Rebus went to one of the windows and peeped out. Sure enough, there were three or four reporters gathered at the bottom of the steps up to the front door. Watson had finished his spiel and was answering a couple of questions, at the same time retreating slowly back up the steps.

‘Oh dear,’ Rebus said, admiring his own sense of understatement. ‘That only makes it worse.’

‘Makes what worse?’

So Rebus told him. And was rewarded with the biggest smile he’d ever seen flit across Lauderdale’s face.

‘Well, well, who’s been a naughty boy then? But I still don’t see the problem.’

Rebus shrugged. ‘Well, sir, it’s just that it doesn’t do anyone any good.’ Outside, the vans were arriving. Two to take the women to the station, two to take the men. The men would be asked a few questions, names and addresses taken, then released. The women . . . well, that was another thing entirely. There would be charges. Rebus’s colleague Gill Templer would call it another sign of the phallocentric society, something like that. She’d never been the same since she’d got her hands on those psychology books . . .

‘Nonsense,’ Lauderdale was saying. ‘He’s only got himself to blame. What do you want us to do? Sneak him out the back door with a blanket over his head?’

‘No, sir, it’s just –’

‘He gets treated the same as the rest of them, Inspector. You know the score.’

‘Yes, sir, but –’

‘But what?’

But what? Well, that was the question. What? Why was Rebus feeling so uncomfortable? The answer was complicatedly simple: because it was Gregor Jack. Most MPs, Rebus wouldn’t have given the time of day. But Gregor Jack was . . . well, he was Gregor Jack.

‘Vans are here, Inspector. Let’s round ’em up and ship ’em out.’

Lauderdale’s hand on his back was cold and firm.

‘Yes, sir,’ said Rebus.

So it was out into the cool dark night, lit by orange sodium lights, the glare of headlamps, and the dimmer light from open doors and twitching windows. The natives were restless. Some had come out on to their doorsteps, wrapped in paisley dressing gowns or wearing hastily found clothes, not quite hanging right.

Police, natives, and of course the reporters. Flash-guns. Christ, there were photographers too, of course. No camera crews, no video machines. That was something: Watson hadn’t persuaded the TV companies to attend his little soirée.

‘Into the van, quick as you can,’ called Brian Holmes. Was that a new firmness, a new authority in his voice? Funny what promotion could do to the young. But by God they were quick. Not so much following Holmes’ orders, Rebus knew, as keen to escape the cameras. One or two of the women posed, trying a lopsided glamour learned from page three, before being persuaded by WPCs that this was neither the time nor the place.

But the reporters were hanging back. Rebus wondered why. Indeed, he wondered what they were doing here at all. Was it such a big story? Would it provide Watson with useful publicity? One reporter even grabbed at a photographer’s arm and seemed to warn him about shooting off too many pictures. But now they were keening, now they were shouting. And the flashbulbs were going off like flak. All because they’d recognized a face. All because Gregor Jack was being escorted down the steps, across the narrow pavement, and into a van.