He limped along to A&E, where Siobhan was having a couple of stitches put into a head wound. Eric Bain was there. The conversation stopped as Rebus approached.

‘Eric here,’ Siobhan said, ‘was just explaining how you worked out where I’d be.’ Rebus nodded. ‘And how you gained entry to David Costello’s flat.’

Rebus made an O with his lips.

‘Mr Strongarm,’ she went on, ‘kicking in a suspect’s door without authority or any sniff of a warrant.’

‘Technically,’ Rebus told her, ‘I was on suspension. That means I wasn’t a serving officer.’

‘Making it even worse.’ She turned to Bain. ‘Eric, you’re going to have to cover for him.’

‘Door was open when we got there,’ Bain recited. ‘Botched break-in, probably …’

Siobhan nodded and smiled at him. Then she gave Bain’s hand a squeeze …

Donald Devlin was under police guard in one of the Western General’s private rooms. He’d half drowned in the river and was now in what the doctors were calling a coma.

‘Let’s hope he stays there,’ ACC Colin Carswell had said. ‘Save us the expense of a prosecution.’

Carswell hadn’t said anything at all to Rebus. Gill said not to worry: ‘He’s ignoring you because he hates making apologies.’

Rebus nodded. ‘I’ve just seen a doctor,’ he told her.

She looked at him. ‘So?’

‘Does that count as my check-up … ?’

David Costello was in custody at Gayfield Square. Rebus didn’t go near. He knew they’d be cracking open a few bottles of whisky and cans of beer, sounds of celebration drifting into the room where Costello was being questioned. He thought of the time he’d asked Donald Devlin whether his young neighbour was capable of killing: not cerebral enough for David. Well, Costello had found his method all the same, and Devlin had protected him … the old man sheltering the young.

When Rebus went home, he took a tour of his flat. It represented, he realised, the only fixed point of his life. All the cases he’d worked, the monsters he’d encountered … he dealt with them here, seated in his chair, staring out of his window. He found room for them in the bestiary of his mind, and there they stayed.

If he gave this up, what would be left? No still centre to his world, no cage for his demons …

Tomorrow he’d call the solicitor, tell her he wasn’t moving.

Tomorrow.

For tonight, he had new cages to fill …

14

It was a Sunday afternoon of sharp, low sunlight, the shadows impossibly long and skewed into an elastic geometry. Trees bowed by the wind, clouds moving like oiled machines. Falls, twinned with Anguish … Rebus drove past the signpost, glanced towards Jean, quiet in the passenger seat. She’d been quiet all week; slow to answer her phone or come to the door. The doctor’s words: nothing time can’t heal …