The barman was new and young. He held the note as though it were likely to ignite. ‘Ehh . . . you haven’t got anything smaller on you?’ His accent was effeminate west coast. Rebus wondered how long he’d last in the Sutherland.

Byars exasperated but rejecting Rebus’s offer of help, dug into his pockets and found two crumpled one-pound notes and some change. He accepted his fifty back and pushed the coins towards the barman, then he winked at Rebus.

‘I’ll tell you a secret, Inspector, if I had to choose between having five tenners or one fifty, I’d go for the one fifty every time. Want to know why? Tenners in your pocket, people think nothing of it. But whip a fifty out, and they think you’re Croesus.’ He turned to the barman, who was counting the coins out into the open till. ‘Hey, son, got anything for eating?’ The barman jerked round as though hit by a pellet.

‘Ehh . . . I think there’s some Scotch broth left over from lunch.’ His vowels turned broth into ‘braw-wrath’. The braw wrath of the Scots, Rebus thought to himself. Byars was shaking his head. ‘A pie or a sandwich,’ he demanded.

The barman proffered the last lonely sandwich in the place. It looked unnervingly like pastrami, but turned out to be, as Byars put it, ‘the guid roast beef’.

‘One pound ten,’ the barman said. Byars got out the fifty-pound note again, snorted, and produced a fiver instead. He turned back to Rebus and lifted his glass.

‘Cheers.’ Both men drank.

‘Not bad at all,’ Byars said of the beer.

Rebus gestured towards the sandwich. ‘I thought you were going to dinner later on?’

‘I am, but more importantly, I’m paying. This way, I won’t eat as much and won’t cost myself so much.’ He winked again. ‘Maybe I should write a book, eh? Business tips for sole traders, that sort of thing. Heh, speaking of tips, I once asked a waiter what “tips” meant. Know what he said?’

Rebus hazarded a wild guess. ‘To insure prompt service?’

‘No, to insure I don’t piss in the soup!’ Byars’ voice was back to the level of megaphone diplomacy. He laughed, then took a bite of sandwich, still chortling as he chomped. He was not a tall man, five seven or thereabouts. And he was stocky. He wore newish denims and a black leather jacket, beneath which he sported a white polo-shirt. In a bar like this, you’d take him for . . . well, just about anybody. Rebus could imagine him ruffling feathers in plush hotels and business bars. Image, he told himself. It’s just another image: the hard man, the no-nonsense man, a man who worked hard and who expected others to work hard, too – always in his favour.

He had finished the sandwich, and was brushing crumbs from his lap. ‘You’re from Fife,’ he said casually, sniffing the whisky.

‘Yes,’ Rebus admitted.

‘I could tell. Gregor Jack’s from Fife too, you know. You said you wanted to talk about him. Is it to do with that brothel story? I found that a bit hard to swallow.’ He nodded towards the empty plate in front of him. ‘Not as hard as that sandwich though.’