“It wouldn’t be them doing it,” Rebus had persisted, “it would be us.” But Cowan had just kept shaking his head.

The record finished and Rebus lifted the needle from the vinyl. It wasn’t yet nine o’clock, far too early to be considering bed. He’d already eaten; already decided there was nothing on TV worth watching. The bottle of beer was empty. He walked over to the window and stared out at the tenement opposite. A couple of children in pajamas were staring back at him from a first-floor flat. He waved, which sent them scampering away. Now they were circling one another in the middle of their room, bouncing on their toes, not at all sleepy, and he had been dismissed from their universe.

He knew what they’d been telling him, though—there was a whole other world out there. And that could mean only one thing.

“Pub,” Rebus said out loud, reaching for his phone and his keys. Switching off the record deck and amp, he noticed the pick again and decided it was coming with him too.

Part One

A man disappears down bar steps
With a piece of wounded sky…

1

He was the only person in the office when the phone rang. Cowan and Bliss had gone to the canteen, and Robison had a doctor’s appointment. Rebus picked up the receiver. It was the front desk.

“Lady here wants to talk to DI Magrath.”

“Then you’ve got the wrong office.”

“She says different.”

Rebus watched as Bliss came into the room, carrying a soft drink in one hand, a sandwich in the other, and with the edge of a crisp packet clamped between his teeth. “Hang on,” he said into the receiver. Then, to Bliss: “Any ideas about a DI called Magrath?”

Bliss placed the sandwich on his desk and removed the bag from his mouth. “He started this place,” he told Rebus.

“How do you mean?”

“First boss of SCRU—we’re all his babies, in a manner of speaking.”

“How long ago?”

“Fifteen years maybe.”

“Someone downstairs is looking for him.”

“Good luck to them.” Bliss saw Rebus’s look. “He’s not dead or anything. Took up his pension six years back. Bought a place up north on the coast.”

“DI Magrath hasn’t worked here for six years,” Rebus explained into the mouthpiece.

“Can somebody else have a word, then?” he was asked.

“We’re a bit busy up here—what’s it about?”

“A missing person.”

“Not really our department.”

“She met with DI Magrath apparently. He gave her his card.”

“Has she got a name?” Rebus asked.

“Nina Hazlitt.”

“Nina Hazlitt?” Rebus repeated, for Peter Bliss’s benefit. Bliss thought for a moment, then shook his head.

“What is it she thinks we can do for her?” Rebus asked the front desk.

“Wouldn’t it be a lot easier for you to ask her that yourself?”

Rebus considered for a moment. Bliss was seated behind his desk, breaking open the prawn Marie Rose sandwich—same thing he always brought back from the canteen. Cowan would soon appear, his fingers scented by bacon-flavor crisps. Maybe a trip downstairs wasn’t such a bad idea.