“Get you another?” Rebus asked.

“My turn.”

“I’m fine,” he said, having hardly touched the pint. “Got the car outside, and this isn’t my first tonight.”

She decided to have another drink anyway, reaching into her bag for money. Rebus played with a beer mat while he waited for her to return.

“So, anyway,” she said, squeezing around the table and sitting down again, “you’ve managed to unearth the files on those other poor women?”

“The records aren’t as complete as I’d like.” He saw her look. “It happens—things get mislaid; notes that should have been written up aren’t…”

“Oh.”

“Not that there were gaps in Sally’s case,” he sought to reassure her.

“Is there any possibility that I…? No, I suppose not.” She lowered her eyes.

“I doubt they’d come as any consolation. You might find them a bit…”

“Upsetting?”

“I was going to say ‘cold.’ Nobody working the case knew Sally, you see.”

She nodded her understanding. “You’re trying to protect me.”

“I’m not sure I’d put it like that.”

They focused on their drinks for a minute. Rebus didn’t know what else to say to her. He didn’t like to think of her as being trapped in limbo, but that’s where she was. The past had its grip on her and wasn’t letting go. He worked with the past, too, but he could always put it back in a box and have it delivered to a storeroom or warehouse.

“Is there a draft?” he asked.

“I don’t think so.”

“Thought you were shivering.”

“It happens sometimes. You know that saying about someone walking over your grave?”

“Never really understood it, though.”

“Now you come to mention it, I’m not sure I understand it either. Sure you don’t want another?”

“Trying to get me arrested for drunk-driving?”

“Couldn’t you talk your way out of it?”

“Not these days.”

She grew thoughtful again. “Working cold cases, you must meet a lot of families who’ve lost loved ones…” She watched him nod. “I talk to a lot of them, too. Over the internet mostly. You know that in England and Wales they can’t issue a death certificate, no matter how long the person’s been missing? It’s hell for the families—means they can’t sort out the estate. Up here, you wait seven years and the court gives you a Presumption of Death certificate.”

“And that’s what happened to you?”

She shook her head. “Presumption’s not what I want. I need to know what happened to her.”

“Even after all this time?”

“Even after all this time,” she echoed. Then she sighed, finished her drink in two gulps and asked if he would walk her back to the hotel.

“My pleasure,” he said.

As they walked back up Victoria Street, he told her he’d not been in the Missoni before.

“I doubt I’d be able to afford it normally,” she explained, “but I got a late deal.”

The kilted doorman didn’t seem to be around. They stopped at the steps, both lighting cigarettes, standing in companionable silence as the traffic and pedestrians rolled past.