Anthony McCall

Anthony McCall is an Edinburgh police inspector whose role in the story is defined as much by his longstanding familiarity with John Rebus as by his place within the police force. He moves between ordinary collegial encounters and investigations shaped by the city’s drug problem, its neglected housing, and the limits of neighbourhood policing. His own history in Pilmuir gives that setting a personal dimension, while his brother Tommy McCall connects him to Rebus’s inquiries and to a conversation about Superintendent Watson’s anti-drug campaign.

Identity and Background

McCall is an inspector in the Edinburgh police. Superintendent Watson identifies him as the officer whose call should ordinarily have been made when a suspected drug overdose came to police attention. Watson explicitly says that McCall’s professional qualities are not in question, distinguishing his absence on that occasion from any judgment of his competence. The passage establishes both his position in the force and the expectation that he would normally handle such a call.

Pilmuir is more than a district McCall encounters through police work. He tells Rebus that he was born there, more precisely on the estate that preceded the present Pilmuir Estate. That earlier housing was levelled and replaced because it was said to be so bad; McCall regards the replacement as a place that has itself become severely troubled. His account compresses successive waves of urban change into a personal history: redevelopment did not, in his view, make the district a settled or flourishing place.

Working Relationship with John Rebus

McCall and Rebus meet with easy familiarity. At a bar, McCall spots Rebus, smiles, and joins him; the greeting and relaxed conversation mark them as colleagues who know one another well. When Rebus mentions having been at Pilmuir, McCall apologizes for not being available earlier, explaining that he had been hungover after a heavy night. He orders a beer and drinks it quickly. The exchange is informal, but it also clarifies that McCall’s absence from the earlier visit was personal rather than a refusal to assist.

Their cooperation also appears in a search at a house where police have been called to a domestic disturbance. Rebus asserts his right to enter after a constable questions whether the matter falls within his territory. While the woman leaves with officers, McCall continues searching the premises; Rebus remarks that two finds are enough to proceed. McCall’s work here is practical and sustained, complementing Rebus’s more confrontational handling of the constable and the investigation.

When Rebus explains that he has had lunch with Tommy, McCall is surprised that his brother took him out. He says Tommy has not taken him to lunch in fifteen years. Rebus identifies the venue as The Eyrie, and McCall recognizes that the meeting concerned Superintendent Watson’s anti-drug campaign. The detail gives their professional conversation a family undercurrent: Rebus has access to McCall’s brother that McCall himself has apparently not had for years.

Police Work and the City’s Drug Crisis

McCall’s work is situated against the scale of drug use in Edinburgh. A doctor tells Rebus that intravenous drug use in the city may involve hundreds of people and links the crisis to the city’s AIDS statistics. Later, Superintendent Watson describes the situation as appalling and says that the Royal Infirmary has treated addicts as young as eleven and twelve. Watson says McCall should have been the officer called to the overdose scene, but that he was unavailable. This establishes the investigative responsibility expected of McCall without suggesting that he caused or mishandled the incident.

Watson proposes a public-awareness campaign supported by discreet information-gathering and backed by fifty thousand pounds from city businessmen. Rebus later tells McCall that his lunch with Tommy was connected to this campaign. The evidence does not establish McCall as its organizer or describe his particular duties in it; instead, the campaign enters their conversation through Rebus’s meeting with Tommy. McCall’s reaction registers the significance of that family contact, while the sum and the businessmen’s promised backing show the campaign’s intended scale.

McCall also helps Rebus consider how to reach Charlie, a young man interested in the occult. He recalls that there may be one or two places worth trying, but warns that finding Charlie will be a slog: the idea of neighbourhood policing, he says, has not yet extended far enough into that area. His response is useful but unsentimental. He can suggest leads, yet he makes clear that local access and police presence are limited, and that the search is unlikely to be straightforward.

Family, Money, and the Limits of Knowledge

Tommy McCall is Anthony’s brother, but their relationship is marked in the available scenes by distance as well as kinship. McCall’s surprise at being taken to lunch after fifteen years makes the estrangement concrete without explaining its cause. The meeting matters to Rebus because it provides information about Watson’s campaign; to Anthony, its unexpectedness seems to be the first fact of the encounter. The brothers’ connection therefore carries both personal weight and investigative usefulness.

In a separate exchange about accounting and the origins of money, McCall’s remarks express a more troubling kind of distance: nobody wants to know where the money comes from, because knowing could make a person an accessory. He says that he did not want to know and would have put his hands over his ears if someone tried to tell him. The exchange does not specify the money’s source or establish the legal consequences for McCall. It does, however, make deliberate ignorance explicit as a way of avoiding responsibility. Set beside the campaign’s publicly announced business funding, this scene sharpens a recurring tension between money presented as civic support and money whose origins are left unexamined.

Narrative Role

McCall is neither a detached functionary nor the central investigator. His position as an inspector makes his availability relevant to police procedure, while his rapport with Rebus allows the investigation to move through informal conversation as well as official channels. His childhood connection to Pilmuir also gives the story a compact way to contrast redevelopment with continuing deprivation: a district can be rebuilt and still remain, in McCall’s assessment, deeply troubled.

The evidence leaves McCall’s later fate and final involvement in the investigation unspecified. His significance lies instead in the junctions he makes visible: between Rebus and the police hierarchy, between a family relationship and an investigative lead, and between public campaigns and the less comfortable question of who supplies money. His scenes repeatedly show how much police work depends on people, access, and information—and how much can remain hidden when someone chooses not to ask.