Back in his room, he pored over the list in his notebook. It would be easy to check where each company was based, what it did – work for later. He had a meeting in Edinburgh tomorrow, and would use the trip to do something about John Rebus. He checked Teletext one last time before retiring for the night. After turning off the lights, he opened the curtains, then lay down on the bed. There were stars in the sky, a few of them bright enough to be visible through the streetlight. Dead, a lot of them, or so the astronomers said. So many dead things around, what difference would another one make?

None at all. Not one jot.

22

They took Jack’s car to Howdenhall, Rebus sitting in the back, calling Jack his ‘chauffeur’. It was a gloss-black Peugeot 405, three years old, turbo version; Rebus disregarded the No Smoking sticker and lit up, but kept the window open beside him. Jack didn’t say anything, didn’t even look in the rearview. Rebus hadn’t slept well in the bed; night sweats, the sheets like a straitjacket. Chase dreams waking him every hour or so, sending him shooting out of bed to stand naked and trembling in the middle of the floor.

Jack for his part had complained first thing of a stiff neck. His second complaint: the kitchen, bare fridge and all. He couldn’t go out to the shops, not without Rebus, so they’d made straight for the car.

‘I’m gutting,’ he complained.

‘So stop and we’ll eat something.’

They stopped at a bakery in Liberton: sausage rolls, beakers of coffee, a couple of macaroon cakes. Sat eating them in the car, parked double yellow by a bus stop. Buses rattled them as they passed, hinting they should shift. There were messages on the backs of some of them: Please Give Way to This Bus.

‘I don’t mind the buses,’ Jack said. ‘It’s their drivers I object to. Half of them couldn’t pass the time of day, never mind a PSV test.’

Rebus’s comment: ‘It’s not buses that have the choke-hold on this place.’

‘You’re cheery this morning.’

‘Jack, just shut your gub and drive.’

They were ready for him at Howdenhall. The team last night at his flat had taken away all his shoes, so the forensic bods could check for footprints and fail to match them against any left at the scene of Johnny Bible’s murders. First thing Rebus had to do this morning was remove the shoes he was wearing. They gave him plastic overshoes to wear, and said his own would be returned to him before he left. The overshoes were too big, uncomfortable – his feet slid around inside them, and he had to curl his toes to keep them from slipping off.

They decided against a saliva test – it was the least reliable – but plucked hairs from his head.

‘Could you graft them on to my temples when you’re finished?’

The woman with the tweezers smiled, went about her business. She explained that she had to get the roots – PCR analysis wouldn’t work on shed hair. There was a test available in some places, but …