No mention of Forbes McCuskey, just this plural threat. Did Owen Traynor know or suspect? If someone were menacing his daughter, what would he do? Would the red mist descend? Did he have friends he could call on?

Expect to see me at your door…

His mind flashed to the doorway of Dod Blantyre’s bungalow, and Maggie standing there, looking radiant. Her words to him at the café: How things might have turned out—if we’d been a little braver. And Stefan Gilmour: No skeletons in your cupboard, John?

We start lying and cheating and concealing…

His brain felt foggy: too many connections, too much loose, frayed wiring.

He made himself a mug of tea, stuck Solid Air on the turntable, and slumped back in his chair, ready for a long night’s thinking.

Day Seven

Day Seven

13

13

This Laura Smith, she wouldn’t be spinning you a line?” Rebus was seated in a café on Morrison Street, halfway between Torphichen Place and Haymarket railway station. It was an area of town he tried to avoid—the tram works seemed to have shut half the roads. He’d found the last space in an over ground car park off the West Approach Road and walked from there to the café.

Midmorning and the place was doling out coffee and buns to visitors fresh off the train. There were no tables as such, just a long shelf by the window and a row of tall narrow stools. Siobhan Clarke was perched on one, while Rebus opted to stand. He had removed the lid from his coffee and was blowing on it while Clarke plucked gobbets of damp pastry from her croissant and popped them into her mouth.

“Could be,” she conceded. “But why would she bother?”

“And all she knows is Forbes McCuskey flogs drugs to his fellow students? We don’t know quantities or whether we’re talking weed or heroin?”

Clarke shook her head. “I’m wondering what to do with it,” she said eventually.

“You mean: is it worth taking to Nick Ralph in its current doodlelike state, or should you try to add a few recognizable features?”

“Something like that.” She checked the time on her phone.

“Press conference?”

She nodded. “Hotel along the street in twenty minutes.”

“Autopsy results?”

“I don’t think we’re seeing those until later.” She looked at him. “Rough night?”

“Not particularly.”

“Get to bed at all?”

“In time for the dawn chorus.” He told her about Jessica Traynor’s phone call.

“A drug deal gone wrong?” Clarke speculated, seeming to wake up a little. Her drink of choice—a three-shot espresso—was already finished, and one of her knees was bouncing.

“Possibly. Remember the car boot? Closed in the initial photos from the crash scene…”

“But wide open by the time we got there. Meaning someone took something?”