After the Stones, he still had half a glass of malt to finish, so put on another album. Bob Dylan’s Desire, and the track ‘Hurricane’, a tale of injustice and wrongful accusation. He knew it happened: sometimes wilfully, sometimes by accident. He’d worked cases where the evidence seemed to be pointing conclusively to an individual, only for someone else to come forward and confess. And in the past – the distant past – maybe one or two criminals had been ‘fitted up’, to get them off the street, or to satisfy the public’s need for a conviction. There were times when you were sure you knew who the culprit was, but were never going to be able to prove it to the Procurator Fiscal’s satisfaction. One or two cops down the years had crossed the line.

He toasted them, catching his reflection in the living-room window. So he raised a toast to himself, too, then picked up the phone and called for a cab.

Destination: pubs.

In the Oxford Bar, he got talking to one of the regulars, happened to mention his trip to Falls.

‘I’d never heard of it before,’ he confided.

‘Oh aye,’ his companion stated, ‘I know Falls. Isn’t that where Wee Billy comes from?’

Wee Billy was another regular. A search confirmed that he wasn’t in the bar as yet, but he walked in twenty minutes later, still wearing his chef’s uniform from a restaurant around the corner. He wiped sweat from his eyes as he squeezed up to the bar.

‘That you done?’ someone asked him.

‘Fag break,’ he said, glancing at his watch. ‘Pint of lager, please, Margaret.’

As the barmaid poured, Rebus asked for a refill and said that both drinks were on him.

‘Cheers, John,’ Billy said, unused to such largesse. ‘How’s tricks?’

‘I was out at Falls yesterday. Is it right you grew up there?’

‘Aye, that’s right. Haven’t been back in years, mind.’

‘You didn’t know the Balfours then?’

Billy shook his head. ‘After my time. I was already in college when they moved back. Thanks, Margaret.’ He lifted the pint. ‘Your health, John.’

Rebus handed the cash over and raised his own pint, watching Billy demolish half the drink in three needy gulps.

‘Jesus, that’s better.’

‘Hard shift?’ Rebus guessed.

‘No more so than usual. You working the Balfour case then?’

‘Along with every other cop in the city.’

‘What did you reckon to Falls?’

‘Not big.’

Billy smiled, reached into his pocket for cigarette papers and tobacco. ‘Expect it’s changed a bit since I lived there.’

‘Were you a Meadowside boy?’

‘How did you know?’ Billy lit his roll-up.

‘A lucky guess.’

‘Mining stock, that’s me. Grandad worked all his days down the pit. Dad started off the same, but they made him redundant.’

‘I grew up in a mining town myself,’ Rebus said.