‘Get a good night’s sleep. We’ll crack the clue tomorrow.’

‘If you say so.’

‘I do. Goodnight, Grant.’

‘’Night, Shiv.’

She ended the call, didn’t even take the time to tell him she hated ‘Shiv’: girls at school had used it. One of her boyfriends at college had liked it, too. He told her it was slang for a knife. Siobhan: even the teachers at her school in England had had trouble with her name. ‘See-Oban’ they’d pronounce it, and she would have to correct them.

Night, Shiv …

Stupidbitch …

She heard his car move off, watched the play of headlights across her ceiling and far wall. She sat there in the dark, finishing her drink without tasting it. When her phone rang again, she swore out loud.

‘Look,’ she roared into the mouthpiece, ‘just let it go, okay?’

‘Well … if you say so.’ It was the Farmer’s voice.

‘Oh, hell, sir, I’m sorry.’

‘Expecting another call?’

‘No, I … maybe another time.’

‘Fair enough. I’ve been doing some ringing round. There are people who know the Craft far better than I do, I thought maybe they could shed some light.’

His tone told her what she needed to know. ‘No joy?’

‘Not as such. But a couple of folk have still to get back to me. Nobody home, so I left messages. Nil desperandum: that’s what they say, isn’t it?’

Her smile was bleak. ‘Some of them probably do, yes.’ Hopeless optimists, for example.

‘So you can expect another call tomorrow. What time’s the cut-off?’

‘Late morning.’

‘Then I’ll make some follow-up calls first thing.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘It’s nice to feel useful again.’ He paused. ‘Things getting you down, Siobhan?’

‘I’ll cope.’

‘I’d put money on it. Speak to you tomorrow.’

‘Goodnight, sir.’

She put the phone down. Her drink was finished. This all comes from John Rebus, doesn’t it? Grant’s words to her during their argument. Now here she was with an empty glass in her hand, sitting in the dark, staring out the window.

‘I’m not like him at all,’ she said out loud, then she picked up the phone again and called his number. Got his answering machine. She knew she could try his mobile. Maybe he was out on the bevvy; almost certainly he was out on the bevvy. She could meet up with him, explore the city’s late openers, each dimly lit howff protection against the dark.

But he’d want to talk about Grant, about the clinch he thought he’d found them in. It would be there between them, no matter what the conversation.