“It really hasn’t. Everyone warned me: Rebus is a loose cannon; he’s off the scale; you can’t trust him; he’s past his sell-by. Everybody told me that, and a lot worse too. Ask yourself this: how many cop shops in this town would have given you the chance? Not a second chance either, but a sixth or seventh or eighth? I did it because at heart I thought you were a good cop—a copper’s cop, the kind from the old days that I used to hear about but hardly ever seemed to meet.” Page paused. The fire had been damped. If anything, he seemed fatigued and—yes—genuinely disappointed.

“Sorry I let you down,” Rebus conceded.

“It seems to be your specialty.”

“I can’t disagree—and you did say I’d sour your mood sooner rather than later. For what it’s worth, DCI Ralph knows this is your investigation. He told me as much.”

“He shouldn’t have had to do that, though, should he?”

“No, he shouldn’t.”

Page nodded slowly at the admission. Then he turned towards his cupboard of an office, went inside and closed the door. A moment later it opened again. He placed an empty cardboard box on the floor and slid it towards Rebus’s desk.

“For your stuff,” he said. “I want you gone in ten minutes.”

The door closed once more. Rebus sat there for half a minute or so, then got up and fetched the box. Placed it on his desk, then realized that he didn’t need it. There was almost nothing here that belonged to him. He hadn’t been back in CID long enough to accumulate anything.

“What the hell have you done, John?” he muttered to himself. He stared at James Page’s door, willing himself to go knock on it and ask forgiveness and one more chance.

Just one more.

“No chance…”

Forbes McCuskey ended the call.

“That was the police,” he said.

He was seated in Jessica’s flat. Alice Bell sat at her desk. Her laptop’s screen saver had been activated. She was halfway through an essay she hadn’t touched in days and had no enthusiasm to finish. Jessica was on the sofa, playing with the last bottle of her prescription pills. Owen Traynor was in the doorway, sleeves rolled up, hands in trouser pockets.

“Which police?” he asked.

“DCI Ralph—he’s in charge of my father’s case.”

“What does he want?”

“He says he needs to see us—me, Jess and Alice.”

“Did he say why?”

“No.”

“We’re finished,” Jessica said, voice trembling.