Wylie had been unravelling for days. He’d taken her into the coffin case thinking maybe he could help. But then maybe she was right – maybe he’d been treating her as just another ‘cripple’, someone else who might be bent to his will, do some of the hard graft on something which would always be his case.

Maybe he’d had ulterior motives.

Wylie had probably seen it as a way of getting back at all of them: Gill Templer, cause of her public humiliation; Siobhan, for whom Templer still had such high hopes; Grant Hood, the new golden boy, coping where Wylie had not … And Rebus, too, the manipulator, the user, grinding her down.

He saw her left with two alternatives: let it all out, or burst with frustration and anger. If he’d accepted her offer of a drink that night … maybe she’d have opened up and he’d have listened. Maybe that was all she’d needed. But he hadn’t been there. He’d sneaked off to a pub by himself.

Nice one, John. Very smoothly played. For some reason an image came to mind: some old blues stalwart, turning up for ‘Ellen Wylie’s Blues’. Maybe John Lee Hooker or B. B. King … He caught himself and snapped out of it. He’d almost retreated into music, almost got to a lyric that would tide him over.

But now Carswell was reading from a list of names, and Rebus caught his own as Carswell snapped it out. DC Hood … DC Clarke … DS Wylie … The coffins; the German student – they’d worked those cases, and now the ACC wanted to see them. Faces turned, curious. Carswell was announcing that he’d see them in the ‘boss’s office’, meaning the station commander’s, commandeered for the occasion.

Rebus tried to catch Bill Pryde’s eye as they trooped out, but with Carswell already having exited, Bill was searching his pockets for more gum, his eyes trying to locate his clipboard. Rebus was the tail of this lethargic snake, Hood in front of him, then Wylie and Siobhan. Templer and Carswell at the head. Derek Linford was standing outside the station commander’s office, opened the door for them and then stood back. He tried to stare Rebus down, but Rebus wasn’t having that. They were still at it when Gill Templer closed the door, breaking the spell.

Carswell was sliding his chair in towards the desk. ‘You’ve already heard my spiel,’ he told them, ‘so I won’t bore you again. If the leak came from anywhere, it came from one of you. That little shit Holly knew way too much.’ As his mouth snapped shut his eyes looked up at them for the first time.