‘Down the coast,’ she said. ‘Eyemouth, round there.’

Yes, of course. Jack had uttered the name of the first town that had come to mind. Then he’d pumped Helen for details so he could prop up his rickety story . . .

He put down the receiver.

‘Well?’asked Watson.

‘His car’s gone, and Gregor Jack with it. All that stuff he told us about Eyemouth . . . eye wash more like . . . he got it all from his secretary. She went there on holiday last year.’

The room was stuffy, the late afternoon outside preparing itself for thunder. Watson spoke first.

‘What a mess.’

‘Yes,’ said Lauderdale.

Holmes nodded. He was a relieved man; more than that, inwardly he was rejoicing: the hire car had turned out to be fact. He’d proved his worth.

‘What now?’

‘I’m just thinking,’ said Rebus, ‘about that lay-by. Liz Jack has an argument with Steele. She tells him she’s going back to her husband. Steele buggers off. What’s the next he hears of her?’

‘That she’s dead,’ answered Holmes.

Rebus nodded. Throwing all those books around the shop in his grief and his anger . . . ‘Not only dead, but murdered. And the last he saw of her, she was waiting for Gregor.’

‘So,’ said Watson, ‘he must know Jack did it? Is that what you’re suggesting?’

‘You think,’ Lauderdale said, ‘Steele’s run off to protect Gregor Jack?’

‘I don’t think anything of the sort,’ said Rebus. ‘But if Gregor Jack is the murderer, then Ronald Steele has known for some time that he is. Why hasn’t he done anything? Think about it: how could he come to the police? He was in way too deep himself. It would mean explaining everything, and explaining it would make him if anything a bigger suspect than Gregor Jack himself!’

‘So what would he do?’

Rebus shrugged. ‘He might try persuading Jack to come forward.’

‘But that would mean admitting to Jack that –’

‘Exactly, that he was Elizabeth Jack’s lover. What would you do in Jack’s position?’

Holmes dared to supply the answer. ‘I’d kill him. I’d kill Ronald Steele.’

Rebus sat all that evening in Patience’s living room, an arm around her as they both watched a video. A romantic comedy; only there wasn’t much romance and precious little comedy. You knew from reel one that the secretary would go off with the bucktoothed student and not with her bloodsucking boss. But you kept on watching anyway. Not that he was taking much of it in. He was thinking about Gregor Jack, about the person he’d seemed to be and the person he really was. You peeled away layer after layer, stripped the man to the bone and beyond . . . and never found the truth. Strip Jack Naked: a card game, also known as Beggar my Neighbour. Patience was a card game, too. He stroked her neck, her hair, her forehead.

‘That’s nice.’

Patience was a game easily won.