And now Gill Templer stepped forward, and the room relaxed a little.

‘Don’t go getting the holiday mood just yet!’ she called out. ‘Okay, there’s been a leak to the press, and what we need now is some damage limitation. Nobody talks to anybody unless they run it past me first, understood?’ There were murmurs of assent.

Templer went on, but Rebus wasn’t listening. He hadn’t wanted to listen to Carswell either, but it had been hard to block the man out. Impressive stuff really. He’d even put some thought into the image of the garden mole, almost making it work without becoming laughable.

But mostly Rebus’s attention had been on the people around him. Gill and Bill Pryde were distant figures, whose discomfort he could almost ignore. Bill’s big chance to shine; Gill’s first major inquiry as a DCS. Hardly what either of them would have wanted …

And closer to home: Siobhan, concentrating hard on the ACC’s speech, maybe learning something from it. She was always on the lookout for a new lesson. Grant Hood, someone else with everything to lose, dejection written into his face and shoulders, the way he held his arms across chest and stomach, as though to ward off blows. Rebus knew Grant was in trouble. A leak to the press, you looked at liaison first. They were the ones with the contacts: an unwise word; the drunk and friendly banter at the end of a good meal. Even if not to blame, a good liaison officer might have been all that was needed in the way of Gill’s ‘damage limitation’. With experience, you’d know how to bend a journalist’s will to your own, even if it meant a bribe of some kind: first dibs on some later story or stories …

Rebus wondered at the extent of the damage. Quizmaster would now know what he’d probably always suspected: that it wasn’t just him and Siobhan, that she was keeping her colleagues apprised. Her face didn’t give anything away, but Rebus knew she was already wondering how to handle it, how to phrase her next communication with Quizmaster, supposing he wanted to keep playing … The Arthur’s Seat coffins connection annoyed him only because Jean had been mentioned by name in the story, cited as ‘the Museum’s resident expert’ on the case. He recalled that Holly had been persistent, leaving messages for Jean, wanting to speak to her. Could she have said something to him unwittingly? He didn’t think so.

No, he had the culprit in his sights. Ellen Wylie looked like she’d been wrung out. There were tangles in her hair where she hadn’t been concentrating with the brush. Her eyes had a resigned look. She kept staring at the floor during Carswell’s speech, and hadn’t shifted when he’d finished. She was still looking at the floor now, trying to find the will to do anything else. Rebus knew she’d spoken on the phone with Holly yesterday morning. It had been to do with the German student, but afterwards she’d seemed lifeless. Rebus had thought it was because she was working another dead end. Now he knew different. When she’d walked away from the Caledonian Hotel, she’d been heading either for Holly’s office or for some wine bar or café nearby.