‘Well, thanks very much!’ She pulled herself out of her chair and stomped off to the toilets. Inside, she stood leaning against the wash-bowl, staring down at its bright white surface. The sod was, she knew Grant was right. But she couldn’t let go the way he could. She’d wanted to play the game, and now it had drawn her in. She wondered if Flip Balfour had become obsessed in much the same way. If she’d got stuck, would she have asked for help? Siobhan reminded herself that she had yet to ask any of Flip’s friends or family about the game. No one had mentioned it in the dozens of interviews, but then why would they? Maybe to them it had just been a bit of fun, a computer game. Nothing to get worked up about …

Gill Templer had offered her the Press Liaison job, but only after engineering the ritual humiliation of Ellen Wylie. It would be nice to feel she’d rejected the offer out of a sense of solidarity with Wylie, but that had had nothing to do with it. Siobhan herself feared that it was more the influence of John Rebus. She’d worked beside him for several years now, coming to understand his strengths as well as his faults. And when it came down to it, like a lot of other officers she preferred the maverick approach, and wished she could be like that. But the force itself had other ideas. There could be room for only one Rebus, and meantime advancement was hers for the taking. Okay, so it would land her squarely in Gill Templer’s camp: she’d follow orders, back her boss up, never take risks. And she would be safe, would continue to rise through the ranks … Detective Inspector, then maybe DCI by the time she was forty. She saw now that Gill had invited her to drinks and dinner that evening to show her how it was done. You cultivated the right friends, you treated them well. You were patient, and the rewards came. One lesson for Ellen Wylie, and a very different one for her.

Back out in the café, she watched as Grant Hood completed the crossword and threw the paper back down, leaning back in his seat and nonchalantly slipping his pen into his pocket. He was trying hard not to look at the table next to him, where a lone female coffee-drinker had been appraising his performance over the top of her paperback book.

Siobhan started forwards. ‘Thought you’d already done that one?’ she said, nodding towards the Scotsman.

‘Easier the second time,’ he answered in a voice which, had it been any more of an undertone, would have leapt up and broken into the chorus of ‘Teenage Kicks’. ‘Why are you grinning like that?’

The woman had gone back to her book. It was something by Muriel Spark. ‘I was just remembering an old song,’ Siobhan said.