There was no mention of the previous night's grisly find in Mary King's Close. The news had seeped out too late for publication. But Rebus knew there would be something about it on the local radio news, so he was quite content for once when Patience tuned the bedside radio to a classical station.

He should have come off his shift at midnight, but murder tended to disrupt the system of shifts. On a murder inquiry, you stopped working when you reasonably could. Rebus had hung around till two in the morning, consulting with the night shift about the corpse in Mary King's Close. He'd contacted his Chief Inspector and Chief Super, and kept in touch with Fettes HQ, where the forensic stuff' had gone. DI Flower kept telling him to go home. Finally he'd taken tile advice.

The real problem with back shifts was that Rebus couldn't sleep well after them anyway. He'd managed four hours since arriving home, and four hours would suffice. But there was a warm pleasure in slipping into bed as dawn neared, curling against the body already asleep there. And even more pleasure in pushing the cat off the bed as you did so.

Before retiring, he'd swallowed four measures of whisky He told himself it was purely medicinal, but rinsed the put it away, hoping Patience wouldn't notice. She` complained often of his drinking, among other things.

`We're eating out,' she said now.

`When?’

'Lunch today.’

`Where?’

`That place out at Carlops.’

Rebus nodded. `Witch's Leap,' he said.

`What?’

`That's what Carlops means. There's a big rock there. They used to throw suspected witches from it. If you didn't fly, you were innocent.’

`But also dead?’

`Their judicial system wasn't perfect, witness the duckingstool. Same principle.’

`How do you know all this?’

`It's amazing what these young constables know nowadays.’