Wee Phil Kennedy. Slippery Phil. Rebus thought he remembered Stefan Gilmour at the time brushing his hands together at the news—one more scumbag who wouldn’t be clogging their in-tray. From the date of birth, he calculated that Kennedy had died just shy of his forty-third birthday. Rebus could see his face—pockmarked and florid and freckled. It was the sort of face you used to see in kids’ comics: slightly exaggerated, an overgrown child. Toothy and nervous and bad news. A housebreaker who always carried a knife with him on jobs, scaring the daylights out of anyone he happened to find at home. The elderly and frail a specialty; sheltered housing was never quite sheltered enough from one of Kennedy’s nocturnal visits. He would often follow his victims home from the post office on pension day, scope the place out, and then return later, a balaclava over his face and six inches of blade gripped tight. One woman died of fright, and another fell and broke her hip, leaving her in pain as well as fear for the rest of her days.

Suddenly but peacefully at home…

Some justice in that, perhaps. He skimmed back a few days, but found no reports of Kennedy’s body being found. Rebus gnawed at his bottom lip. Was it Frazer Spence who had come in one day, a bounce in his step, and announced the news? And had Stefan Gilmour really brushed his hands together, quite content to have heard it? Was Porkbelly Paterson in the office at the time? How had he reacted? Rebus couldn’t remember. But all of them would have pulled Kennedy in for questioning at one time or another, and some of them would have given evidence against him in court. He had passed away six days prior to the attack on Douglas Merchant—their bodies might well have lain in adjacent drawers at the mortuary. Professor Cuttle’s words again: we were so busy…a lot of lowlifes dropping dead…Rebus wondered what had happened to Slippery Phil. He could think of one man who might well have the answers. The same man who very probably had sliced him open on a slab…