They emerged into the centre of the city. Blue hitched his pack on his back and looked around curiously. They set off west down Princes Street, which ran straight as an arrow towards the spires of St Mary’s Cathedral, to find the guest house Blue had booked for himself.

It was a little after eight in the evening, so the end-of-day crowd had subsided from its peak, and the light was starting to go. All the monuments of the city seemed to be bathed in yellow-gold floodlights: the Castle on its shapeless volcanic mound, the Balmoral Hotel, and the memorial for Walter Scott which looked, Henry thought, like a Saturn V launch gantry rendered in sandstone, turned black as coal by pollution, which the monument was too fragile to have washed off.

“So,” said Henry. “What do you think?”

Blue gazed around, his rheumy eyes analytical. “Skinny,” he said. “England has a lot of skinny buildings.”

“It may do. But this is Scotland.”

“Whatever. And it’s kind of grubby from the pollution.”

“True enough.”

“So where’s the volcano?”

Henry clapped him on the shoulder. “Tomorrow, old man. You need to sleep off your jet lag.”

Blue sighed. “I suppose you are right.”

They arrived in a small, straight side-street in the west of the city, not far from the shadow of St Mary’s. The guest house was a rambling, much-extended building next to a cobbled courtyard, entered by a narrow archway. The ground floor was pretty much a pub, a long bar gleaming with glass and leather, circular brass tables crowded with drinkers cradling pints in straight glasses; cigarette smoke hung like a volcanic pall in the air.

Blue grinned at Henry. “I think I will like it here.”

He didn’t object when Henry picked up his rucksack to carry it up the two flights of stairs to his room (no elevator, of course). The room, when they got to it, was just a box, not much bigger than a bed and a shower stall.

Back in the bar, which was still more crowded than before, Blue insisted on buying the drinks. They sat at a table in the corner, sticky with stale beer, and Blue waited patiently, until Henry had to explain that in a British pub you had to go up to the bar and order your drinks and bring them back. On the other hand, in cafes and restaurants you were supposed to wait for service… and so forth. Blue accepted all this serenely, went to the bar, and came back with two glasses full to the brim with heavy Scottish bitter.

“Here’s to you,” Henry said.

“Kampai!”

The beer was heavy, flat and warm; Henry was working at getting used to the stuff, but he had a ways to go yet.

“Your room’s kind of small,” he said.