‘A couple of people have called in.’

Pryde flicked through his notes. ‘Nothing helpful, but I’m going to interview them, see if I can jog a memory or two.’

‘Could the car have been nicked? Maybe that’s why he was in a hurry.’

‘I can check.’

‘I’ll help you.’

Pryde considered this. ‘You sure?’

‘Try and stop me, Bill.’

‘No skid marks,’ Pryde said, ‘no sign that he tried braking, either before or after.’

They were standing at the junction of Minto Street and Newington Road. The cross-streets were Salisbury Place and Salisbury Road. Cars, vans and buses queued at the traffic lights as pedestrians crossed the road.

It could have been any one of you, Rebus thought. Any one of them could have taken Sammy’s place ...

‘She was about here,’ Pryde went on, pointing to a spot where, just past the lights, a bus lane started. The carriageway was wide, a four-lane road. She hadn’t crossed at the lights. She’d been lazy, carrying on down Minto Street a few strides, then crossing in a diagonal. When she’d been a child, they’d taught her about crossing the road. Green Cross Code, all of that. Drummed it into her. Rebus looked around. At the top of Minto Street were some private houses and Bed & Breakfasts. On one corner stood a bank, on another a branch of Remnant Kings, with a takeaway next door.

‘The takeaway would have been open,’ Rebus said, pointing. On the third corner stood a Spar. ‘That place, too. Where did you say she was?’

‘The bus lane.’

She’d crossed three lanes, been only a yard or two from safety. ‘Witnesses say she was nearly at the kerb when he hit her. I think he was drunk, lost it for a second.’

Pryde nodded towards the bank. There were two phone boxes in front of it. ‘Witness called from there.’

The wall behind the phone boxes had a poster glued to it. Grinning maniac behind a steering-wheel, and some writing: ‘So many pedestrians, so little time’. A computer game . . .

‘It would have been so easy to avoid her,’ Rebus said quietly.

12

Rebus was sitting in his boss’s office. It was nine-fifteen and he had slept for probably forty-five minutes the previous night. There’d been the hospital vigil and Sammy’s operation: something about a blood clot. She was still unconscious, still ‘critical’. He’d called Rhona in London. She’d told him she’d catch the first train she could. He’d given her his mobile number, so she could let him know when she arrived. She’d started to ask ... her voice had cracked. She’d put down the receiver. He’d tried to find some feeling for her. Richard and Linda Thompson: ‘Withered and Died’.

He’d called Mickey, who said he’d drop by the hospital some time today. And that was it for the family. There were other people he could call, people like Patience, who had been his lover for a time, and Sammy’s landlady until far more recently. But he didn’t. He knew in the morning he’d call the office where Sammy worked. He wrote it in his notebook so he wouldn’t forget. And then he’d called Sammy’s flat and given Ned Farlowe the news.