Dangerous. He knew the only way to quash such speculation was to locate the Upstart. Imitation was not the sincerest form of flattery. It was potentially lethal. He had to find the Upstart. Either that or lead the police to him. One way or another, it would be done.

8

He was in a six a.m. opener, drinking off a good sleep.

He’d woken up way too early, got dressed, and decided to go for a walk. He crossed the Meadows, headed down George IV Bridge and the High Street, left on to Cockburn Street. Cockburn Street: shopping mecca to teenagers and hippies; Rebus remembered Cockburn Street market when it was a damned sight more disreputable than these days. Angie Riddell had bought her necklace in a shop on Cockburn Street. Maybe she’d worn it the day he’d taken her to the café, but he didn’t think so. He switched off the thought, turned down a passageway, a steep flight of steps, and took another left on Market Street. He was opposite Waverley Station, and there was a pub open. It catered to night-shift workers, a drink or two before home and bed. But you saw businessmen in it too, bracing themselves for the day ahead.

With newspaper offices nearby, the regulars were print-workers and subs, and there were always first editions available, the ink just dry. Rebus was known here, and no one ever bothered him. Even if a reporter was having a drink, they didn’t hassle him for stories or quotes – it was an unwritten rule, never breached.

This morning, three teenagers sat slumped at a table, barely touching their drinks. Their dishevelled and sleepy state told Rebus they’d just completed a ‘twenty-four’: round-the-clock drinking. The daytime was easy: you started at six in the morning – somewhere like this – and the pubs were licensed till midnight or one o’clock. After that, it had to be clubs, casinos, and you finished the marathon at a pizza parlour on Lothian Road, open till six a.m., at which point you returned here for the last drink of the session.

The bar was quiet, no TV or radio, the fruit machine not yet plugged in: another unwritten rule. At this time of day, what you did in this place was drink. And read the papers. Rebus poured a helping of water into his whisky, took it and a paper to a table. The sun outside the windows was skin-tone pink against a milky sky. It had been a good walk; he liked the city quiet: taxis and early risers, first dogs being exercised, clear, clean air. But the night before still clung to the place: a litter-bin upturned, a bench on the Meadows with a broken back, traffic cones hoisted on to bus shelter roofs. It was true of the bar too: last night’s fug had not had time to dissipate. Rebus lit a cigarette and read his paper.

A story on the inside page caught his attention: Aberdeen was hosting an international convention on offshore pollution and the role of the oil industry. Delegates from sixteen countries were expected to attend. There was a smaller story tacked on to the article: the Bannock oil and gas field, 100 miles north-east of Shetland, was coming to the end of its ‘useful economic life’, and was about to undergo decommissioning. Environmentalists were making an issue of Bannock’s main production platform, a steel and concrete structure weighing 200,000 tonnes. They wanted to know what the owners, T-Bird Oil, planned to do with it. As required by law, the company had submitted an Abandonment Programme to the Oil and Gas Division of the Department of Trade and Industry, but its contents had not been made public.