“Which means word will get around.”

“Should I tell the DCI?”

“I’ll let you decide.” Rebus had wedged the phone between his shoulder and his cheek so he could steer the maze-like course to the gates of the crematorium.

“You’re breaking up,” Siobhan said.

Not if I can help it, Rebus thought to himself.

Cyril Colliar had been murdered six weeks before. Age twenty, he’d been locked away on a fixed ten-year stretch for a vicious rape. At the end of the sentence, he’d been released, despite the reservations of prison warders, police, and social services. They figured he was as big a threat as ever, having shown no remorse, denying his guilt despite DNA evidence. Colliar had returned to his native Edinburgh. All the bodybuilding he’d done in prison paid off. He worked as a nighttime bouncer and daytime muscle. His employer on both counts was Morris Gerald Cafferty. Big Ger was a villain of long standing. In had been Rebus’s job to confront him about his latest employee.

“What do I care?” had been the retort.

“He’s dangerous.”

“Way you’re hassling him would try the patience of a saint.” Cafferty swinging from side to side on his leather swivel chair, behind his desk at MGC Lettings. Anyone was slow with the weekly rent on one of Cafferty’s flats, Rebus guessed that was where Colliar would take over. Cafferty owned minicabs, too, and at least three raucous bars in the less salubrious parts of town. Plenty of work for Cyril Colliar.

Right up until the night he’d turned up dead. Skull caved in, the blow coming from behind. Pathologist figured he’d have died from that alone, but just to make sure, someone had added a syringe of very pure heroin. No indication that the deceased had been a user. Deceased was the word most of the cops on the case had used-and grudgingly at that. Nobody bothered with the term victim. Nobody could say the words out loud-Bastard got what he deserved-that wasn’t the done thing these days.