The address might have been posher than Rebus was expecting, but the accommodation was cramped. The office was in the eaves of the building, so that you couldn’t stand up in half the available space, which hadn’t stopped desks being sited in the most awkward corners.

‘Which is hers?’ Rebus asked.

Mae Crumley pointed to the desk next to her own. There was a computer there somewhere, but only its screen was showing. Loose sheets of paper, books and pamphlets and reports, the whole lot spilled on to the chair and from there down on to the floor.

‘She works too hard,’ Crumley said. ‘We all do.’

Rebus sipped the coffee she’d made him. Cafe Hag.

‘When Sammy came here,’ she went on, ‘the first thing she said was that her father was CID. She never tried to hide it.’

‘And you’d no qualms about taking her on?’

‘None at all.’

Crumley folded her arms. They were big arms; she was a big woman. Her hair was a fiery red, long and frizzy and tied back with a black ribbon. She wore an oatmeal linen shirt with a denim jacket over the top of it. Her eyebrows had been plucked into thin arches over pale grey eyes. Her desk was relatively tidy, but only, as she’d explained to Rebus, because she tended to stay later than anyone else.

‘What about her clients?’ Rebus asked. ‘Could any of them have held a grudge?’

‘Against her or against you?’

‘Against me through her.’

Crumley considered this. ‘To the extent that they’d run her over just to make a point? I very much doubt it.’

‘I’d be interested to see her client list.’

She shook her head. ‘Look ... you shouldn’t be doing this. It’s too personal, you know that. I mean, who am I talking to here: Sammy’s father, or a copper?’

‘You think I’ve a score to settle?’

‘Well haven’t you?’

Rebus put down the coffee mug. ‘Maybe.’

‘And that’s why you shouldn’t be doing this.’

She sighed. ‘Number one on my wish list: Sammy back on her feet and back here. But what about if meantime I do a bit of poking around? I stand a better chance of getting them to talk than you do.’

Rebus nodded. ‘I’d appreciate that.’

He got to his feet. ‘Thanks for the coffee.’

Outside, he checked the list the juice Church had given him. He kept it in his pocket, didn’t refer to it often. There was a meeting at Palmerston Place in about an hour and a half. No good. He knew he’d spend the time beforehand in a pub. Jack Morton had introduced him to Al-Anon, but Rebus hadn’t really taken to it, though the stories had affected him.

‘See,’ one man had told the group, ‘I had problems at work, problems with my wife, my kids. I had money problems and health problems and everything else. Practically the only problem I didn’t have was with the drink. And that’s because I was a drunk.’