She had been thinking about an evening visit to her gym, and had even changed in readiness before slumping on the sofa and checking the TV schedules instead. When her phone let her know she had a message, she decided to ignore it. Then her door buzzer sounded. She went into the hall and pushed the button next to the intercom.

“Yes?” she asked.

“DI Clarke? It’s Malcolm Fox.”

Clarke sucked air in between her teeth. “How do you know where I live, or is that a stupid question?”

“Can I come in?”

“No, you can’t.”

“Any particular reason?”

“I’m expecting someone.”

“DCI Page, perhaps?”

Christ, the Complaints really did know everything…

“Something to hide, DI Clarke?” Fox was asking.

“I just like my privacy.”

“Yes, me too. And that time we happened to bump into one another—I was trusting that you’d have understood our little chat was meant to be kept private.”

“Then you should have said.”

“Still, I can appreciate that John Rebus is an old and dear friend. You probably feel no qualms about sharing information with him.” Though two doors, seventeen stone steps and a passageway separated them, it felt as if his mouth was only an inch or so from her face. She could hear each of his individual breaths.

“John Rebus is proving invaluable to the McKie inquiry,” she stated.

“You mean he’s not gone out on one of his famous limbs yet—not as far as you’re aware.”

“Why can’t you just leave him alone?”

“Why can’t you see that he’s the same liability he’s always been? Don’t tell me life wasn’t simpler before he managed to inveigle his way onto the McKie case…”

“What do you mean?”

“Why do you think he’s there? What tidbits might he be passing back to his good friend Cafferty? Working cold cases is one thing, but now he has access to an entire floor of CID offices in Gayfield Square.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I know a cop gone bad when I see one. Rebus has spent so many years crossing the line, he’s managed to rub it out altogether. As far as he’s concerned, his way’s the right way, no matter how wrong the rest of us might know it to be.”

“You don’t know him,” Clarke persisted.

“Then help me get to know him—talk me through some of the cases the pair of you worked.”

“So you can twist it all around? I’m not that stupid.”

“I know you’re not—far from it—and this is your chance to prove it to the people at the top, the people I talk to each and every day.”

“I grass up my friend and you put in a word come promotion time?”

“John Rebus should be extinct, Clarke. Somehow the Ice Age came and went and left him still swimming around while the rest of us evolved.”

“I’d rather bludgeon Darwin with a claw hammer than evolve into you.”

She heard him give a sigh. “We’re not so different,” he said quietly, sounding weary. “We’re both conscientious and hard-working. I can even see you joining the Complaints—maybe not this year or next, but sometime.”