“Who said you could do that?” she complained.

Rebus shushed her and turned up the volume on track three. “Just listen,” he said. Then, after a few minutes: “So what’s he singing about, then?”

“How do you mean?”

“In the chorus.”

“Something about standing in another man’s rain.”

“You sure?”

“Am I hearing it wrong?”

Rebus shook his head. “It’s just that I thought he was…Ach, never mind.” He made to eject the CD, but she told him to leave it. She signaled and pulled out to overtake. The Audi had a bit of heft. Even so, she just made it, an oncoming vehicle flashing its lights in protest.

“Trying to prove something?” Rebus asked.

“I just want us arriving in Pitlochry much the same time she did. Isn’t that the whole point?” She turned towards him. “And aren’t you supposed to be looking for where that photo might’ve been taken?”

“Nowhere around here,” he muttered. But he began to scan the overcast countryside anyway. They passed a sign to Birnam and a Beatrix Potter exhibition. Clarke overtook another lorry, then had to brake hard when she spotted a speed camera, causing the lorry to brake too, accompanied by a blast of its horn and an angry flash of headlights. The Jackie Leven CD had ended and Rebus asked if she wanted Kate Bush back on, but she shook her head.

“Where the hell are they all going?” Rebus was peering at the traffic ahead of them. “Not exactly tourist season.”

“Not exactly,” she agreed. Then, too casually: “How’s Cafferty, by the way?”

Rebus stared at her. “What makes you think I’d know?”

She seemed to take a moment deciding how to answer. “I was talking to someone from the Complaints…”

The Complaints: meaning Internal Affairs. “Fox?” Rebus guessed. “I see him sliming his way around HQ.”

“The word is out, John—you and Cafferty, your little drinking sessions.”

Rebus digested this. “Is Fox coming after me? You don’t want to hang around with those scumbags, Siobhan. Might be contagious.”

“They’re not scumbags, as you well know. And to answer your question: you’re not a serving officer, meaning at the moment I doubt Fox could touch you even if he wanted to.” She paused, keeping her eyes firmly on the road ahead. “On the other hand, you go back a long way with Cafferty.”

“So?”

“So, is there anything for the Complaints to find if they do come looking?”

“You know how I feel about Cafferty,” Rebus stated coldly.

“Doesn’t mean favors haven’t been swapped somewhere down the line.”

Rebus drank from a plastic bottle of water, bought when they’d stopped for petrol at Kinross.

“Fox wants you to grass me up, is that it?”

“He was just asking if I saw much of you these days.”

“And then he happens to drop Cafferty’s name into the mix?” Rebus shook his head slowly. “So what did you tell him?”

“He was right, though, wasn’t he—about you seeing Cafferty?”

“The guy thinks he owes me for what I did at the hospital.”