'Spit it out,' he said.

Tibbet was holding out another sheet of paper. 'Fax from the Caledonian. Several of the hotel residents bought brandies at the bar that night.'

'Any of them Russian?' Rebus asked.

'Have a look.'

So Rebus took the fax from him and saw three names staring back at him. Two were complete strangers, but didn't sound foreign.

The third wasn't foreign either, but it sent the blood thrumming in his ears.

Mr M. Cafferty.

M for Morris. Morris Gerald Cafferty.

'Big Ger,' Hawes explained, with no necessity whatsoever.

Rebus had only the one question: bring him in, or question him at his house?

'My decision, not yours,' Siobhan Clarke reminded him. She'd been back from the mortuary half an hour and seemed to be nursing a headache. Tibbet had made her a coffee, and Rebus had watched her press two tablets from their foil enclosure into the palm of her hand. Todd Goodyear had thrown up only the once, in the mortuary car park, though there had been another crisis point on the way back to Gayfield Square when they passed some men laying tarmac.

'Something about the smell,' he'd explained.

He now looked pale and shaken, but kept telling everyone he was all right – whether they wanted to hear it or not. Clarke had gathered them round so she could tell them what Gates and Curt had told her: male, five ten, rings on two fingers of the right hand, gold watch on one wrist, and with a broken jaw.

'Maybe a roof beam fell on him,' she speculated. The victim hadn't been tied to any piece of furniture, and neither his hands nor his feet had been bound. 'Just lying in a heap on the living-room floor.

Probable cause of death: smoke inhalation. Gates did stress that these were preliminary findings…'

Rebus: 'Still makes it a suspicious death.'

Hawes: 'Which means it's ours.'

'And ID?' Tibbet asked.

'Dental records, if we're lucky.'

'Or the rings?' Goodyear guessed.

'Even if they belonged to Riordan,' Rebus told him, 'doesn't mean Riordan was the last man wearing them. I had a case ten or

twelve years back, guy being done for fraud tried faking his own death…'

Goodyear nodded slowly, beginning to see.

After which, Rebus divulged his own news, before asking his question.

Clarke sat with the fax in one hand, head resting in the other.

'This,' she said, 'just keeps getting better and better. Then, raising her eyes to meet Rebus's: 'Interview Room 3?'

'IR3 it is,' he said, 'and remember to wrap up warm.'

Cafferty, however, sat with his chair slid back from the table, one leg crossed over the over and hands behind his head, for all the world as if he were in the parlour back home.

'Siobhan,' he said as she walked into the room, 'always a great delight. Doesn't she look businesslike, Rebus? You've trained her to perfection.'

Rebus closed the door and took up position by the wall, Clarke easing herself on to the chair opposite Cafferty. He gave her a little bow, inclining the great dome of his head but keeping the hands where they were.

'I was wondering when you would pull me in,' he said.

'So you knew it was coming?' Clarke had placed a blank pad of paper on the table and was taking the top off her pen.

'With DI Rebus only days away from the scrapheap?' The gangster glanced in Rebus's direction. 'I knew you'd dream up some pretext for giving me grief.'

'Well, as it happens, we've got slightly more than a pretext-'

'Did you know, Siobhan,' Cafferty broke in, 'that John here sits outside my house of an evening, making sure I'm tucked up in bed?

I'd say that level of protection goes somewhat beyond the call of duty.'

Clarke was trying not to be deflected. She placed her pen on the table, but then had to stop it rolling towards the edge. 'Tell us about Alexander Todorov,' she began.

'Say again?'

'The man you bought a tenner's worth of cognac for last Wednesday night.'

'In the bar of the Caledonian Hotel,' Rebus added.

'What? The Polish guy?'

'Russian, actually,' Clarke corrected him.

Tou live a mile and a half away,' Rebus pressed on. 'Makes me

wonder why you'd need a room.'

'To get away from you, maybe?' Cafferty made show of guessing.

II'Or just because I can afford one.'

'And then you sit in the bar, buying drinks for strangers,' Clarke added.

Cafferty unlinked his hands so he could raise a finger, as if to stress a point. 'Difference between Rebus and me – he'd sit in the bar all night and buy drinks for no bugger.' He gave a cold chuckle.

'This is the sum total of why you've dragged me here – because I bought some poor immigrant a drink?'

'How many “poor immigrants” do you reckon would wander into that bar?' Rebus asked.

Cafferty made show of thinking, closing his sunken eyes and then opening them again. They were like dark little pebbles in his huge pale face. Tou have a fair point,' he admitted. 'But the man was still a stranger to me. What's he gone and done?'

'He's gone and been murdered,' Rebus said, with as much restraint as he could muster. 'And as of right now, you're the last person who saw him alive.'

'Whoa there.' Cafferty looked from one detective to the other.

'The poet guy, the one I saw in the papers?'

'Attacked on King's Stables Road, maybe fifteen or twenty minutes after drinking with you. What was it the pair of you fell out about?'

Cafferty ignored Rebus and concentrated on Clarke. 'Do I need my solicitor here?'

'Not as yet,' she said levelly. Cafferty smiled again.

'Are you not wondering, Siobhan, why I'm asking you and not Rebus? He outranks you, after all.' Now he turned back to Rebus.

'But you're days from the scrapheap, just like I say, while Siobhan here's still on the way up. If the pair of you have got a case on the go, my guess is that Old Man Macrae will have seen sense and put Shiv in charge.'

'Only my friends get to call me Shiv.'

'My apologies, Siobhan.'

'Far as you're concerned, I'm Detective Sergeant Clarke.'

Cafferty whistled through his teeth and slapped one meaty thigh.

Trained her to perfection,' he repeated. 'And rare entertainment with it.'

“What were you doing at the Caledonian Hotel?' Clarke asked, as if he'd never spoken.

'Having a drink.'

'And staying in a room?'

'It can be murder, finding a taxi home.'

'So how did you meet Alexander Todorov?'

'I was in the bar…'

'Alone?'

'But only because I wanted to be – unlike DI Rebus there, I have plenty of friends I can drink and have a laugh with. I'm betting you'd be fun to drink with, too, DS Clarke, so long as misery-guts was elsewhere.'

'And Todorov just happened to sit next to you?' Clarke was guessing.

'I was on a stool at the bar. He was standing, waiting to get served. Barman was crafting a cocktail, so we had a minute or two to talk. I liked him well enough to put his drink on my tab.'

Cafferty offered an exaggerated shrug. 'He slugged it, said thanks, and buggered off.'

'He didn't offer to buy one back?' Rebus asked. He took the poet to be a drinker of the old school; etiquette would have demanded no less.

'Actually he did,' Cafferty admitted. 'I told him I was fine.'

'Here's hoping the CCTV backs you up,' Rebus commented.

For the first time, Cafferty's mask slipped a little, though the unease was momentary at best. 'It will,' he stated.

Rebus just nodded slowly while Clarke suppressed a smile. Good to know they could still rattle Cafferty.

“Victim was beaten without mercy,' Rebus went on. 'If I'd thought about it, I'd've had you in the frame from the word go.'