John Rebus, too, was thinking of Edinburgh. When he moved from his flat, where would he make his next home? Was there any district he liked better than any other? Portobello itself was fine, pretty relaxed. But he could always move south or west, into the country. Some of his colleagues travelled in from as far as Falkirk and Linlithgow. He wasn’t sure he was ready for that kind of commute. Portobello would be okay though. The only problem was, when they walked along the promenade, he kept looking towards the beach, as if expecting to see a little wooden coffin there, like the one they’d found in Nairn. It wouldn’t matter where he went, his head would go with him, colouring his surroundings. The Falls coffin was working away at him now. He only had the carpenter’s word for it that it had been made by someone else, someone who hadn’t made the other four. But if the killer was being really clever, wouldn’t he have anticipated just that, changing his work habits and tools, trying to dupe them into …

Oh Christ, here he went again … the same old dance, reeling around his skull. He sat down on the sea wall, and Jean asked if something was wrong.

‘Bit of a headache,’ he said.

‘Isn’t that supposed to be the woman’s prerogative?’ She was smiling, but he could see she wasn’t happy.

‘I should be heading back,’ he told her. ‘Not great company tonight.’

‘Do you want to talk about it?’ He raised his eyes so they met hers, and she snorted with laughter. ‘Sorry, stupid question. You’re a Scottish male, of course you don’t want to talk about it.’

‘It’s not that, Jean. It’s just …’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe therapy wouldn’t be such a bad idea.’

He was trying to make a joke of it, so she didn’t push him.

‘Let’s head back,’ she said. ‘Bloody freezing out here anyway.’

She slid her arm through his as they walked.

12

By the time Assistant Chief Constable Colin Carswell arrived at Gayfield Square police station on that underlit Tuesday morning, he was out for blood.

John Balfour had bawled him out; Balfour’s lawyer had done his damage more subtly, the voice never wavering in its professional and well-educated tones. Still, Carswell felt bruised, and he wanted some measure of revenge. The Chief Constable was remaining aloof – his position, his unassailability, had to be maintained at all costs. This was Carswell’s mess, one he’d spent all the previous evening busy surveying. He might as well have been exploring a landscape of shrapnel and broken glass, armed only with a dustpan and some tweezers.