Rebus thought of meeting Aldous Zane in this very room. Zane had been in the papers again – he’d inspected the latest locus, given the same rambling spiel, and been flown home. Rebus wondered what Jim Stevens was up to now. He remembered Zane’s handshake, the way it had tingled. And Zane’s impressions of Bible John – though Stevens had been present, the paper hadn’t bothered printing them. A trunk in the attic of a modern house. Well, Rebus could have come up with better than that himself, if some paper had put him up in a posh hotel.

Lumsden had put him up in a posh hotel, probably thinking CID would never know. Lumsden had tried to get pally with him, telling him they were alike, showing Rebus that he had stature in the city – free meals and drinks, free entrance to Burke’s Club. He’d been testing Rebus, seeing how open he’d be to a bung. But at whose behest? The club’s owners? Or Uncle Joe himself …?

More photos. There seemed no end to them. It was the onlookers who interested Rebus, the people who didn’t know they’d been snapped for posterity. A woman in high heels, good legs – all you could see of her were heels and legs, the rest hidden behind a WPC taking part in a reconstruction. Woolly suits searching the back courts off Mackeith Street, looking for the victim’s handbag. The courts looked like bomb-sites – drying-poles poking up out of stunted grass and rubble. Roadside motor cars: Zephyrs, Hillman Imps, Zodiacs. A world ago. A bundle of posters sat in one box, the rubber band long ago perished. Photofits of Bible John along with varying descriptions: ‘Speaks with a polite Glasgow accent and has an erect posture’. Very helpful. The phone number of the inquiry HQ. They’d received thousands of phone calls, boxes of them. Brief details of every one, with more detailed back-up notes if the call seemed worth checking.

Rebus’s eyes moved over the remaining boxes. He chose one at random – a big flat cardboard box, inside which were newspapers from the time, intact and unread for quarter of a century. He examined front pages, then turned to the back to look at the sports. A few of the crosswords had been half-done, probably by a bored detective. Slips of paper stapled to each banner-head gave page numbers with Bible John coverage. But Rebus wasn’t going to find anything there. He looked at the other stories instead and smiled at some of the adverts. Some seemed artless by today’s standards; others hadn’t aged at all. In the personal ads, people were selling lawnmowers, washing machines, and record players at knockdown prices. In a couple of papers, Rebus found the same ad, framed like a public notice: ‘Find a New Life and a Good Job in America – Booklet Tells You How’. You had to send off a couple of stamps to an address in Manchester. Rebus sat back, wondering if Bible John had got that far.