Maybe thirty or forty over the course of his three-decades-plus on the force. Another ten days and this poor wretch would have been somebody else's problem – and still could be. For weeks now he'd been feeling Siobhan Clarke's tension: part of her, maybe the best part of her, wanted Rebus gone. It was the only way she could start to prove herself. Her eyes were on him now, as if she knew what he was thinking. He offered a sly smile.

'I'm not dead yet,' he said, as the Scene-of-Crime van slowed to a halt on the roadway.

The duty doctor had duly declared death. The SOCOs had taped off Raeburn Wynd at top and bottom. Lights had been erected, a sheet pinned up so that onlookers no longer had a view of anything except the shadows on the other side. Rebus and Clarke were suited up in the same white hooded disposable overalls as the SOCOs. A camera team had just arrived, and the mortuary van was standing by. Beakers of tea had materialised from somewhere, wisps of steam rising from them. In the distance: sirens headed elsewhere; drunken yelps from nearby Princes Street; maybe even the hooting of an owl from the churchyard. Preliminary statements had been taken from the teenage girl and the middle-aged couple, and Rebus was nicking through these, flanked by the two constables, the elder of whom, he now knew, was called Bill Dyson.

'Rumour is,' Dyson said, 'you've finally got your jotters.'

'Weekend after next,' Rebus confirmed. 'Can't be too far away yourself.'

'Seven months and counting. Nice wee taxi job lined up for afterwards.

Don't know how Todd will cope without me.'

'I'll try to maintain my composure,' Goodyear drawled.

'That's one thing you're good at,' Dyson was saying, as Rebus went back to his reading.