“The murder of Douglas Merchant, yes.” Fox placed a hand gently on one thick file.

“That’s not the stuff we went through yesterday,” Rebus stated.

“Freshly disinterred.”

“Mind if I…?”

“Be my guest.”

Rebus picked the file up, feeling its heft. He sat with it, clearing space on the desk in front of him, and opened the cover. “Smells of mold,” he commented.

“Some of the pages needed to be prized apart.”

“You’ve taken a look at it, though?” He watched as Fox nodded. “And how often does my name come up?”

“Hardly at all.”

“Which is why you don’t mind me going through it?” Rebus paused. “See, if I were a betting man, I’d stick money on you having noted everything in here. That way, if I lift anything, you’ll know—and that’ll be the gen you really need.”

Fox’s face remained inscrutable. “Just take a read,” he said. “Then we can talk about it.”

“I hardly need to,” Rebus said. “I’m not going to forget a case like Douglas Merchant. It near destroyed the Saints and put Stefan Gilmour out of a job.”

“No harm done in the long run, though—for everyone except the dear departed Mr. Merchant.” Fox pointed towards the file. “There are photos in there—family photos. Wife and kid. He had three sisters, too, all of them saying how he always looked after them, right from when they were little. Far as I know, they’re all still with us. Maybe they think of him a few times a week, still missing him…”

“You auditioning for daytime TV?”

“I’m just looking at the reality of the situation. Someone ends up dead, there are ripples—lots of lives affected. It’s not just about the Saints, John. The Saints got a slap on the wrist and that was that.”

Rebus considered this for a moment, then asked when the Solicitor General was going to interview Billy Saunders.

“Soon. Very soon.”

“He was a crook, remember—maybe he still is. How will anyone know if he’s spinning them a story?”

Fox shrugged. “Not my problem.”

Rebus was skimming the file at random. Some of the badly typed sheets had faded. He remembered the typewriter—the o was so fierce, it punched a hole through paper whenever you hit it. Handwriting was blotchy in some places where damp had got to it. He found a photo of the dead man—a glossy square with a white border. Taken in a pub somewhere, Merchant hoisting a tumbler of whisky, glassy-eyed and with a gap-toothed grin.

“Did you know him?” Fox was asking.

“Merchant?” Rebus shook his head, still studying the photograph.

“But you probably met Billy Saunders, him being the station’s star pupil when it came to snitching?”