The green suitcase jutting out from beneath the bed. Rebus pulled it out and opened it. It was empty. So were most of the drawers.

‘We keep a change of clothes up there,’ Jack had told detectives. ‘Enough for emergencies, that’s all.’

Rebus stared at the bed. Its pillows had been fluffed up, and the duvet lay straight and smooth across it. A sign of recent habitation? God knows. This was it, the last room in the house. What had he learned at the end of his hundred-odd-mile drive? He’d learned that Mrs Jack’s suitcase – the one Mr Jack said she’d taken with her – was here. Anything else? Nothing. He sat down on the bed. It crackled beneath him. He stood up again and pulled back the duvet. The bed was covered in newspapers, Sunday newspapers, all of them open at the same story.

MP Found in Sex Den Raid.

So she’d been here, and she knew. Knew about the raid, about Operation Creeper. Unless someone else had been here and planted this stuff . . . No, keep to the obvious. His eye caught something else. He moved aside one of the pillows. Tied to the post behind it was a pair of black tights. Another pair had been tied to the opposite post. Moffat was staring quizzically, but Rebus thought the young man had learned enough for one day. It was an interesting scenario all the same. Tied to her bed and left there. Moffat could have come, looked the house over, and gone, without ever being aware of her presence upstairs. But it wouldn’t work. If you were really going to restrain someone, you wouldn’t use tights. Too easy to escape. Tights were for sex-games. For restraint, you’d use something stronger, twine or handcuffs . . . Like the handcuffs in Gregor Jack’s dustbin?

At least now Rebus knew that she’d known. So why hadn’t she got in touch with her husband? There was no telephone at the lodge.

‘Where’s the nearest call-box?’ he asked Moffat, who still seemed interested in the tights.

‘About a mile and a half away, on the road outside Cragstone Farm.’

Rebus checked his watch. It was four o’clock. ‘Okay, I’d like to take a look at it, then we’ll call it a day. But I want this place gone over for fingerprints. Christ knows, there should be enough of them. Then we need to check and double check the shops, petrol stations, pubs, hotels. Say, within a twenty-mile radius.’

Moffat looked doubtful. ‘That’s an awful lot of places.’

Rebus ignored him. ‘A black BMW. I think some more handouts are being printed today. There’s a photo of Mrs Jack, and the car description and registration. If she was up this way – and she was – somebody must have seen her.’

‘Well . . . folk keep to themselves, you know.’

‘Yes, but they’re not blind, are they? And if we’re lucky, they won’t be suffering from amnesia either. Come on, sooner we look at that phone-box, the sooner I can get to my digs.’