Christie nodded slowly. “But I don’t want that to happen.”

“No?”

“Things could get messy afterward, and I don’t want my mum being more upset than she already is.”

“Frank Hammell has a pretty good track record, Darryl. If he gets hold of someone, there’s not going to be a trace of them afterward—not for a long time.”

“This is different. I’ve not seen him lose it the way he’s been doing.”

It was Rebus’s turn to study the young man in front of him. “You really are smarter, aren’t you?”

“I’m just a bit more rational at this point in time. Plus it’ll put my job on the line if he does something stupid.”

“It’s more than that, though. I’d say you’re canny by nature. My bet is, you kept your head down in school, did well in exams. But always watchful, learning how things are and what makes people tick.”

Darryl Christie offered a shrug of the shoulders. When he removed his hands from his pockets, he was holding a card in one. “I’ve got lots of phones,” he said. “If you ring this number, I’ll know it’s you.”

“You really think I’m going to hand over whoever did this?”

“A name and an address; that’s all.” He looked through the windows of the Saab at the carrier bags on the rear seat. “You never know—there might be the price of a washing machine in it…”

Rebus watched him turn and head back to the Merc. No swagger to the walk, just an easy confidence. The driver’s eyes were on Rebus, as if daring him to go against Christie’s wishes, whatever those wishes might be. Rebus managed a wink as the window began to slide up, then got into the front seat of the Saab and started the engine. By the time he’d reversed out of his parking space and reached the junction at the foot of Arden Street, the Merc was nowhere to be seen.

The guy in the launderette told him it might be a couple of days. Rebus remonstrated that he didn’t have a couple of days, to which the owner responded by waving his arms in the direction of the backlog of service washes.

“Way things are,” he said, “I’d almost pay you to load the machine yourself.”

On the way back to the flat, it was a three-way contest between fish and chips, Indian and Chinese. Indian won, and Rebus stopped at Pataka’s, ordering a rogan josh and saying he would wait. He was offered a lager but turned it down. The place was doing good business, the booths filled with couples sharing platters of food and bottles of chilled wine. There were three or four pubs within a two-minute walk, but Rebus flicked through that day’s Evening News instead. By the time he’d finished, his food was ready. He drove back to Arden Street with Maggie Bell playing on the radio. He wondered if she was still going strong…

His kitchen filled with aromas as he opened the containers, scooping out the meat, sauce and rice onto a plate. There were beers in the cupboard, so he opened one and added it to the tray, which he carried through to the dining table. The living room felt a bit better, so he closed the window again and put the Bert Jansch album back on. His phone sounded, letting him know he had a message. He decided it could wait. A couple of minutes later, it issued another reminder and this time he got up to check the screen. One missed call; one voicemail.