‘Can’t say I remember.’

‘Well, let’s hope your long-term memory’s better.’ He opened a file. ‘Because now the fun really begins.’ He nodded for a sheepish Jack to switch on the tape recorder, then started off by giving date and time, officers present … Rebus felt as if he’d explode. He really thought if he sat there a second longer, his eyeballs would fly from their sockets like those jokeshop glasses with spring-loaded eyes. He’d felt like this before, just before a panic attack. But he wasn’t panicking now; he was just charged. He stood up. Ancram broke off what he’d been saying.

‘Something the matter, Inspector?’

‘Look,’ Rebus rubbed at his forehead, ‘I can’t think straight … not about Spaven. Not today.’

‘That’s for me to decide, not you. If you’re feeling ill, we can call for a doctor, but otherwise …’

‘I’m not ill. I just …’

‘Then sit down.’ Rebus sat down, and Ancram went back to his notes. ‘Now, Inspector, on the night referred to, your report states that you were at Inspector Geddes’ house, and there was a telephone call?’

‘Yes.’

‘You didn’t actually hear the conversation?’

‘No.’ Braid-hair and Mitchison … Mitch the organiser, protester. Mitch the oil-worker. Killed by Tony El, henchman to Uncle Joe. Eve and Stanley, working Aberdeen, sharing a room …

‘But DI Geddes told you it was to do with Mr Spaven? A tip-off?’

‘Yes.’ Burke’s Club, police hang-out, maybe an oil-workers’ hang-out too. Hayden Fletcher drinking there. Ludovic Lumsden drinking there. Michelle Strachan meets Johnny Bible there …

‘And Geddes didn’t say who the call was from?’

‘Yes.’ Ancram looked up, and Rebus knew he’d given the wrong answer. ‘I mean, no.’

‘No?’

‘No.’

Ancram stared at him, sniffed, concentrated on his notes again. There were pages and pages of them, specially prepared for this session: questions to be asked, ‘facts’ double-checked, the whole case stripped down and rebuilt.

‘Anonymous tip-offs are pretty rare in my experience,’ Ancram said.

‘Yes.’

‘And they’re almost always made to a police station’s general desk. Would you agree?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Was Aberdeen the key then, or did the answers lie further north? What did Jake Harley have to do with it? And Mike Sutcliffe – Mr Sheepskin – hadn’t Major Weir warned him off? What was it Sutcliffe had said? He’d said something on the plane, then stopped suddenly … Something about a boat …

And did any of it connect to Johnny Bible? Was Johnny Bible an oilman?

‘So it would be rational to deduce that DI Geddes knew the caller, wouldn’t it?’

‘Or they knew him.’

Ancram shrugged this aside. ‘And this tip-off just happened to concern Mr Spaven. Didn’t that strike you at the time as a bit of a coincidence, Inspector? Seeing as Geddes had been warned off Spaven already? I mean, it must have been clear to you that your boss was obsessed with Spaven?’

Rebus got up again and started pacing the small room as best he could.