His attacker hadn’t taken anything – credit cards, cash, both mobile phones, all accounted for. And once he was unconscious, it didn’t appear as if they’d continued the beating. He took a good look at his teeth and then manipulated his jaw with his hand.

‘You’re okay,’ he told his reflection. Then he noticed that one button was missing from his waistband. It would need replacing, or his braces wouldn’t sit right. He took a few deep breaths, ran the water over his hands again and dried himself off with his handkerchief. One of the drinkers from the bar came weaving in, paying him almost no attention as he headed for a urinal. Fox put his coat back on and left. Outside, he nodded towards the doorman. Pete Scott was busy talking to the same two women as before. They’d stepped out for a cigarette and were complaining about the lack of ‘hunks’. If Fox had been invisible to them before, he seemed more so now. Scott asked him if he was really okay, and Fox just nodded again, heading across the road to where his car waited. Someone had left the remains of a kebab on the Volvo’s bonnet. He gave it a swipe on to the roadway, unlocked the doors and got in.

The journey home was slow, the lights against him at every junction. Taxis were touting for business, but most people seemed content to walk. Fox tuned his radio to Classic FM and decided that Jack Broughton had not recognised him. Why should he have? They had met for approximately ten seconds at the triplex penthouse. Broughton hadn’t known until some minutes later that the man waiting for the lift was a cop. Could Broughton himself have been the attacker? Doubtful – and why would he have hung around? Besides, his shoes had been brown brogues; not at all the same as the one Fox had watched connect with his chin.

Pete Scott on the other hand…Pete’s shoes had been black Doc Martens, and Pete was strong enough… But Fox didn’t think so. Would Pete have deserted his post for a spot of small-minded revenge? Well, maybe he would, but Fox had him down as a ‘possible’ rather than a ‘probable’.

Once home he stripped off his clothes and stood under a hot shower, training the water on to his back for a good nine or ten minutes. It hurt when he tried towelling himself dry, and he was able to get a look at himself in the bathroom mirror – no visible damage. Maybe it would be different in the morning. Slowly, he pulled on a pair of pyjamas and went downstairs to the kitchen, finding an unopened bag of garden peas in the freezer compartment, wrapping a tea towel around it and holding it to his jaw while he boiled the kettle for tea. There was a box of aspirin in one of the drawers, and he swallowed three tablets with a glass of water from the tap.

It was nearly two o’clock by the time he settled himself at the table. After a few minutes of staring at the wall, he got up and went through to the dining room. His computer sat on a desk in the corner. He got it working and started a search of three names: Joanna Broughton, Charlie Brogan and Jack Broughton. There wasn’t much on the last of these – his heyday had been before the advent of the internet and the twenty-four-hour news cycle. Fox hadn’t thought to ask him what he was doing in the Cowgate at that time of night. But then Jack Broughton was no ordinary seventy-one-year-old. Probably he still fancied his chances against the majority of the drunks and chancers.

Fox couldn’t get properly comfortable. If he leaned forward, he ached; if he leaned back, the pain was greater. He was grateful for the lack of alcohol in the house – it stopped him reaching for that quickest of fixes. Instead, he held the bag of peas to his face and concentrated on Charlie Brogan, finding several interviews culled from magazines and the business pages of newspapers. One journalist had asked Brogan why he’d become a property developer.

You’re creating monuments, Brogan had replied. You’re making a mark that’s going to outlast you.

And that’s important to you?

Everybody wants to change the world, don’t they? And yet most of us, all we leave behind is an obituary and maybe a few kids.

You want people to remember you?

I’d rather they noticed me while I’m here! I’m in the business of making an impression.

Fox wondered to himself: an impression on who? Joanna Broughton? Or her successful dad, maybe? Didn’t men always want to prove themselves to their in-laws? Fox recalled that he’d been nervous when he’d met Elaine’s parents, even though he’d known them when he was a school-kid. He’d been to birthday parties at their house. But flash forward two decades and he was greeting them as their daughter’s boyfriend.

‘Elaine tells us you’re in the police,’ the mother had said. ‘I’d no idea you were that way inclined…’ The tone of voice said it all: our lovely, talented daughter could have done so much better. So much better…

Fox could well imagine Brogan’s first encounter with Pa Broughton. Both sons were dead, meaning there was a lot for Joanna to prove. She’d left it late to get married. Fox reckoned her doting and protective father would have chased off many a previous suitor. But Charlie Brogan knew what he wanted – he wanted Joanna. She was glamorous and her family had money. More than that, her father had about him the whiff of power. When you got hitched to the daughter, you kept her father’s name in your pocket like a number for the emergency services. Anybody tried to turn you over, the name would be dropped into the conversation.

Not that Fox could imagine Jack Broughton liking that.

So when CBBJ started hitting the skids, there was no insurance policy. Maybe Brogan had approached the old boy on the quiet – definitely wouldn’t want Joanna knowing about it – but if he had, he’d given Jack the perfect opportunity to tell his son-in-law just how useless he’d always reckoned him. You say you lost all your money in the downturn? Well, Charlie, I didn’t know you were that way inclined.

And by the way, my lovely talented daughter could have done so much better.

‘Poor sod,’ Fox said to himself.

Half an hour later, he was done with the three of them. He found a link to Quidnunc but couldn’t enter the game without the relevant software. Instead, he stared at the website’s home page with its colourful graphics. Some sort of monster was being dispatched by half a dozen muscle-men.

‘The Warrior Is In You’ ran the strapline. Fox thought of Jamie Breck. He hadn’t been much of a warrior in Billy Giles’s office. Breck: losing himself in this fiction while a real life with Annabel was kept on pause. Fox wondered what sort of role he himself had played throughout his life. Had he used alcohol the same way Breck used the online game – sinking into a virtual world as an escape from the real thing? He wondered, too, whether he really did trust Jamie Breck. He thought he did, but then again, Breck had said it himself: does it just mean I’m your very last hope? Failing to come up with an answer, he set the computer to ‘sleep’ mode and headed for bed. He lay on his side, the only way he could rest without pain. The curtains were illuminated by the sodium glare of a street lamp. The peas were defrosting in their bag. Birdsong was playing on the radio…