‘It’s vanity, you know,’ Rebus said, getting up from his chair.

‘What is?’

‘When you need glasses but refuse to wear them. I’m just guessing it’s down to vanity.’

‘Not the worst sin, is it, Mr Rebus?’ Mackenzie said with a smile.

‘Not by a long shot,’ Rebus was forced to agree.

He reckoned Brillo would be fine for another hour so drove from Lasswade Road to Craigmillar. He’d worked CID there for a spell, but the old police station on the main road had turned into some kind of Pentecostal church, albeit with metal shutters firmly closed. Its replacement was a short sprint away, a new-build reflecting changes in the area. Craigmillar and next-door Niddrie had kept the police busy in Rebus’s day, crumbling housing and endemic poverty proving fertile soil for crime and criminals. Much of that had now gone. The up-to-date low-rise blocks and buffed-up facilities had altered the face of Craigmillar utterly. Rebus passed a shiny library and a busy-looking Tesco Express. He turned off the main road into the estate where Jack Oram had lived, pulled to a stop kerbside and felt able to lock his car without fearing it would be vandalised in his absence.

‘Changed days,’ he said to himself.

Hoardings advertised new developments further into the estate. The houses here were of a vintage, but roofs had been replaced and the double-glazed windows looked new. Gardens were tidier than would have been the case at one time. Oram had run a successful little business and could have afforded to live elsewhere in the city, but Rebus knew that a sense of community and belonging were sometimes more important. He’d known gangsters – in many ways Cafferty was an anomaly – who stayed in the same council houses they’d grown up in long after they’d amassed their fortunes. There was safety, too, in surrounding yourself with people who would look out for you. They felt you were one of them, long after this had ceased to be the case, and a few quid handed round could always oil the machine of neighbourliness.

Rebus had the address from the phone book. It was at the end of a terrace, pebble-dashed like the others in the street. The front garden had been replaced by a driveway, though no car sat there at present. There was a garage at the side and hanging baskets, currently devoid of life, flanking the front door. The door itself looked new, dark varnished wood with a tall rectangle of stained glass above the letter box. The bell had a camera attached. Rebus pressed it and waited.

The woman who opened up rolled her eyes when she saw him. ‘What’s he done this time? I hardly ever see him, you know.’

‘You think I’m the police?’

‘You mean you’re not?’

She was in her forties, dyed orange hair falling to her shoulders, and dressed for a gym she almost certainly never visited.