“He was a madman.”

“But why the school? Why that particular day? You see what I’m saying.”

“You’re saying you won’t let it lie. All we want is to be left alone.”

“We need to know, Allan.”

“Why?” Renshaw’s voice was rising. “What’s it going to change? You going to bring Derek back? I don’t think so. The bastard who did it’s dead… I don’t see that anything else matters.”

“Drink your tea, Dad,” Kate said, a hand reaching for her father’s arm. He took it in his own hand, held it up to plant a kiss.

“It’s just us now, Kate. Nobody else matters.”

“I thought you just told me family mattered. The inspector’s our family, isn’t he?”

Renshaw looked at Rebus again, eyes filling with tears. Then he got up and walked from the room. They sat for a moment, hearing him climbing the stairs.

“We’ll just leave him,” Kate said, sounding sure of her role and comfortable with it. She straightened in her seat and pressed her hands together. “I don’t think Derek knew the man. I mean, South Queensferry’s a village, there’s always the chance he knew his face, maybe even who he was. But nothing other than that.”

Rebus nodded but stayed quiet, hoping she would feel the need to fill the silence. It was a game Siobhan knew how to play, too.

“He didn’t pick them out, did he?” Kate went on, going back to stroking Boethius. “I mean, it was just the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“We don’t know yet,” Rebus responded. “It was the first room he went into, but he’d passed other doors to get to it.”

She looked at him. “Dad told me the other boy was a judge’s son.”

“You didn’t know him?”

She shook her head. “Not well.”

“Weren’t you a pupil at Port Edgar?”

“Yes, but Derek’s two years younger than me.”

“I think what Kate means,” Siobhan clarified, “is that all the boys in his year were two years younger than her, so she wouldn’t be disposed to have any interest in them.”