Detective Sergeant Brian Holmes was in the Murder Room, handing a polystyrene cup of tea to Detective Constable Siobhan Clarke, and laughing about something.

`What's the joke?’

asked Rebus.

'The one about the hard-up squid,' Holmes answered.

`The one with the moustache?’

Holmes nodded, wiping an imaginary tear from his eye. `And Gervase the waiter. Brilliant, eh, sir?’

'Brilliant.’

Rebus looked around. The Murder Room was all purposeful activity. Photos of the victim and the locus had been pinned up on one wall, a staff rota not far from it. The staff rota was on a plastic wipe-board, and a WPC was checking names from a list against a series of duties and putting them on the board in thick blue marker-pen. Rebus went over to her. `Keep DI Flower and me away from one another, eh? Even if it means a slip of the pen.’

'I could get into trouble for that, Inspector.’

She was smiling, so Rebus winked at her. Everyone knew that having Rebus and Flower in close proximity, two detectives 'who hated one another, would be counter productive. But of course Lauderdale was in charge. It was Lauderdale's list, and Lauderdale liked to see sparks fly, so much so that he might have been happier in a foundry.

Holmes and Clarke knew what Rebus had been talking about with the WPC, but said nothing.

`I'm going back down Mary King's Close,' Rebus said quietly. `Anyone want to tag along?’

He had two takers.

Rebus was keeping an eye on Brian Holmes. Holmes hadn't tendered his resignation yet, but you never knew when it might come. When you joined the police, of course, you signed on for the long haul, but Holmes's significant other was pulling on the other end of the rope, and it was hard to tell who'd win the tug o' war.