Next morning, Rebus went to St Leonard's, telephoned the NCIS centre at Prestwick and asked if they had anything connecting British criminals to European prostitution. His reasoning: someone had brought Candice – she was still Candice to him – from Amsterdam to Britain, and he didn't think it was Telford. Whoever it was, Rebus would get to them somehow. He wanted to show Candice her chains could be broken.

He got NCIS to fax him what information they had. Most of it concerned the `Tippelzone', a licensed car park where drivers went for sex. It was worked by foreign prostitutes mainly, most of them lacking work permits, many smuggled in from Eastern Europe. The main gangs seemed to be from former Yugoslavia. NCIS had no names for any of these kidnappers-cum-pimps. There was nothing about prostitutes making the trip from Amsterdam to Britain.

Rebus went into the car park to smoke his second cigarette of the day. There were a couple of other smokers out there, a small brotherhood of social pariahs. Back in the office, the Farmer wanted to know if there was any progress on Lintz.

`Maybe if I brought him in and slapped him around a bit,' Rebus suggested.

`Be serious, will you?’ the Farmer growled, stalking back to his office.

Rebus sat down at his desk and pulled forward a file.

`Your problem, Inspector,' Lintz had said to him once, `is that you're afraid of being taken seriously. You want to give people what you think they expect. I mention the Ishtar gate, and you talk of some Hollywood movie. At first I thought this was meant to rouse me to some indiscretion, but now it seems more a game you are playing against yourself.’

Rebus: seated in his usual chair in Lintz's drawing-room. The view from the window was of Queen Street Gardens. They were kept locked: you had to pay for a key.

`Do educated people frighten you?’

Rebus looked at the old man. `No.’

`Are you sure? Don't you perhaps wish you were more like them?’

Lintz grinned, showing small, discoloured teeth. `Intellectuals like to see themselves as history's victims, prejudiced against, arrested for their beliefs, even tortured and murdered. But Karadzic thinks himself an intellectual. The Nazi hierarchy had its thinkers and philosophers. And even in Babylon…’

Lintz got up, poured himself more tea. Rebus declined a refill.

`Even in Babylon, Inspector,' Lintz continued, getting comfortable again, `with its opulence and its artistry, with its enlightened king… do you know what they did? Nebuchadnezzar held the Jews captive for seventy years. This splendid, awe-inspiring civilisation… Do you begin to see the madness, Inspector, the flaws that run so deep in us?’

`Maybe I need glasses.’

Lintz threw his cup across the room. `You need to listen and to learn! You need to understand!' The cup and saucer lay on the carpet, still intact. Tea was soaking into the elaborate design, where it would become all but invisible…

He parked on Buccleuch Place. The Slavic Studies department was housed in one of the tenements. He tried the secretary's office first, asked if Dr Colquhoun was around.

`I haven't seen him today.’

When Rebus explained what he wanted, the secretary tried a couple of numbers but didn't find anyone. Then she suggested he take a look in their library, which was one floor up and kept locked. She handed him a key.

The room was about sixteen feet by twelve, and smelled stuffy. The shutters across the windows were closed, giving the place no natural light. A No Smoking sign sat on one of four desks. On another sat an ashtray with three butts in it. One entire wall was shelved, filled with books, pamphlets, magazines. There were boxes of press cuttings, and maps on the walls showing Yugoslavia 's changing demarcation lines. Rebus lifted down the most recent box of cuttings.

Like a lot of people he knew, Rebus didn't know much about the war in ex-Yugoslavia. He'd seen some of the news reports, been shocked by the pictures, then had got on with his life. But if the cuttings were to be believed, the whole region was being run by war criminals. The Implementation Force seemed to have done its damnedest to avoid confrontation. There had been a few arrests recently, but nothing substantial: out of a meagre seventy-four suspects charged, only seven had been apprehended.

He found nothing about slave traders, so thanked the secretary and gave her back her key, then crawled through the city traffic. When the call came on his mobile, he nearly went off the road.

Candice had disappeared.

Mrs Petrec was distraught. They'd had dinner last night, breakfast this morning, and Dunya had seemed fine.

`There was a lot she said she couldn't tell us,' Mr Petrec said, standing behind his seated wife, hands stroking her shoulders. `She said she wanted to forget.’

And then she'd gone out for a walk down to the harbour, and hadn't returned. Lost maybe, though the village was small. Mr Petrec had been working; his wife had gone out, asking people if they'd seen her.

`And Mrs Muir's son,' she said, `he told me she'd been taken away in a car.’

`Where was this?’ Rebus asked.

`Just a couple of streets away,' Mr Petrec said.

`Show me.’

Outside his home on Seaford Road, Eddie Muir, aged eleven, told Rebus what he'd seen. A car stopping beside a woman. A bit of chat, though he couldn't hear it. The door opening, the woman getting in.

`Which door, Eddie?’

`One of the back ones. Had to be, there were two of them in the car already.’

`Men?’

Eddie nodded.

`And the woman got in by herself? I mean, they didn't grab her or anything?’

Eddie shook his head. He was straddling his bike, keen to be going. One foot kept testing a pedal.

`Can you describe the car?’

`Big, a bit flash. Not from round here.’

`And the men?’

`Didn't really get a good look. Driver was wearing a Pars shirt.’

Meaning a football shirt, Dunfermline Athletic. Which would mean he was from Fife. Rebus frowned. A pick-up? Could that be it? Candice back to her old ways so soon? Not likely, not in a place like this, on a street like this. It was no chance encounter. Mrs Petrec was right: she'd been snatched. Which meant someone had known where to find her. Had Rebus been followed yesterday? If he had, they'd been invisible. Some device on his car? It seemed unlikely, but he checked wheel-arches and the underbody: nothing. Mrs Petrec had calmed a little, her husband having administered medicinal vodka. Rebus could use a shot himself, but turned down the offer.

`Did she make any phone calls?’ he asked. Petrec shook his head. `What about strangers hanging around the street?’

`I would have noticed. After Sarajevo, it's hard to feel safe, Inspector.’

He opened his arms. `And here's the proof nowhere's safe.’

`Did you tell anyone about Dunya?’

`Who would we tell?’

Who knew? That was the question. Rebus did. And Claverhouse and Ormiston knew about the place, because Colquhoun had mentioned it.

Colquhoun knew. The nervy old Slavic Studies specialist knew… On the way back to Edinburgh, Rebus tried phoning him at office and home: no reply. He'd told the Petrecs to let him know if Candice came back, but he didn't think she'd be coming back. He remembered the look she'd given him early on when he'd asked her to trust him. I won't be surprised if you let me down. Like she'd known back then that he'd fail. And she'd given him a second chance, waiting for him beside his car. And he'd let her down. He got back on his mobile and called Jack Morton.

`Jack,' he said, `for Christ's sake, talk me out of having a drink.’

He tried Colquhoun's home address and the Slavic Studies office: both locked up tight. Then he drove to Flint Street and looked for Tommy Telford in the arcade. But Telford wasn't there. He was in the cafe's back office, surrounded as usual by his men.