“Afraid we’ll be pulled over? Why not take a risk for once?”

“We’re swapping,” Fox persisted.

Kaye looked at him and knew the man wouldn’t give up. He sighed and reached for the door handle.

Part Four

Part Four

I took a jar of pain to the soaking field…

42

42

If he’d been putting together a mix tape for the journey, it would have featured plenty of songs about roads. Canned Heat and the Rolling Stones, Manfred Mann and the Doors. He refueled at Kinross, checked out the roadworks north of Pitlochry, and stopped for tea and a cheese scone at Bruar, where he looked at his phone and found a missed call from Nina Hazlitt—making four in total—and a message from Siobhan Clarke telling him that rooms had been booked for a couple of nights at Whicher’s. He doubted this was coincidence. Maybe it was the only hotel Clarke knew in Inverness. Inverness, however, was not his immediate destination. He stayed on the A9, crossing the Kessock Bridge. Alness, followed by Tain, and finally the turn-off to Edderton. Jim Mellon had been contacted, and he’d made sure the police located the spot. A Portakabin was being unloaded from a flatbed lorry, which would have the devil’s own job reversing back to the main road. The crane arm dropped the Portakabin on to the narrow lane ahead of it. Maybe the fields were too marshy to take its weight. The end result was that diversions would be needed. No traffic was going to be able to pass this way until the police operation had finished. A uniform gestured for Rebus to lower his window. Rebus obliged, holding out his ID. Mellon was in consultation with a woman in a smart two-piece suit, the pair of them pointing towards the hills. The woman held a copy of the photo sent from Annette McKie’s phone. She had come prepared: shoes swapped for green wellies. Rebus wished he’d thought of that.

He maneuvered the Saab up onto what verge there was.

“Give me a shout when the lorry needs to get out,” he told the uniform. The man nodded, adding Rebus’s license plate to the clipboard he was holding. Mellon had recognized him and was giving him a wave. Rebus walked forward and shook hands. The woman was waiting for an introduction.

“I’m John Rebus,” he obliged. “Attached to the Edinburgh inquiry.”

She nodded slowly. “Mr. Mellon was telling me about you. I’m DCS Dempsey.”

“Yes, ma’am.” They shook hands and sized one another up. She was around forty, buxom and bespectacled and with shoulder-length ash-blond hair.

“Where’s DCI Page?” she asked.

“On his way. What do you make of the comparison?” Rebus gestured towards the photo she was holding.

“I think it was taken pretty much where we’re standing.” She paused. “Though I’m still not sure what its significance might be.”