“We going to have a race, then?” he asked, sliding farther into the space, picking up the small black box.

“Why not?” Renshaw agreed, placing Rebus’s car on the starting line. He brought his own car to meet it, then counted down from five. Both cars jolted towards the first bend, Rebus’s careering off straightaway. He crawled over on hands and knees and fixed it back onto the track, just as Renshaw’s car lapped him.

“You’ve had more practice than me,” he complained, sitting back down again. Drafts of warm air were gusting up through the open hatch, providing the attic with its only source of heat. Rebus knew that if he stood, there wouldn’t be quite enough room for him. “So how long have you been up here?” he asked. Renshaw ran a hand over what was now more beard than stubble.

“Since first thing,” he said.

“Where’s Kate?”

“Out helping that MSP.”

“The front door isn’t locked.”

“Oh?”

“Anyone could walk in.” Rebus had waited for Renshaw’s car to catch up with him, and now they were racing again, crossing lanes at one point in the track.

“Know what I was thinking about last night?” Renshaw said. “I think it was last night…”

“What?”

“I was thinking about your dad. I really liked him. He used to do tricks for me, do you remember that?”

“Producing pennies from behind your ear?”

“And making them disappear. He said he’d learned it in the army.”

“Probably.”

“He was in the Far East, wasn’t he?”

Rebus nodded. His father had never said much about his wartime exploits. Mostly, all he’d shared were anecdotes, things they could laugh at. But later on… towards the end of his life, he’d let slip details of some of the horrors he’d witnessed.

These weren’t professional soldiers, John, they were conscripts-men who worked in banks, shops, factories. War changed them, changed all of us. How could it not?

“Thing is,” Allan Renshaw continued, “thinking about your dad got me thinking about you. Remember that day you took me to the park.”

“The day we played football?”

Renshaw nodded, gave a weak smile. “You remember it?”

“Probably not as well as you.”

“Oh, I remember, all right. We were playing football, and then some guys you knew turned up, and I had to play by myself while you talked to them.” Renshaw paused. The cars crossed each other again. “Coming back to you?”

“Not really.” But Rebus supposed it could be true. Whenever he’d gone home on leave, there’d been friends from school to catch up with.

“Then we started walking home. Or you and your pals did, me trailing behind, carrying the ball you’d bought us… Now this bit, this bit I’d pushed to the back of my mind…”

“What bit?” Rebus was concentrating on the racetrack.

“The bit where we were passing the pub. You remember the pub on the corner?”

“The Bowhill Hotel?”

“That was it. We were passing, only then you turned to me, pointed at me, told me I’d to wait outside. Your voice was different, a lot harder, like you didn’t want your pals to know we were pals…”

“You sure about this, Allan?”

“Oh, I’m sure. Because the three of you went inside, and I sat at the curb and waited. I was holding on to the ball, and after a while you came out again, but just to hand me a bag of crisps. You went back inside, and then these other kids came up, and one of them kicked the ball out of my grasp, and they ran off, laughing and kicking it to each other. That’s when I started crying, and still you didn’t come out, and I knew I couldn’t go in. So I got to my feet and walked back to the house by myself. I got lost once, but I stopped and asked someone.” The racing cars were speeding towards the point at which they would switch lanes. They arrived at the same time, met and bounced off the track, landing on their backs. Neither man moved. The attic was silent for a moment. “You came home later,” Renshaw continued, breaking the silence, “and nobody said anything because I’d not said anything to them. But you know what really got me? You never asked what had happened to the ball, and I knew why you didn’t ask. It was because you’d forgotten all about it. Because it wasn’t important to you.” Renshaw paused. “And I was just some little kid again, and not your friend.”

“Jesus, Allan…” Rebus was trying to remember, but there was nothing there. The day he’d thought he’d known had been sunshine and football, nothing else.

“I’m sorry,” he said at last.

Tears were dripping down Renshaw’s cheeks. “I was family, John, and you treated me like I was nothing.”

“Allan, believe me, I never -”

“Out!” Renshaw yelled, sniffing back more tears. “I want you out of my house-now!” He’d risen stiffly to his feet. Rebus was up, too, the two men standing awkwardly, heads angled against the roofbeams, backs bent.

“Look, Allan, if it’s any…”

But Renshaw had him by the shoulder, trying to maneuver him to the hatch.

“All right, all right,” Rebus was saying. He tried yanking himself free of the other man’s grip, and Renshaw stumbled, one foot finding no purchase, sending him falling through the hatch. Rebus grabbed him by the arm, feeling his fingers burn as he tightened his grip. Renshaw scrabbled back upright.

“You okay?” Rebus asked.

“Didn’t you hear me?” Renshaw was pointing at the ladder.

“Okay, Allan. But we’ll talk again sometime, eh? That’s what I came here for: to talk, to get to know you.”

“You had your chance to get to know me,” Renshaw said coldly. Rebus was making his way back down the ladder. He peered up through the gap, but his cousin wasn’t visible.

“Are you coming down, Allan?” he called. No response. Then the buzzing sound again, as the red car recommenced its journey. Rebus turned and headed downstairs. Didn’t really know what to do, whether it was safe to leave Allan like this. He walked into the living room, through to the kitchen. Outside, the lawn mower had yet to move. There were sheets of paper on the table, computer printouts. Petitions calling for gun control, for more safety in schools. No names as yet, just row after row of blank boxes. The same thing had happened after Dunblane. A tightening of rules and regulations. Result? More illegal guns than ever out there on the street. Rebus knew that in Edinburgh, if you knew where to go asking, you could get a gun in under an hour. In Glasgow, it was reckoned to take all of ten minutes. Guns were run like rental videos: you hired them for a day. If they came back unused, you got some money back. Used, and you didn’t. A simple commercial transaction, not too far removed from Peacock Johnson’s activities. Rebus thought about signing his name to the petition but knew it would be an empty gesture. There were lots of newspaper cuttings and reprints of magazine articles: the effects of violence in the media. Knee-jerk stuff, like saying a horror video could make two kids kill a toddler… He had a look around, wondering if Kate had left a contact number. He wanted to talk to her about her father, maybe tell her Allan needed her more than Jack Bell did. He stood at the foot of the stairs for a few minutes, listening to the noises in the attic, then checked the phone book for a taxi firm.

“Be with you in ten,” the voice on the phone told him. A cheery, female voice. It was almost enough to persuade him that there was another world than this…

Siobhan stood in the middle of her living room and looked around her. She walked over to the window and closed the shutters against the dying light. She picked up a mug and plate from the floor: toast crumbs identifying her last meal in the flat. She checked that there were no messages on her phone. It was Friday, which meant Toni Jackson and the other female officers would be expecting her, but the last thing she felt like was girlie bonhomie and the drunken eyeing-up of pub talent. The mug and plate took half a minute to wash and place on the draining board. A quick look in the fridge. The food she’d bought, intending to cook a meal for Rebus, was still there, a few days shy of its “best before” date. She closed the door again and went into her bedroom, straightened the duvet on her bed, confirmed that doing laundry would be necessary this weekend. Then into the bathroom, a glance at herself in the mirror before heading back into the living room, where she opened the day’s mail. Two bills and a postcard. The postcard was from an old college friend. They hadn’t managed to see each other this year, despite living in the same city. Now the friend was enjoying a four-day break in Rome… probably already back, judging by the date on the card. Rome: Siobhan had never been there.