A good lad, yes. A good lad who knew almost every aspect of the business and was learning more every day. A good lad who was paying off long-term employees and replacing them with leaner, hungrier models who knew where their loyalty lay.

Stretched out on his bed with his head supported by a pillow and his laptop balanced on his flat stomach, Darryl slotted home the memory stick. Financial records, not all of them password-protected. Those that were would be the kind the taxman never saw. Hammell had trusted Darryl with some passwords. The rest wouldn’t be a problem. Darryl had a friend who spent his whole life hacking—one good reason Darryl himself would never succumb to online banking. Hammell had, however.

“Makes life simpler,” he’d said.

Simpler, yes, if you were stupid enough.

The blinds hadn’t been closed yet and he glanced up at the sky. Overcast again; the house silent apart from the hum of his laptop’s fan. He thought about his sister, taking cash from her mother’s lover. She wouldn’t have said please or thanks—Frank Hammell would have offered. But following her to make sure she got on the train? Arguing with her at the bus station? Darryl wondered what that was all about. No way he could ask without his employer asking in turn how he knew.

Then he remembered the package…

40

40

Page was just starting the briefing when Rebus arrived at Gayfield Square next morning. Christine Esson handed him nine sheets of paper held together with a staple. Rebus scanned them while Page spoke. The final five pages comprised the material gleaned the previous night from the files, but they were preceded by details of the two new MisPers.

August 2007, Jemima Salton, age fifteen, had failed to return home from a party, some of her clothing turning up in a picnic area on the banks of Loch Ness. The party had been held in Invermoriston and Jemima lived six or so miles away in Fort Augustus. Her plan had been to walk or hitch home in the early hours. Divers had been sent in, but the loch stretched for miles. Accidental drowning had been the verdict. No body ever turned up, and her phone and bag remained missing. Her family had maintained her bedroom almost as a shrine. The photo had been sent to them at three in the morning, though they hadn’t seen it until later. No message. They’d checked the bedroom. No Jemima either…

November 2009, sixteen-year-old Amy Mearns had had an argument with her parents and gone to visit various friends in the village of Golspie. There had been a trip to a nearby beach, and at some point Amy had drifted away. Her jacket was found the following day, attached to a fence above the seashore, blown there perhaps. Amy herself had not been seen again.