Hammell glared at him. “What?” he couldn’t help asking. Christie leaned closer.

“I won’t trust anyone,” he confided, gesturing for the doormen to take Hammell to the office.

“I’m signing fuck all!” Hammell called out as he was led away. But he would sign, Darryl was sure of it. He rested his forearms on the balcony as he entered the text into his phone. It was to his father, and the message was succinct.

All done and dusted.

Even though he knew that wasn’t quite the case.

59

Having managed a broken night’s sleep, Rebus arrived at the Fettes HQ car park to find it half empty. The sky wasn’t fully light yet, street lamps still burning. He locked his car and entered the building. The main reception was manned by the same officer who’d called up to SCRU that first day to tell him there was a visitor downstairs for DI Magrath. Another member of the team might have answered, or Rebus could have been on a cigarette break.

And everything would have been different.

He took the stairs rather than the lift—every little bit helped, as his doctor had told him at his last check-up. Even so, he needed the help of the banister and a breather at the halfway stage. The corridor was deserted, as were the offices he passed. He opened the door to SCRU and stood on the threshold. The place was frozen in time—half-filled crates; waste bin emptied by a cleaner and waiting to be used again; marker pens and paper clips; mugs needing to be rinsed. At his desk he found a clean sheet of paper, dated it, and jotted down the barest details of his meeting with Sally Hazlitt. Then he signed it and opened her case file, clipping it to the inside front cover. Cowan’s desk, he noticed, was as tidy as ever—just in case any of the brass decided to drop by. There was a stapler with the name COWAN on it; Cowan had purchased it himself after each and every one of its predecessors had gone missing. Rebus lifted it from the desk and pocketed it, same as with the others, then headed out of the office and back down the stairs.

It wasn’t a bad day for a drive and he wasn’t in the mood for stopping. He’d filled the Saab on his way to Fettes and knew it was good for the trip north. He promised himself he would book the old warhorse in for a full service and valeting when this was all finished, a little reward for its efforts. Drumming his fingers against the steering wheel, Nazareth on the CD player, Rebus drove. He wasn’t really thinking about anything other than the journey and its punctuations: the moment a particular section of dual carriageway ended; the passing of landmarks such as the Pitlochry roadworks and House of Bruar; familiar signposts pointing him to places he would most likely never visit, such as the Waltzing Waters and Killiecrankie. There was still a good covering of snow on most of the hills. Sheep continued to graze, inured to the passing parade of trucks, vans and cars. Rebus remembered Siobhan Clarke’s words as they drove towards Chanonry Point: it’s an odd little country this…hard to fathom. She’d accused him of coming over all defensive—well, it was a natural enough reaction, but in fact he agreed with her. A nation of five million huddled together as if cowed by the elements and the immensity of the landscape surrounding them, clinging to notions of community and shared history, some of them identified or hinted at in the book of legends Nina Hazlitt had given him. Even bogeymen were useful, because if there was a “them,” there was also an “us,” and if there was a “them,” there was someone to blame…