“Hello?” Her voice this time.

“Sorry to be calling so late,” Rebus said. “It’s John Rebus. From Edinburgh.”

He heard an intake of breath. “Have you…? Is there any news?”

“Nothing like that.” Rebus had taken the plectrum from his pocket and was playing with it in his free hand. “I just wanted you to know I hadn’t forgotten about you. I’ve pulled the files and I’m taking a look.”

“On your own?”

“For the moment.” He paused. “Sorry to interrupt your evening…”

“It was my brother answered the phone. He’s staying with me.”

“Right,” Rebus said, not knowing what else to add. The silence lengthened.

“Sally’s case is reopened, then?” Nina Hazlitt’s voice was a mix of hope and fear.

“Not officially,” Rebus stressed. “Depends what I turn up.”

“Anything so far?”

“I’m only just getting started.”

“It’s nice of you to go to the trouble.”

Rebus wondered if the conversation would have been so stilted without the presence of her brother. Wondered too why the hell he had phoned her out of the blue—late at night, when the only reason for calling could be that there was news of some kind, something that couldn’t wait until morning. Filling her with momentary hope.

False hope…

“Well,” he said. “I’ll let you get on.”

“Thanks again. And call anytime, please.”

“Maybe not quite so late, though, eh?”

“Anytime,” she repeated. “It’s nice to know something’s happening.”

He ended the call and stared at the paperwork in front of him.

“Nothing’s happening,” he muttered to himself, placing the plectrum back in his pocket and rising to fix the final drink of the evening.

5

The officer’s name was Ken Lochrin, and he had been retired for three years. Rebus had been given his telephone number after a bit of pleading. Lochrin’s name was in the Zoe Beddows file. He seemed to have done a lot of work on it. His handwriting and signature cropped up over two dozen times. Having introduced himself, Rebus spent the first five minutes discussing retirement itself, swapping stories and explaining how SCRU worked.

“Me, I miss the job not one jot,” Lochrin had said. “Complete pain in the posterior by the time I emptied my desk.”

“Bit frustrating not to get a result on Zoe Beddows?”

“It’s a lot worse when you feel you’re getting close—that never happened with her. Gets to the point where you have to move on—unless cold cases is your job, of course. So you’re part of this new Crown Office initiative?”

“Not exactly. I’m in a smaller team based in Edinburgh.”

“Then how come Zoe’s turned up on your radar?”

“This kid who went missing on her way to Inverness.”

“Zoe was four years ago, though.”

“All the same…” Rebus liked it that Lochrin used Beddows’s first name. It meant she’d become a person to him rather than a case number.

“I did wonder about that myself, actually.”

“What?” Rebus prompted.

“Whether there could be a connection. But like I say—four years…”