"Look upon as promotion" that had been the official word back in Teviot Row when the top brass transferred DCI John Rebus back to his home county of Fife to head up the new "Postie" Unit. Rebus knew better of course, as he drew deeply on his tenth fag of the day and drank even more deeply from his fourth "Laphroig". "Too much of a wild card, old son" Rebus thought to himself as he looked at his watch: nine o’clock, time to open up, it's always busy on pension day...

"Oh aye and the young yins noo son, they’ve nae respect fur naeb ‘dy, they’re ae maakin a racket and the swears o’ them?" Rebus feigned interest as the old woman prattled on, "Christ" he thought to himself as he opened another bottle of malt, " what does this woman want? I’ve given her the pension, three stamps for the TV license and six second class stamps. Why doesn’t she just leave?"

Rebus stole a glance at the Post Office clock, it read 11am, back in Edinburgh he would’ve been on to solving his third murder of the day and still made it into the Oxford Bar for opening. He looked deep into his glass of amber fire and thought to himself   "isn’t it funny the way fictional characters can drink like this without suffering grand mal seizures and hallucinating. If I was real, I’d be pissed by now."

Later, ignoring the queue of pensioners that snaked out of the post office and half way up the scheme road, Rebus walked the short distance back to his car and got in. Back to Edinburgh, then, back to tell the Chief Constable that he could take this job and stuff it. Maybe there was a place for community based policing using local civic amenities. But this wasn’t the world that Rebus knew or wanted.

The world that Rebus knew beckoned just over the road bridge over the Forth. A fictional Edinburgh, where there were more murders a day than in New Orleans, where corrupt politicians and venal policemen were ten a penny, a violent fictive entity that was everything the real Edinburgh could never be: interesting.

Rebus needed all that and besides, he needed a drink. He’d go into the Oxford when he got back, see if that author guy, Rankin, that was his name, would buy him a drink.

He owed him, Rebus reckoned. God knows how many novels and not one page of credible character development in any of them, and still the books sold in shed loads. A drink was the least he owed him.