Black and Blue

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‘Tell me again why you killed them.’

‘I’ve told you, it’s just this urge.’

Rebus looked back at his notes. ‘The word you used was “compulsion”.’

The slumped figure in the chair nodded. Bad smells came off him. ‘Urge, compulsion, same thing.’

‘Is it?’ Rebus stubbed out his cigarette. There were so many butts in the tin ashtray, a couple spilled over on to the metal table. ‘Let’s talk about the first victim.’

The man opposite him groaned. His name was William Crawford Shand, known as ‘Craw’. He was forty years old, single, and lived alone in a council block in Craigmillar. He had been unemployed six years. He ran twitching fingers through dark greasy hair, seeking out and covering a large bald spot at the crown of his head.

‘The first victim,’ Rebus said. ‘Tell us.’

‘Us’ because there was another CID man in the biscuit-tin. His name was Maclay, and Rebus didn’t know him very well. He didn’t know anyone at Craigmillar very well, not yet. Maclay was leaning against the wall, arms folded, eyes reduced to slits. He looked like a piece of machinery at rest.

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