But Scotland was the last place Rutledge intended to go. The love and duty he owed his godfather were very real, but so was his reluctance to go north of the border, which seemed in the clear light of day an almost superstitious dread, but in the dark seemed an unbearable, unspeakable burden. Not because he hated the Scots but because so many of them had been under his command in France—and he’d led so many of them to their death. He could name every one of them, even the raw recruits he’d known for less than a day.

And leave was the last thing he wanted. Tired as he was, idleness was worse. When a man was idle, his demons marched like ghostly armies in the forefront of his mind.

CHIEF SUPERINTENDENT BOWLES would have been glad to grant Rutledge leave if he had asked for it. The less he saw of the Inspector, the happier Bowles was. The closed door of his empty office was like a benediction when Bowles passed it each day that Rutledge was away from London. Rutledge underfoot was a constant reminder of things best forgotten. Clever men always disturbed Bowles’s peace of mind, and clever men with good accents, men who’d been to university or moved comfortably in circles where Bowles, for all his authority, felt stiff and clumsy, were intolerable. Bowles made it a point to rid himself of such men as fast as he could. There were subtle ways to convince a clever man that it was in his best interests to ask for a transfer.

But Rutledge, damn and blast him, seemed to lead a charmed life. He had survived the bloodbath of the Somme, he’d survived wounds, he’d survived months in hospital. And if Bowles’s informant was telling the truth, Rutledge had been half out of his head, broken and silent, hardly a promising future. Yet for four months now he’d survived Bowles’s concerted attempts to show him up as inept and lacking his pre-war skills.

To Bowles’s way of thinking, England would have been better served if Rutledge had died with the rest of what the writers were now calling The Flower of English Youth. Dead “flowers” could be swept up with the rubbish and forgotten. Live challengers to his ambition were fair targets.

Bowles had climbed the ladder as far as his ability allowed, buoyed by some small success hunting German spies during the Great War. But it appeared he was destined to retire as a Chief Superintendent. Climbing higher was out of the question for a man of his station. And that knowledge was a constant goad to his anger and frustration.

He found himself this gloomy morning walking into Rutledge’s office and dragging the other chair from where it was usually kept near the wall, out of the way of the door. Sitting down heavily, he slapped a file on the desk.