‘What?’

‘Brought you here.’

‘I should have the willpower to go into a pub without drinking.’

Rebus nodded. ‘Thanks,’ he said.

And he had a little smile to himself. Jack would be OK. Jack wouldn’t shop him. The man had lost too much self-respect already.

‘There’s a spare room,’ Rebus said, getting into the car, ‘but no sheets or anything. We’ll make up the sofa if that’s OK.’

‘That’ll be fine,’ Jack said.

Fine for Jack, yes, but not so fine for Rebus. It meant he’d have to sleep in his bed. No more nights half-dressed on the chair by the window. No more Stones at two a.m. He knew he had to get busy, had to finish this as fast as he could, one way or another.

Beginning tomorrow.

As they left the Ox, Rebus decided on a detour, directed Jack down towards Leith, let him drive them around for a bit, then pointed to a darkened shop doorway.

‘That was her pitch,’ he said.

‘Whose?’ Jack stopped the car. The street was lifeless, the working girls busy elsewhere.

‘Angie Riddell’s. I knew her, Jack. I mean, I’d met her a couple of times. First time, it was business, I was pulling her in. But then I came down here looking for her.’ He looked at Jack, expecting a jokey comment, but Jack’s face was serious. He was listening. ‘We sat and talked. Next thing I knew, she was dead. It’s different when you know someone. You remember their eyes. I don’t mean the colour or anything, I mean all the things their eyes told you about them.’ He sat in silence for a moment. ‘Whoever killed her, he couldn’t have been looking at her eyes.’

‘John, we’re not priests, you know. I mean, this is a job, right? You have to be able to lay it aside sometimes.’

‘Is that what you do, Jack? Home after a shift, and suddenly everything’s OK? Doesn’t matter what you’ve seen out there, your home is your castle, eh?’

Jack shrugged, hands rubbing the steering-wheel. ‘It’s not my life, John.’

‘Good for you, pal.’ He looked towards the doorway again, expecting to see something of her there, the trace of a shadow, something left behind. But all he saw was darkness.

‘Get me home,’ he told Jack, closing his eyes with both thumbs.

The Fairmount Hotel was situated in Glasgow’s west end, just off the main traffic routes. From the outside, it was an unassuming slab of concrete. Inside, it was a middle-management sort of place, its main business taking place during the week. Bible John booked for the Sunday night only.

News of the Upstart’s latest victim had broken on Sunday morning, too late for coverage in the quality press. Instead, he caught the hourly news bulletins on the radio in his room, tuning between half a dozen stations, and watched what TV news he could, making notes between times. The Teletext flashes were brief paragraphs. Almost all he knew was that the victim, a married woman in her late twenties, had been found near the harbour in Aberdeen.