‘I know where he is,’ Rebus said quietly. ‘I know where she’s meeting him. Come on.’ He ran from the room, hand already reaching for his mobile. The detectives who were wandering around the Botanics, they could be at Warriston in two minutes …

‘Hello, David.’

He still had his funeral clothes on, including the sunglasses. He grinned as she walked towards him. He was just sitting there, legs swinging from the wall. He slid down and was suddenly standing in front of her.

‘You guessed,’ he said.

‘Sort of.’

He looked at his watch. ‘You’re early.’

‘You’re earlier.’

‘I had to recce, see if you were lying.’

‘I said I’d be on my own.’

‘And here you are.’ He looked around again.

‘Plenty of escape routes,’ Siobhan said, surprised by how calm she was. ‘Is that why you chose it?’

‘It’s where I first realised I loved Flip.’

‘Loved her so much you went and killed her?’

His face fell. ‘I didn’t know that was going to happen.’

‘No?’

He shook his head. ‘Right up until the moment I had my hands round her throat … even then I don’t think I knew.’

She drew in a deep breath. ‘But you did it anyway.’

He nodded. ‘I suppose I did, yes.’ Looked up at her. ‘That’s what you wanted to hear, isn’t it?’

‘I wanted to meet Quizmaster.’

He opened his arms. ‘At your command.’

‘I also want to know why.’

‘Why?’ He framed his lips into an O. ‘How many reasons do you want? Her yah friends? Her pretensions? The way she kept teasing and picking fights, looking to break us up just so she could watch me crawling back?’

‘You could have walked away.’

‘But I loved her.’ When he laughed, it was as if acknowledging his own foolishness. ‘I kept telling her that, and you know what she told me back?’

‘What?’

‘That I wasn’t the only one.’

‘Ranald Marr?’

‘That old goat, yes. Since before she left school. And still at it, even when we were together!’ He stopped, swallowed. ‘Enough motivation for you, Siobhan?’

‘You vented your anger on Marr by disfiguring that toy soldier, and yet Flip … Flip you had to kill?’ She felt calm, almost numb. ‘That doesn’t seem quite fair to me.’

‘You wouldn’t understand.’

She looked at him. ‘But I think I do, David. You’re a coward, pure and simple. You say you didn’t know you were going to murder Flip that night – that’s a lie. You had it planned all along … and afterwards you were Mr Calm, speaking to her worried friends not much more than an hour after you’d killed her. You knew exactly what you were doing, David. You were Quizmaster.’ She paused. He was staring into the middle distance, soaking up every word. ‘Something I don’t understand … you sent Flip a message after she died?’