‘I couldn’t leave.’

‘I know.’

He kissed her cheek..

‘The person in the car ...’

‘What?’

She looked at him. ‘I don’t care any more. I don’t care who they were or whether they get caught. All I want is for her to wake up.’

Rebus nodded, told her he understood. Told her breakfast was on him. He kept the talk going, his mind not really on it. Instead, her words bounced around in his head: I don’t care who they were or whether they get caught ...

Whichever stress he put on it, he couldn’t make it sound like surrender.

At St Leonard’s, he broke the news to Ned Farlowe. Farlowe wanted to go to the hospital, but Rebus shook his head. Farlowe was crying as Rebus left his cell. Back at his desk, the files on the Crab were waiting.

The Crab: real name, William Andrew Colton. He had form going back to his teens, celebrated his fortieth birthday on Guy Fawkes Day. Rebus hadn’t had many dealings with him during his time in Edinburgh. Looked like the Crab had lived in the city for a couple of years in the early-80s, and again in the early-90s. 1982: Rebus gave evidence against him in a conspiracy trial. Charges dropped. 1983: he was in trouble again - a fight in a pub left one man in a coma and his girlfriend needing sixty stitches to her face. Sixty stitches: you could knit a pair of mittens with less.

The Crab had held various jobs: bouncer, bodyguard, general labourer. The Inland Revenue had a go at him in 1986. By ‘88, he was on the West Coast, which was presumably where Tommy Telford had found him. Knowing good muscle when he saw it, he’d put the Crab on the doors of his club in Paisley. More bloodspilling; more accusations. Nothing came of them. The Crab had lived a charmed life, the sort of life that niggled at cops the world over: witnesses too scared to testify; withdrawing or refusing to give evidence. The Crab didn’t often make it to trial. He’d served three adult sentences - a total of twenty-seven months - in a career that was now entering its fourth decade. Rebus went through the paperwork again, picked up the phone and called CID in Paisley. The man he wanted to speak to had been transferred to Motherwell. Rebus made the call, eventually got through to Detective Sergeant Ronnie Hannigan, and explained his interest.

‘It’s just that reading between the lines, you suspected the Crab of a lot more than ever got put down on paper.’

‘You’re right.’ Hannigan cleared his throat. ‘Never got close to proving anything though. You say he’s south of the border now?’

‘Telford placed him with a gangster in Newcastle.’

‘Have criminal tendencies, will travel. Well, let’s hope they keep him. He was a one-man reign of terror, and that’s no exaggeration. Probably why Telford palmed him off on someone else: the Crab was getting out of control. My theory is, Telford tried him out as a hit-man. Crab wasn’t suitable, so Telford needed to jettison him.’