At first, Rebus had accused the doctor of penny-pinching, of not wanting to give out costly drugs. But the damned thing seemed to work. He could help himself. He could help himself to Patience Aitken . . .

‘Here you go,’ she said, coming into the bathroom. She was holding a long thin glass of orange juice. ‘As squeezed by Dr Aitken.’

Rebus slipped a sudsy arm around her buttocks. ‘As squeezed by Inspector Rebus.’

She bent down and kissed him on his head. Then touched a finger to his hair. ‘You need to start using a conditioner, John. All the life’s going out of your follicles.’

‘That’s because it’s headed somewhere else.’

She narrowed her eyes. ‘Down, boy,’ she said. Then, before he could make a grab for her again, she fled from the bathroom. Rebus, smiling, settled further into the bath.

Deep breathing . . . emptying the mind . . . Had Gregor Jack been set up. If so, who by? And to what purpose? A scandal, of course. A political scandal, a front-page scandal. But the atmosphere in the Jack household had been . . . well, strange. Strained, certainly, but also cold and edgy, as though the worst were still to happen.

The wife . . . Elizabeth . . . something didn’t seem right there. Something seemed very odd indeed. Background, he needed more background. He needed to be sure. The lodge address was fixed in his mind, but from what he knew of Highland police stations little good would come of phoning on a Sunday. Background . . . He thought again of Chris Kemp, the reporter. Yes, why not? Wake up, arms, wake up, chest, neck and head. Sunday was no time to be resting. For some people, Sunday was a day of work.

Patience stuck her head round the door. ‘Quiet night in this evening?’ she suggested. ‘I’ll cook us a –’

‘Quiet night be damned,’ Rebus said, rising impressively from the water. ‘Let’s go out for a drink.’

You know me, John. I don’t mind a bit of sleaze, but this place is cheapskate sleaze. Don’t you think I’m worth better?’

Rebus pecked Patience’s cheek, placed their drinks on the table, and sat down beside her. ‘I got you a double,’ he said.

‘So I see.’ She picked up the glass. ‘Not much room for the tonic, is there?’

They were seated in the back room of the Horsehair public house on Broughton Street. Through the doorway could be seen the bar itself, noisy as ever. People who wanted to have a conversation seemed to place themselves like duellists a good ten paces away from the person they wanted to talk with. The result was that a lot of shouting went on, producing much crossfire and more crossed wires. It was noisy, but it was fun. The back room was quieter. It was a U-shaped arrangement of squashy seating (around the walls) and rickety chairs. The narrow lozenge-shaped tables were fixed to the floor. Rumour had it that the squashy seating had been stuffed with horsehair in the 1920s and not restuffed since. Thus the Horsehair, whose real and prosaic name had long since been discarded.