He was trying to read, but thinking about work. Every day of the holiday, he sneaked off to a phone-box and called the station. They kept telling him to go and enjoy himself, forget about everything. He was halfway through a spy thriller. The plot had already lost him.

Rhona was doing her best. She’d wanted somewhere foreign, a bit of glamour and heat to go with the sunshine. Finances, however, mere on his side. So here they mere on the Fife coast, where he’d first met her. Was he hoping for something? Some memory rekindled? He’d come here with his own parents, played with Mickey, met other kids, then lost them again at the end of the fortnight.

He tried the spy novel again, but case-work got in the may. And then a shadow fell over him.

‘Where is she?’

‘What?’ He looked down. His feet mere buried in sand, but Sammy wasn’t there. How long had she been gone? He stood up, scanned the seashore. A few tentative bathers, going in no further than their knees.

‘Christ, John, where is she?’

He turned round, looked at the sand dunes in the distance.

‘The dunes . . . ?’

They warned her. There mere hollows in the dunes where the sand was eroding. Small dens had been created - a magnet for kids. Only they were prone to collapse. Earlier in the season, a ten-year-old boy had been dug out by frantic parents. He hadn’t quite choked on the sand ...

They were running now. The dunes, the grass, no sign of her.

‘Sammy!’ ‘Maybe she went into the water.’

‘You mere supposed to be keeping an eye on her!’

‘I’m sorry. I ...’

‘Sammy!’ A small shape in one of the dens. Hopping on its hands and knees. Rhona reached in, pulled her out, hugged her.

‘Sweetie, we told you not to!’

‘I was a rabbit. ’ Rebus looked at the fragile roof sand meshed with the roots of plants and grasses. Punched it with a fist. The roof collapsed. Rhona was looking at him. End of holiday.

3

John Rebus kissed his daughter.

‘See you later,’ he said, watching her as she left the coffee shop. Espresso and a slice of caramel shortbread - that’s all she’d had time for - but they’d fixed another date for dinner. Nothing fancy, just a pizza.

It was October 30th. By mid-November, if Nature were feeling bloody, it would be winter. Rebus had been taught at school that there were four distinct seasons, had painted pictures of them in bright and sombre colours, but his native country seemed not to know this. Winters were long, outstaying their welcome. The warm weather came suddenly, people stripping to t-shirts as the first buds appeared, so that spring and summer seemed entwined into a single season. And no sooner had the leaves started turning brown than the first frost came again.

Sammy waved at him through the cafe window then was gone. She seemed to have grown up all right. He’d always been on the lookout for evidence of instability, hints of childhood traumas or a genetic predisposition towards self destruction. Maybe he should phone Rhona some day and thank her, thank her for bringing Samantha up on her own. It couldn’t have been easy: that was what people always said. He knew it would be nice if he could feel some responsibility for the success, but he wasn’t that hypocritical. The truth was, while she’d been growing up, he’d been elsewhere. It was the same with his marriage: even when in the same room as his wife, even out at the pictures or around the table at a dinner party ... the best part of him had been elsewhere, fixed on some case or other, some question that needed answering before he could rest.