John Rebus: presumptuous bastard.

‘Why are you smiling?’ she asked.

‘Use it or lose it, they say.’

They split the bill, the drinks coming to as much as the food. And then they were outside. The night had grown cool.

‘What are my chances of finding a taxi?’ Gill was looking up and down the street.

‘Pubs aren’t out yet, you should be OK. My car’s back at the flat …’

‘Thanks, John, I’ll be all right. Look, here’s one.’ She waved to it. The driver signalled and pulled over with a squeak of brakes. ‘Tell me how you get on,’ she said.

‘I’ll phone you straight after.’

‘Thanks.’ She pecked his cheek, a hand on his shoulder to steady herself. Then she got into the taxi and closed the door, giving her address to the driver. Rebus watched the cab execute a slow U-turn into the traffic heading for Tollcross.

Rebus stood there for a moment, looking at his shoes. She’d wanted a favour, that was all. Good to know he was still useful for some things. ‘Feardie Fergie’, Fergus McLure. A name from the past; one-time friend of a certain Lenny Spaven. Worth a morning trip to Ratho for definite.

He heard another taxi coming – unmistakable engine sound. Its yellow light was on. He waved it down, got in.

‘The Oxford Bar,’ he said.

The more Bible John thought about the Upstart … the more he learned about him … the surer he felt that Aberdeen was the key.

He sat in his study, door locked against the outside world, and stared at the UPSTART file on his laptop. The gap between victims one and two was six weeks, between victims two and three only four. Johnny Bible was a hungry little devil, but so far he hadn’t killed again. Or if he had, he was still playing with the body. But that wasn’t the Upstart’s way. He killed them quick, then presented the bodies to the world. Bible John had worked back, and had found two newspaper stories – both in the Aberdeen Press and Journal. A woman attacked on her way home from a nightclub, a man attempting to drag her into an alley. She’d screamed, he’d panicked and fled. Bible John had driven out to the scene one night. He stood in the alley and thought of the Upstart standing there, biding his time till the nightclub emptied. There was a housing scheme nearby, and the route home passed the mouth of the alley. Superficially, it was the perfect spot, but the Upstart had been nervous, ill-prepared. He’d probably been waiting there for an hour or two, standing back in the shadows, afraid someone would stumble upon him. His nerve had come and gone. When he’d finally picked a victim, he hadn’t disabled it quickly enough. A scream was all it had taken to send him running.

Yes, it could well be the Upstart. He’d studied his failure, come up with a better plan: go into the nightclub, get talking to the victim … put the victim at its ease, then strike.