‘You know how mothers are with daughters,’ David started to add. ‘Protective and all that.’

‘Rightly so, eh?’ Thomas Costello winked at Rebus, who glanced towards Ellen Wylie, wondering if this would rouse her. But she was staring out of the window.

‘Thing is, David,’ Rebus said quietly, ‘we’ve reason to believe there might have been a bit of friction there too.’

‘How so?’ Thomas Costello asked.

‘Maybe David can answer that,’ Rebus told him.

‘Well, David?’ Costello asked his son.

‘I’ve no idea what he means.’

‘I mean,’ Rebus said, pretending to check his notes, ‘that Mrs Balfour harboured the thought that you’d somehow poisoned Flip’s mind.’

‘You must have misheard the lady,’ Thomas Costello said. He was bunching his fists again.

‘I don’t think so, sir.’

‘Look at the strain she’s been under … doesn’t know what she’s saying.’

‘I think she knew.’ Rebus was still looking at David.

‘It’s right enough,’ he said. He’d lost all interest in the apple. It hung from his hand, the white, exposed flesh already beginning to discolour. His father gave a questioning look. ‘Jacqueline had some notion that I was giving Flip ideas.’

‘What sort of ideas?’

‘That she hadn’t had a happy childhood. That she was remembering it all wrong.’

‘And did you think she was?’ Rebus asked.

‘It was Flip, not me,’ David stated. ‘She’d been having this dream. She was back in London, back at the house there, and running up and down stairs trying to get away from something. Same dream most nights for a fortnight.’

‘What did you do?’

‘Looked in a couple of textbooks, told her it might be to do with repressed memory.’

‘The boy’s lost me,’ Thomas Costello admitted. His son turned his head towards him.

‘Something bad that you’ve managed not to think about. I was quite envious, actually.’ They stared at one another. Rebus thought he knew what David was talking about: growing up with Thomas Costello couldn’t have been easy. Maybe it explained the son’s teenage years …

‘She never explained what that might be?’ Rebus asked.

David shook his head. ‘Probably it was nothing; dreams can have all sorts of meanings.’

‘But Flip believed it?’

‘For a little while, yes.’

‘And told her mother as much?’

David nodded. ‘Who then blamed the whole thing on me.’

‘Bloody woman,’ Thomas Costello hissed. He rubbed his forehead. ‘But then she’s been under a lot of strain, lot of strain …’

‘This was before Flip went missing,’ Rebus reminded him.

‘I don’t mean that: I mean Balfour’s,’ Costello growled. The slight against his son was still fresh.

Rebus frowned. ‘What about it?’

‘Lots of money men in Dublin. You get to hear rumours.’

‘About Balfour’s?’

‘I don’t understand it all myself: overstretched … liquidity ratios … just words to me.’

‘You’re saying Balfour’s Bank is in trouble?’

Costello shook his head. ‘Just a few stories that they might be headed that way if they don’t turn things around. Problem with banking is, it’s all about confidence, isn’t it? Few wild stories can do a lot of damage …’