“What about it, John?” Hogan was asking. “Will you help?”

Warm, fuzzy cotton… it could protect you, cushion you…

No mystery… Siobhan’s words… lost his marbles, that’s all…

“Just one question, Bobby.”

Bobby Hogan looked tired and slightly lost. Leith meant drugs, stabbings, prossies. Those, Bobby could deal with. Rebus got the feeling he’d been summoned here because Bobby Hogan needed a friend by his side.

“Fire away,” Hogan said.

“Got a cigarette on you?” Rebus asked.

There were too many people fighting for space in the Portakabin. Hogan loaded Siobhan’s arms with paperwork, everything they had on the case, the copies still warm from the machine in the school office. Outside, a group of herring gulls had gathered on the lawn, seemingly curious. Rebus flicked them his cigarette butt and they sprinted towards it.

“I could report you for cruelty,” Siobhan told him.

“Ditto,” he said, looking the amount of paperwork up and down. Grant Hood was finishing a phone call, tucking his mobile back in his pocket. “Where did our friend go?” Rebus asked him.

“You mean Dirty Mac Jack?” Rebus smiled at the nickname, which had graced the front page of a tabloid the morning after Bell’s arrest.

“That’s who I mean.”

Hood nodded down the hill. “A member of the press corps called him, offering a TV slot at the school gates. Jack was off like a flash.”

“So much for not budging from the spot. Are the press boys behaving themselves?”

“What do you think?”

Rebus responded with a twitch of the mouth. Hood’s phone sounded again, and he turned away to take the call. Rebus watched Siobhan maneuver the car trunk open, some of the sheets slipping onto the ground. She picked them up again.