‘Oh, he was assassinated all right. But I’m not sure the Negrita had much to do with it.’ Harley stopped walking and looked at him. ‘I think you’d be quite safe going back home, Jake,’ Rebus said. ‘In fact, I’m sure of it. But first, there’s something I need.’

‘What?’

‘An address for Joanna Bruce.’

30

The trip back was a real follicle transplant – hairier even than the trip out. They’d taken Jake and Briony back to Brae, then dropped the car off at Lerwick and begged a lift to Sumburgh. Forres was still in the huff, but relented eventually and checked the flights back, one of which gave them enough time for a Cup-a-Soup at the station.

At Dyce, they climbed back into Jack’s car and sat there for a couple of minutes, adjusting to being back on the ground. Then they headed south on the A92, using the directions Jake Harley had given them. It was the same road Rebus had been taken on the night Tony El had been killed. They had Stanley for that – no matter what. Rebus wondered what else the young psychopath might spill, especially now he’d lost Eve. He’d know she’d flown; he’d know she wouldn’t have left the loot behind. Maybe Gill would have twisted more stories out of him.

It could be the making of her.

They saw signposts to Cove Bay, followed Harley’s instructions and came to a lay-by, behind which were parked a dozen vans, caravans, buses and campers. Bumping over ineffectual earth mounds, they came into a clearing in front of a forest. Dogs were barking, kids out playing with a punctured football. Clothes-lines hung between branches, and someone had lit a bonfire. A few adults had parked themselves around the fire, passing joints, one woman strumming a guitar. Rebus had been to travellers’ camps before. They came in two designs. There was the old-style gypsy camp, with smart caravans and builders’ lorries, the inhabitants – Romanies – olive-skinned and lapsing into a tongue Rebus couldn’t understand. Then there were the ‘New Age travellers’: usually with buses which had passed their last MOT on a wing and a prayer. They were young and savvy, cut dead wood for fuel, and worked the social security system, despite government attempts to render it unworkable. They gave their kids names the kids would kill them for when they grew up.

Nobody paid Rebus and Jack any heed as they walked towards the camp-fire. Rebus kept his hands in his pockets, and tried not to make fists of them.

‘Looking for Jo,’ he said. He recognised the guitar chords: ‘Time of the Preacher’. He tried again. ‘Joanna Bruce.’

‘Bummer,’ someone said.

‘That could be arranged,’ Jack cautioned.

The joint went from hand to hand. ‘Decade from now,’ someone else said, ‘this won’t be illegal. It might even be on prescription.’

Smoke billowed from grinning mouths.

‘Joanna,’ Rebus reminded them.

‘Warrant?’ the guitarist asked.

‘You know better than that,’ Rebus told her. ‘I only need a warrant if I want to bust this place. Want me to fetch one?’