Just as Rebus was thinking their surroundings couldn’t get any grimmer - all industrial decay, gutted buildings and potholes Kenworthy signalled to turn in at the gates of a scrapyard.

‘You’re kidding?’ he said.

Three Alsatians, tethered by thirty-foot chains, barked and bounded towards the car. Kenworthy ignored them, kept driving. It was like being in a ravine. Either side of them stood precarious canyon walls of car wrecks.

‘Hear that?’

Rebus heard it: the sound of a collision. The car entered a wide clearing, and he saw a yellow crane, dangling a huge grab from its arm, pluck up the car it had dropped and lift it high, before dropping it again on to the carcass of another. A few men were standing at a safe distance, smoking cigarettes and looking bored. The grab dropped on to the roof of the top car, denting it badly. Glass shimmered on the oily ground, diamonds against black velvet.

Jake Tarawicz - Mr Pink Eyes - was in the crane, laughing and roaring as he picked up the car again, worrying it the way a cat might play with a mouse without noticing it was dead. If he’d seen the new additions to his audience, it didn’t show. Kenworthy hadn’t got out of her car immediately. First, she’d fixed on a face from her repertoire. When finally she was ready, she nodded to Rebus and they opened their doors simultaneously.

As Rebus stood upright, he saw that the grab had dropped the car and was swinging towards them. Kenworthy folded her arms and stood her ground. Rebus was reminded of those arcade games where you had to pick up a prize. He could see Tarawicz in the cab, manipulating the controls like a kid with a toy. He remembered Tommy Telford on his arcade bike, and saw at once something the two men had in common: neither had ever really grown up.

The motorised hum stopped suddenly, and Tarawicz dropped from the cab. He was wearing a cream suit and emerald shirt, open at the neck. He’d borrowed a pair of green wellies from somewhere, so as to keep his trousers clean. As he walked towards the two detectives, his men stepped into line behind him.

‘Miriam,’ he said, ‘always a pleasure.’

He paused. ‘Or so the rumour goes.’

A couple of his men grinned. Rebus recognised one face: ‘The Crab’, that’s what he’d been called in central Scotland. His grip could crush bones. Rebus hadn’t seen him in a long time, and had never seen him so smartly groomed and dressed.

‘All right, Crab?’

Rebus said.

This seemed to disconcert Tarawicz, who half-turned towards his minion. The Crab stayed quiet, but colour had risen, to his neck.

Up close, it was hard not to stare at Mr Pink Eyes’s face. His eyes demanded that you meet them, but you really wanted to study the flesh in which they sat.

He was looking at Rebus now.

‘Have we met?’

‘No.’

‘This is Detective Inspector Rebus,’ Kenworthy explained. ‘He’s come all the way from Scotland to see you.’