He smiled at the three CID men. ‘Bet you didn’t think I’d know a word like “vilification”.’

His gaze rested on Rebus, then he turned to Groal.

‘DI Rebus isn’t based at this station.’

Groal took the hint. ‘That’s true, Inspector. Might I ask by what authority you’ve been allowed to sit in on this interview?’

‘That will become clear,’ Hogan said, ‘if you’ll allow us to begin?’

Groal cleared his throat, but said nothing. Hogan let the silence lie for a few moments, then began.

‘Mr Summers, do you know a man called Joseph Lintz?’

‘No.’

The silence stretched out. Summers recrossed his feet. He looked up at Hogan, and blinked, the blink deteriorating into a momentary twitch of one eye. He sniffed, rubbed at his nose - trying to make out that the twitch meant nothing.

‘You’ve never met him?’

‘No.’

‘The name means nothing to you?’

‘You’ve asked me about him before. I’ll tell you same as I told you then: I never knew the cat.’

Summers sat up a bit straighter in his chair.

‘You’ve never spoken to him by telephone?’

Summers looked at Groal.

‘Hasn’t my client made himself clear, Inspector?’

‘I’d like an answer.’

‘I don’t know him,’ Summers said, forcing himself to relax again, ‘I’ve never spoken to him.’

He gave Hogan his stare again, and this time held it. There was nothing behind the eyes but naked self interest. Rebus wondered how anyone could ever think him ‘pretty’, when his whole outlook on life was so fundamentally ugly.

‘He didn’t phone you at your ... business premises?’

‘I don’t have any business premises.’

‘The office you share with your employer.’

Pretty-Boy smiled. He liked those phrases: ‘business premises’; ‘your employer’. They all knew the truth, yet played this little game ... and he liked playing games.

‘I’ve already said, I never spoke to him.’

‘Funny, the phone company says differently.’

‘Maybe they made a mistake.’

‘I doubt that, Mr Summers.’

‘Look, we’ve been through this before.’

Summers sat forward in his chair. ‘Maybe it was a wrong number. Maybe he spoke to one of my associates, and they told him he had a wrong number.’

He opened his arms. ‘This is going nowhere.’

‘I agree with my client, Inspector,’ Charles Groal said, scribbling something down. ‘I mean, is this leading anywhere?’

‘It’s leading, Mr Groal, to an identification of Mr Summers.’

‘Where and by whom?’

‘In a restaurant with Mr Lintz. The same Mr Lintz he claims never to have met, never to have spoken to.’

Rebus saw hesitation cross Pretty-Boy’s face. Hesitation, rather than surprise. He made no immediate denial.

‘An identification made by a member of staff at the restaurant,’ Hogan continued. ‘Corroborated by another diner.’

Groal looked to his client, who wasn’t saying anything, but the way he was staring at the table, Rebus wondered a smoking hole didn’t start appearing in it.

‘Well,’ Groal went on, ‘this is fairly irregular, Inspector.’

Hogan wasn’t interested in the lawyer. It was Pretty-Boy and him now.