`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.’

Rebus lit himself a cigarette and drove home.

He sat in his chair and thought about Rhona. They'd shared so much over so many years… and then it had all stopped. He'd chosen his job over his marriage, and that could not be forgiven. Last time he'd seen her had been in London, wearing her new life like armour. Nobody had warned him about Jackie Platt. His phone rang, and he snatched it from the floor.

`Rebus.’

`It's Bill.’

Pryde sounded halfway to excited, which was as far as he ever ventured.

`What have you got?’

`Dark green Rover 600 – I think the owner called it "Sherwood Green" – stolen yesterday evening about an hour before the collision.’

`Where from?’

`Metered parking on George Street.’

`What do you reckon?’

`My advice is, keep an open mind. Having said that, at least now we've got a licence plate. Owner reported it at sixforty last night. It hasn't turned up anywhere, so I've upped the alert status.’

`Give me the reg.’

Pryde read out the letters and numbers. Rebus thanked him and put down the phone. He was thinking of Danny Simpson, dumped outside Fascination Street around the time Sammy was being hit. Coincidence? Or a double message, Telford and Rebus. Which put Big Ger Cafferty in the frame. He called the hospital, was told there was no change. Farlowe was in visiting. The nurse said he had his laptop with him.

Rebus recalled Sammy growing up – a series of isolated images. He hadn't been there for her. He saw her in a series of fast jerky impressions, as if the film had been spliced. He tried not to think about the hell she had gone through at the hands of Gordon Reeve…

He saw good people doing bad things and bad people doing good, and he tried dividing the two into groups. He saw Candice and Tommy Telford and Mr Pink Eyes. And encompassing it all, he saw Edinburgh. He saw the mass of the people just getting on with their lives, and he saluted them. They knew things and felt things, things he'd never feel. He used to think he knew things. As a kid, he'd known everything. Now he knew differently. The only thing you could be sure of was the inside of your head, and even that could deceive you. I don't even know myself, he thought. So how could he ever hope to know Sammy? And with each year, he understood less.

He thought of the Oxford Bar. Even on the wagon, he'd stayed a regular, drinking cola and mugs of coffee. A pub like the Ox was about so much more than just the hooch. It was therapy and refuge, entertainment and art. He checked his watch, thinking he could head down there now. Just a couple of whiskies and a beer, something to make him feel good about himself until the morning.

The phone rang again. He picked it up.

`Evening, John.’ Rebus smiled, leaned back in his chair. `Jack, you must be a bloody mind reader…’

Mid-morning, Rebus walked through the cemetery. He'd been to the hospital to check on Sammy – no change. Now, he felt he had time to kill…

`A bit cooler today, Inspector.’

Joseph Lintz rose from his knees and pushed his glasses back up to the bridge of his nose. There were damp patches on his trousers from where he'd been kneeling. He dropped his trowel on to a white polythene bag. Beside the bag stood pots of small green plants. `Won't the frost get them?’

Rebus asked. Lintz shrugged.

`It gets all of us, but we're allowed to bloom for a while.’

Rebus turned away. Today, he wasn't in the mood for games. Warriston Cemetery was vast. In the past, it had been a history lesson to Rebus – headstones telling the story of nineteenth-century Edinburgh – but now he found it a jarring reminder of mortality. They were the only living souls in the place. Lintz had pulled out a handkerchief.

`More questions?’ he asked.

`Not exactly.’

`What then?’

`Truth is, Mr Lintz, I've got other things on my mind.’

The old man looked at him. `Maybe all this archaeology is beginning to bore you, Inspector?’

`I still don't get it, planting things before the first frost?’

`Well, I can't plant very much afterwards, can I? And at my age… any day now I could be lying in the ground. I like to think there might be a few flowers surviving above me.’

He'd lived in Scotand the best part of half a century, but there was still something lurking beneath the local accent, peculiarities of phrasing and tone that would be with Joseph Lintz until he died, reminders of his far less recent history.

`So,' he said now, `no questions today?’

Rebus shook his head. `You're right, Inspector, you do seem preoccupied. Is it something I can help with?’

`In what way?’

`I don't really know. But you've come here, questions or no. I take it there's a reason?’

A dog was bounding through the long grass, crunching on the fallen leaves, nose brushing the ground. It was a yellow Labrador, short-haired and overweight. Lintz turned towards it and almost growled. Dogs were the enemy.

`I was just wondering,' Rebus was saying, `what you're capable of.’

Lintz looked puzzled. The dog began to paw at the ground. Lintz reached down, picked up a stone, and hurled it. It didn't reach the dog. The Labrador's owner was rounding the corner. He was young, crop-haired and skinny.

`That thing should be kept on its lead!' Lintz roared.

`Jawohl!' the owner snapped back, clicking his heels. He was laughing as he passed them.

`I am a famous man now,' Lintz reflected, back to his old self after the outburst. `Thanks to the newspapers.’

He looked up at the sky, blinked. `People send me hate by the Royal Mail. A car was parked outside my home the other night… they put a brick through the windscreen. It wasn't my car, but they didn't know that. Now my neighbours keep clear of that spot, just in case.’