Rebus had taken him out for a drink one evening, laying out his theories about Gregor and Kenny Magrath. Bliss had been reluctant to concede any of the possibilities proposed, and had eventually walked out of the bar, since when his attitude had been one of professional courtesy only. Rebus had left a note on his colleague’s desk—Just have a think back—does anything jar?—which Bliss had crumpled into a ball and dropped into the waste-paper bin.

“You two,” Robison had chided them. “Why can’t you play nice?”

“He started it,” Rebus had answered, hoping to elicit a smile from Bliss.

A forlorn hope, as it turned out.

He spoke to Siobhan Clarke by phone, keeping up to date with the Inverness inquiry, Gavin Arnold having been warned—presumably by Dempsey—not to pass tidbits to him. Clarke wasn’t much help. Now that the Inverness team had all the information on Annette McKie from the Edinburgh end, James Page and his officers were being frozen out. Dempsey had even come south, reinterviewing Gail McKie, Frank Hammell and Thomas Redfern. A further request had seen the bus station’s CCTV footage forwarded to Northern Constabulary HQ.

“None of which is going to help them,” Rebus had told Clarke. “They’re just scratching around for want of anything else to do.”

Nothing prejudicial had been found in either Magrath’s van or the Land Rover. After exhaustive tests, nothing alien on or in Annette McKie’s body could be linked to Kenny Magrath—the pubic hair had belonged to Frank Hammell. The funeral had eventually been allowed to go ahead, as had services for the other four victims. Watching the footage on TV—Darryl leading the mourners, his mother clinging to his arm, Hammell nowhere to be seen—Rebus realized he knew the cemetery: it was the same one where Jimmy Wallace was buried. He remembered that day, the pallbearers called forward by number, the wailing widow, and Tommy Beamish sidling up to him.

Too many like Jimmy—gold watch, and soon after they’re on a slab…Is that why you keep working…?

Well, of course it bloody was. What the hell was he going to do next week—take up fishing, or buy a dog? Or more likely sit staring at a gantry of drinks like some of the old-timers he knew, treating a stint at the pub almost as if it were a job in itself.

He’d met Malcolm Fox on the stairs one day, and Fox had stopped to tell him that the Complaints had ceased to have “an active interest” in him.

“Oh?”

“For the moment, that is. So good luck with your application.”

“Aye, right.”

“I mean it,” Fox had said, eyes drilling into Rebus’s. “I want you back on the force. You’ll screw up sooner rather than later and that’s when we’ll get to know one another better. I just pray you don’t take the likes of Siobhan Clarke down with you…”

On the Thursday, Elaine Robison had tried to fix a time and place for farewell drinks the following night, but Peter Bliss had grown cool on the idea.