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makes me think he used to work heavy shifts, two weeks on, two off. Maybe he didn’t always come home between times. He was earning enough to pay off a mortgage in the Financial District, and there’s a two-week gap between his latest credit-card transactions.’
    ‘You think he could have been offshore during that time?’
    Rebus shrugged. ‘I don’t know if that’s the way it still works, but in the early days I had friends who went to seek their fortune on the rigs. The stints lasted two weeks, seven days a week.’
    ‘Well, it’s worth following up. We need to check family, too, next of kin. Priority for the paperwork and formal ID. Question one in my mind: motive. Are we sticking with an argument?’
    Rebus shook his head. ‘There was too much premeditation,way too much. Did they just happen to find sealing-tape and a polythene bag in that tip? I think they brought them. Do you remember how the Krays got to Jack “the Hat” McVitie? No, you’re too young. They invited him to a party. He’d been paid to do a contract, but bottled it and couldn’t pay them back. It was in a basement, so down he comes crying out for birds and booze. No birds, no booze, just Ronnie grabbing him and Reggie stabbing him to death.’
    ‘So these two men lured Mitchison to the derelict flat?’
    ‘Maybe.’
    ‘To what end?’
    ‘Well, first thing they did was tie him up and wrap a bag around his head, so they didn’t have any questions to ask. They just wanted him crapping himself and then dead. I’d say it was straight assassination, with a bit of malicious cruelty thrown in.’
    ‘So was he thrown or did he jump?’
    ‘Does it matter?’
    ‘Very much, John.’ MacAskill stood up, leaned against the filing cabinet with his arms folded. ‘If he jumped, that’s tantamount to suicide, even if they had been planning to kill him. With the bag over his head and the way he was trussed up, we’ve got maybe culpable homicide. Their defence would be that they were trying to scare him, he got too scared and did something they hadn’t been expecting – jumped through a window.’
    ‘To do which he must have been scared out of his wits.’
    MacAskill shrugged. ‘Still not murder. The crux is, were they trying to scare him, or kill him?’
    ‘I’ll be sure to ask them.’
    ‘It’s got a gang feel to it: drugs maybe, or a loan he’d stopped repaying, somebody he’d ripped off.’ MacAskill returned to his chair. He opened a drawer and took out a can of Irn-Bru, opened it and started to drink. He never went to the pub after work, didn’t share the whisky when the team gota result. Soft drinks only: more ammo for the like-your-loafers brigade. He asked Rebus if he wanted a can.
    ‘Not while I’m on duty, sir.’
    MacAskill stifled a burp. ‘Get a bit more background on the victim, John, let’s see if it leads anywhere. Remember to chase forensics for fingerprint ID on the carry-out, and pathology for the PM results. Did he do drugs, that’s question one in my mind. Make things easier for us if he did. Unsolved, and we don’t even know how to frame it – not the sort of case I want to drag to the new station. Understood, John?’
    ‘Unquestionably, sir.’
    He turned to go, but the boss hadn’t quite finished. ‘That trouble over … what was the name again?’
    ‘Spaven?’ Rebus guessed.
    ‘Spaven, yes. Quietened down yet, has it?’
    ‘Quiet as the grave,’ Rebus lied, making his exit.

3
    That evening – a long-standing engagement – Rebus was at a rock concert at Ingliston Showground, an American headliner with a couple of biggish-name British acts supporting. Rebus was part of a team of eight, four different city stations represented, providing back-up (meaning protection) for Trading Standards sniffers. They were looking for bootleg gear – T-shirts and programmes, tapes and CDs – and had the full support of the bands’ management. This meant backstage passes, liberal use of the hospitality marquee,