He sat back down again. There was a bottle on the floor: Talisker, a clean, honed taste. Glass beside it, so he poured, toasted the reflection in the window, leaned back and closed his eyes. He wasn’t having this room redecorated. He’d done it himself not that long back, his old friend and ally Jack Morton helping. Jack was dead now, one of too many ghosts. Rebus wondered if he’d leave them behind when he moved. Somehow he doubted it, and deep down, he would miss them anyway.

The music was all about loss and redemption. Places changing and people with them, dreams shifting ever further beyond reach. Rebus didn’t think he’d be sorry to see the back of Arden Street. It was time for a change.

4

On her way into work next morning, Siobhan thought of nothing but Quizmaster. Nobody had called her mobile, so she was thinking up another message to send him. Him or her. She knew she had to keep an open mind, but couldn’t help thinking of Quizmaster as ‘him’. ‘Stricture’, ‘Hellbank’ … they seemed masculine to her. And the whole idea of some game being played by computer … it all sounded so blokeish, sad anoraks stuck in their bedrooms. Her first message – Problem. Need to talk to you. Flipside – seemed not to have worked. Today, she was going to end the pretence. She would e-mail him as herself, and explain Flip’s disappearance, asking him to get in touch. She’d kept the mobile phone beside her all night, waking every hour or so and checking to see that she hadn’t slept through a call. But no calls came. Finally, as dawn approached, she’d got dressed and gone for a walk. Her flat was just off Broughton Street, in an area undergoing rapid gentrification: not as pricey as the New Town which it neighboured, but close to the city centre. Half her street seemed to be taken up with skips, and she knew that by mid-morning builders’ vans would be struggling to find a parking space.