“John,” she said, “can you divvy up the cold cases? We need fresh interviews with all concerned. Did our abductor lie in wait, or had he met the women beforehand? Could he be in some job that took him to those specific places, or to those particular victims?”

“It’s a tall order,” Rebus warned her.

“Worth a try, though, wouldn’t you say?” Her look dared him to defy her.

“Absolutely,” he responded, the team gathering around him to receive their orders.

Rebus had lost count of the number of cases he’d worked, cases often as complex as this one, requiring interview after interview, statement after statement. He thought of the material in the boxes, now being pored over by those around him—paperwork generated in order to show effort rather than with any great hope of achieving a result. Yes, he’d been on cases like that, and others where he’d despaired of all the doors knocked on, the blank faces of the questioned. But sometimes a clue or a lead emerged, or two people came forward to furnish the same name. Suspects were whittled down. Alibis and stories unraveling after the third or fourth retelling. Pressure was sustained, enough evidence garnered to present to the Procurator Fiscal.

And then there were the lucky breaks—the things that just happened. Nothing to do with dogged perseverance or shrewd deduction: just sheer bloody happenstance. Was the end result any less of a victory? Yes, always. It was possible that there was something he had missed in the files, some connection or thread. Watching the team at work, he couldn’t decide if he would want them to find it or not. It would make him look stupid, lazy, out of touch. On the other hand, they needed a break, even at the expense of his vanity. So he watched them, their heads bowed as they sifted through the documents, chewing on their pens, underlining, making notes, or typing their thoughts into their computers. Putting together more detailed chronologies, deciding who should be questioned, ready to suggest some avenue that had been missed—either by the original inquiry or by Rebus.

More chewing of pens. More notes. Trips to the kettle and coffee pot. The occasional offer to fetch snacks from downstairs. Rebus was the only one who took cigarette breaks. During one, he made sure the cars in the car park were empty before tapping a number into his phone.

“I want to talk to Hammell,” he told the person who answered. “Tell him it’s Rebus.”

After a few seconds, the man’s voice was back in Rebus’s ear. “He can’t speak at the minute.”

“Tell him it’s important.”

“He’ll phone you back.”