A new Rebus short story by Ian Rankin, The Very Last Drop was published in The Scotsman today. I couldn’t find it online but it is in a four page pull-out in the paper, complete with illustrations and a photo of Ian Rankin reading his story at the Royal Blind School fundraising event that took place last Thursday at Edinburgh’s Caledonian Brewery.

Rebus, now retired, is on a tour around The Caledonian Brewery as a retirement present from Siobhan Clarke. When the tour guide Albert Simms tells the group about the ghost of Johnny Watt, who had died sixty years ago “almost to the day” after banging his head when he fell in one of the vats overcome by fumes, Rebus’s interest is aroused.  As Siobhan says

Soon as you get a whiff of a case – mine or anyone else’s -you’ll want to have a go yourself. 

He can’t resist looking back at the case, using the company’s archives and back copies of The Scotsman. What he finds is more than a ghost story.