“Good memory on him, too. Remembers you and Stefan being present. Then the senior pathologist—Professor Donner—invents an excuse to get him out of the room. When he returns, Kennedy’s stomach has been opened and Stefan has emptied a hip flask of whisky into it. Why would he do that, Dod? You were there, so I’m assuming you know the answer.”

“What does Stefan say?”

“Stefan thinks I should mind my own business—but this is my business.”

“Kennedy was a scumbag of the first order, John.”

“I’m not going to argue about that. But Stefan killed him and made it look like an accident. I mean, maybe it was an accident. I’m not saying he meant to push him down those stairs. But it happened, and he was quick to arrange a cover-up. Probably left one or two empty bottles lying around the place, but then realized that the autopsy would show Kennedy hadn’t been drinking. Donner was a mate and open to a bit of bribery. Cuttle wasn’t, and had to be out of the room for it to work.” Rebus paused, and leaned forward. “But you were there, Dod. So you know how it went down.”

“You’re jumping to conclusions, John.”

“I hadn’t been a Saint long enough to be let in on it. But somehow Billy Saunders found out, and that meant he could kill Douglas Merchant knowing Stefan and you owed him one huge favor. Thirty years later, he might be on his way to jail again and he doesn’t want that. He’d be happy to trade what he knows. Stefan couldn’t let that happen…”

Blantyre was trying to shake his head, his shoulders jerking.

“Remember the gun, Dod?” Rebus asked. “The one taken from Laurie Martin? The Saunders inquiry knows all about it. They think it’s the same one they pulled from the canal, the one used to shoot Billy Saunders. Now isn’t that neat? It disappears from Porkbelly’s drawer and thirty years later turns up again…”

Blantyre fixed Rebus with a heavy-lidded stare. The silence stretched until he broke it.

“Remember your promise, John? That night in the pub? The oath you swore?”

The years melted away. Rebus remembered all right. A bar on Buccleuch Street, just along from Summerhall. The regular haunt of the Saints. Rebus wasn’t sure the owner liked this, but he put up with it. A place filled with billowing smoke and curses, the waft of stale urine every time someone opened the door to the toilets. A Friday evening probably, hence the densely packed bar, Rebus having just got in the drinks. Then Dod Blantyre at his shoulder, offering to carry a couple of them back to the table. But tightening a hand around Rebus’s forearm first, leaning in so that his lips brushed Rebus’s left ear.