Well, all that was behind me. I was a bobby, back in Scotland and happy with my lot. Then I got roped into the Bible John case. You’ve got to remember, we didn’t know him as ‘Bible John’ until very late on. It was after the third victim that we got the description of him quoting from the Bible. That’s when the papers came up with the name. Well, when I thought about someone quoting from the Bible, a strangler and rapist, I remembered Borneo. I went to my boss and told him all about it. He said it was a long shot of Olympic standards, but that I could chase it up in my own time if I liked. You know me, John, never one to resist a challenge. Besides, I had a shortcut planned – Lenny Spaven. I knew he was back in Scotland, and he’d have info on all the church-goers. So I got in touch with him, but he’d gone from bad to rotten, didn’t want anything to do with it. I’m the persistent type, and he complained about me to my boss. That got me a warning to ease off, but I wasn’t about to ease off. I knew what I wanted: I reckoned Lenny might have photos from his days in Borneo, maybe with him and the rest of the flock. I wanted to show them to the woman who’d shared the taxi with Bible John. I wanted to see if she recognised anyone. But bloody Spaven kept standing in my way. Eventually, I did manage to get some photos – going the long way round, talking to the army first, then tracking down the minister from the time. It took weeks.

Rebus looked at Jack. ‘The photos Ancram showed us.’ Jack nodded.

We showed the photos to the eye-witness. Mind, they were eight or nine years out of date, and not very good to start with, water damaged some of them. She said she couldn’t be sure, she thought one of them ‘was like him’ – her words. But as my boss said, there were hundreds of men out there in the big wide world who bore a physical resemblance to the killer: we’d interviewed most of them. That wasn’t good enough for me. I got the man’s name, he was called Ray Sloane – an unusual enough name, and it wasn’t hard to track him down. Only he’d cleared out. He’d been living in a bedsit in Ayr, working as a toolmaker. But he’d recently given notice and moved on, nobody knew where. I was convinced in my mind that he could be the man we were looking for, but I couldn’t convince my boss to go all-out on finding him.

See, John, that delay while I was dealing with the army, it was all down to Spaven. If he’d helped, I’d have been on to Sloane before he’d had a chance to pack up and ship out. I know it, I can feel it. I might have had him. Instead of which, I had nothing but my anger and frustration, both of which I vented too publicly. The boss kicked me off the inquiry, and that was that.