‘Gregor,’ Jack reminded him. ‘Please, call me Gregor. What was in them? Rubbish. Garbled nonsense. Ravings . . .’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘What?’

‘Someone told me you’d refuse to let anyone open them. He thought they might be love letters.’

Jack hooted. ‘Love letters!’

‘I don’t think they were either. But it strikes me, how could Ian Urquhart or anyone else know which letters they were to hand to you unopened? The handwriting? Difficult to tell though, isn’t it? No, it had to be the postmark. It had to be what was on the envelope. I’ll tell you where those letters came from, Mr Jack. They came from Duthil. They came from your old friend Andrew Macmillan. And they weren’t raving, were they? They weren’t garbled or nonsense or rubbish. They were asking you to do something about the system in the special hospitals. Isn’t that right?’

Jack sat and studied his glass, mouth set petulantly, a kid who’s been caught out.

‘Isn’t that right?’

Jack gave a curt nod. Rebus nodded, too. Embarrassing to have a sister who’s a prostitute. But how much more embarrassing to have an old friend who’s a murderer? And mad, to boot. Gregor Jack had worked hard to form his public image, and harder still to preserve it. Rushing around with his vacuously sincere grin and strong-enough-for-the-occasion handshake. Working hard in his constituency, working hard in public. But his private life . . . well, Rebus wouldn’t have wanted to swop. It was a mess. And what made it so messy was that Jack had tried to hide it. He didn’t have skeletons in his closet; he had a crematorium.

‘Wanted me to start a campaign,’ Jack was muttering. ‘Couldn’t do that. Why did you start this crusade, Mr Jack? To help an old friend. Which old friend is that, Mr Jack? The one who cut his wife’s head off. Now, if you’ll excuse me. Oh, and please remember to vote for me next time round . . .’ And he began a drunken, wailing laugh, near-manic, near-crying. Finally actually becoming crying, tears streaming down his cheeks, dripping into the glass he still held.

‘Gregor,’ Rebus said quietly. He repeated the name, and again, and again, always quietly. Jack sniffed back more tears and looked blurrily towards him. ‘Gregor,’ said Rebus, ‘did you kill your wife?’

Jack wiped his eyes on his shirt-sleeve, sniffed, wiped again. He began to shake his head.

‘No,’ he said. ‘No, I didn’t kill my wife.’

*

No, because William Glass killed her. He killed the woman under Dean Bridge, and he killed Elizabeth Jack.

Rebus had missed all the excitement. He had driven back into town unaware of it. He had climbed the steps up to Great London Road station without knowing. And he had entered a place of jumpy, jittery clamour. Christ, what did it mean? Was the station definitely staying open? No move to St Leonard’s? Which meant, if he remembered his bet, that he’d set up home with Patience Aitken. But no, it was nothing to do with the station staying open or being reduced to rubble. It was William Glass. A beat constable had come across him sleeping amidst the dustbins behind a supermarket in Barn-ton. He was in custody. He was talking. They were feeding him soup and giving him endless cups of tea and fresh cigarettes, and he was talking.