Some detective I am, he told himself. He’d spent as much time as possible away from the flat. The rewiring had come to a halt Friday at five o’clock with half the floorboards still up and runs of cable straggling everywhere. Skirting-boards had been uprooted, exposing the bare wall behind. The sparkies had left their tools – ‘be safe enough here’, they’d quipped, knowing his profession. They’d said they might manage Saturday morning, but they hadn’t. So that was him for the weekend, stumbling over lengths of wire and every second floorboard either missing or loose. He’d eaten breakfast in a café, lunch in a pub, and was now harbouring lubricious thoughts of a haggis supper with a smoked sausage on the side. But first, the Oxford Bar.

He’d asked Siobhan what her own plans were.

‘A hot bath and a good book,’ she’d told him. She’d been lying. He knew this because Grant Hood had told half the station he was taking her on a date, his reward for lending her his laptop. Not that Rebus had said anything to her: if she didn’t want him to know, that was fair enough. But knowing, he hadn’t bothered trying to tempt her with an Indian meal or a film. Only when they were parting outside the pub on Leith Walk had it struck him that maybe this had been bad manners on his part. Two people with no apparent plans for Saturday night: wouldn’t it have been natural for him to ask her out? Would she now be offended?

‘Life’s too short,’ he told himself, paying off the taxi. Heading into the pub, seeing the familiar faces, those words stayed with him. He asked Harry the barman for the phone book.

‘It’s over there,’ Harry answered, obliging as ever.

Rebus flipped through but couldn’t find the number he wanted. Then he remembered she’d given him her business card. He found it in his pocket. Her home number had been added in pencil. He stepped back outdoors again and fired up his mobile. No wedding ring, he was sure of that … The phone was ringing. Saturday night, she was probably …

‘Hello?’

‘Ms Burchill? It’s John Rebus here. Sorry to call you on a Saturday night.’

‘That’s all right. Is something the matter?’

‘No, no … I just wondered if maybe we could meet. It was all very mysterious, what you said about there being other dolls.’

She laughed. ‘You want to meet now?’

‘Well, I was thinking maybe tomorrow. I know it’s the day of rest and all, but we could maybe mix business with pleasure.’ He winced as the words came out. He should have thought it all through first: what he was going to say, how he was going to say it.

‘And how could we do that?’ she asked, sounding amused. He could hear music in the background: something classical.