As Rebus read, the years melted away again. He could hear Lawson’s voice, and see him swaggering into the station, or marching into a pub like he was the landlord, a word for everybody whether he knew them or not … Jack got up for a minute and returned with two mugs of coffee. They read on.

With Spaven dead and me out of the way, there’ll only be you left for the telly people to hassle. I don’t like to think of that – I know you’d nothing to do with any of it. So here’s this letter, after all these years, and maybe it’ll explain things. Shorn it to whoever you need to. They say dying men tell no lies, and maybe they’ll accept that the following is the truth as I know it.

I knew Lenny Spaven back in the Scots Guards. He was always getting into trouble, finding himself consigned to jankers or even on occasion the glass-house. He was a skiver, too, and that’s how he came to be involved with the minister. Spaven used to attend the Sunday church service (I say ‘church’ – in Borneo it was a tent, back home it was a Nissen hut). But I suppose a lot of places can be churches in the sight of God. Maybe I’ll ask him when I see him. It’s ninety-odd degrees outside, and I’m drinking firewater – the old usquebaugh. It tastes better than ever.

Rebus caught the sudden tang of whisky at the back of his mouth: memory playing tricks. Lawson used to drink Cutty Sark.

Spaven helped the minister out, laying hymnaries on the chairs, then counting them back in at the end. You know yourself there are some buggers in the army would steal a hymnary as soon as anything else. There weren’t many regular attenders. If things got hairy, a few more souls would turn up, praying it wouldn’t be them being nailed into a box at the end of play. Well, like I say, Spaven had it cushy. I didn‘t have much to do with him, or with any of the church types.

The thing is, John, there was a murder – a prostitute near our camp. A native girl from the kampong. The villagers blamed it on us, and even the Gurkhas knew it was probably a British soldier. There was an investigation – civil and military. Funny really, I mean, there we were going hell for leather killing people – it was what we got paid for – and there they were looking into a single murder. Anyway, they never found anyone for it. Thing is though, that prozzy was strangled, and one of her sandals was never recovered.

Rebus turned a page.