bible move to Glasgow and Edinburgh. Meaning what? Did Aberdeen hold some particular significance for the killer? He’d walked the victim from a nightclub to Duthie Park, but that didn’t mean he was local: Michelle herself could have shown him the way. Rebus got out his map again, found College Street, then traced a finger from Burke’s Club to Duthie Park. A long walk, residential, nobody had seen them the whole length of the route. Had they taken especially quiet back roads? Rebus folded the map and put it away.