‘My guess is the sprinklers will have done as much damage as anything.’

Cafferty’s jaw hardened. ‘Makes me look even more of a mug.’

Rebus sat in silence, waiting for him to finish whatever chessgame was being played inside his head.

‘Okay,’ the gangster said at last, ‘I’ll call off the troops. Maybe it’s time to do some recruiting anyway.’

He looked up at Rebus. ‘Time for some fresh blood.’

Which reminded Rebus of another job he’d been putting off.

Danny Simpson lived at home with his mother in a terraced house in Wester Hailes.

This bleak housing-scheme, designed by sadists who’d never had to live anywhere near it, had a heart which had shrivelled but refused to stop pumping. Rebus had a lot of respect for the place. Tommy Smith had grown up here, practising with socks stuffed into the mouth of his sax, so as not to disturb the neighbours through the thin walls of the high-rise. Tommy Smith was one of the best sax players Rebus had ever heard.

In a sense, Wester Hailes existed outside the real world: it wasn’t on a route from anywhere to anywhere. Rebus had never had cause to drive through it he only went there if he had business there. The city bypass flew past it, offering many drivers their only encounter with Wester Hailes. They saw: high-rise blocks, terraces, tracts of unused playing field. They didn’t see: people. Not so much concrete jungle as concrete vacuum.

Rebus knocked on Danny Simpson’s door. He didn’t know what he was going to say to the young man. He just wanted to see him again. He wanted to see him without the blood and the pain. Wanted to see him whole and of a piece.

Wanted to see him.

But Danny Simpson wasn’t in, and neither was his mother. A neighbour, lacking her top set of dentures, came out and explained the situation.

The situation took Rebus to the Infirmary, where, in a small, gloomy ward not easily found, Danny Simpson lay in bed, head bandaged, sweating like he’d just played a full ninety minutes. He wasn’t conscious. His mother sat beside him, stroking his wrist. A nurse explained to Rebus that a hospice would be the best place for Danny, supposing they could find him a bed.

‘What happened?’

‘We think infection must have set in. When you lose your resistance ... the world’s a lethal place.’

She shrugged, looked like she’d been through it all once too often. Danny’s mother had seen them talking. Maybe she thought Rebus was a doctor. She got up and came towards him, then just stood there, waiting for him to speak.

‘I came to see Danny,’ he said.

‘Yes?’

‘The night he ... the night of his accident, I was the one who brought him here. I just wondered how he was doing.’

‘See for yourself.’

Her voice was breaking.

Rebus thought: a five-minute walk from here, he’d be in Sammy’s room. He’d thought her situation unique, because it was unique to him. Now he saw that within a short radius of Sammy’s bed, other parents were crying, and squeezing their children’s hands, and asking why.