“Cheers, Alex!” Rebus called out, giving the driver a little wave. “Mind how you go!” The car signaled and moved off again, easing into the stream of traffic, leaving Rebus standing by the side of a busy arterial road.

Somewhere on the outskirts of Inverness, with no idea how to get back to his Saab.

“Nicely played yet again, John,” he muttered to himself, reaching into his pocket for his cigarettes.

In the end, it was a thirty-five-minute walk, with just the one fellow pedestrian issuing a set of erroneous directions…

The lock-up was easy to find—he just went to the pub and asked. The pub was on a sharp bend in the road at the northern end of Rosemarkie, at the top of the lane leading down to the beach and the homes of both Magrath brothers. The lock-up was directly across from it, next to a modern bungalow, a low brick wall separating the two. There was a gravel parking area in front, and that was where Rebus’s Saab ended up. The wooden doors to the garage were held fast by a padlock. There was just the one window, protected on the outside by chicken wire and with what looked like a polythene carrier bag pinned to the inside, blocking prying eyes. Rebus returned to his car and switched the CD player back on. Nothing to do but wait. He had purchased supplies at the pub—two packets of cheese and onion crisps and two small bags of salted peanuts. He still had a half-full bottle of water on the passenger seat. There was very little traffic. As far as he knew, the road led only to Cromarty. He checked the map and saw that it was the A832. With his finger he traced the route back to the A9, and from there all the way south to Perth. Then back up again, this time staying on the A9 until the Dornoch Firth, heading inland towards Tongue. His finger rested there as he remembered the view from Samantha’s house, and the interior visible through the living room window, giving him hints and clues to her life. Durness and Laxford and Colaboll and Lairg, then Edderton. Rebus pressed the palm of his hand against the Saab’s steering wheel.

“A lot of ground we’ve covered, old-timer,” he told the car.

When the CD ended, he tried the radio, but the signal came and went, leaving the choice of ceilidh music or nothing. So he swapped John Martyn for some early Wishbone Ash and leaned back in his seat, closing his eyes.

When he woke up, it was to absolute silence. His neck was stiff as he angled his head towards his watch. He couldn’t read the dial, so he switched on his phone instead. Two in the morning. The pub was in darkness. He took a slug of water and got out, walking over to the lock-up and relieving himself against its side wall. Back in the Saab, he checked his phone for messages, but there weren’t any. He rubbed some feeling back into his arms and legs. The temperature was not going to drop as far as zero tonight: too much cloud cover. He stared at the padlock on the door in front of him for a while, then felt his vision blurring and closed his eyes again.