Allan Mitchison’s flat was in a designer block in what wanted to be called ‘the Financial District’. Scrapland off Lothian Road had been transformed into a conference centre and ‘apartments’. A new hotel was in the offing, and an insurance company had grafted its new headquarters on to the Caledonian Hotel. There was room for more expansion, more road-building.

‘Desperate,’ Bain said, parking the car.

Rebus tried to remember the way the area had looked before. He only had to think back a year or two, but found the process difficult nonetheless. Was it just a big hole in the ground, or had they knocked things down? They were half a mile, maybe less, from Torphichen cop-shop; Rebus thought he knew this whole hunting-ground. But now he found that he didn’t know it at all.

There were half a dozen keys on the chain. One of them opened the main door. In the well-lit lobby there was a whole wall of letter-boxes. They found the name Mitchison – flat 312. Rebus used another key to open the box and remove the mail. There was some junk – ‘Open Now! You Could Have Scooped Life’s Jackpot!’ – and a credit-card statement. He opened the statement. Aberdeen HMV, an Edinburgh sports shop – £56.50, the Nikes – and a curry house, also in Aberdeen. A gap of just under two weeks, then the curry house again.

They took the narrow lift to the third floor, Bain shadow-boxing the full-length mirror, and found flat 12. Rebus unlocked the door, saw that an alarm panel was flashing on the wall in the small hallway, and used another key to disable it. Bain found the light-switch and closed the door. The flat smelled of paint and plaster, carpets and varnish – new, uninhabited. There wasn’t a stick of furniture in the place, just a telephone on the floor beside an unrolled sleeping-bag.

‘The simple life,’ Bain said.

The kitchen was fully equipped – washing machine, cooker, dishwasher, fridge – but the seal was still across the door of the washer-drier and the fridge contained only its instruction manual, a spare lightbulb, and a set of risers. There was a swing-bin in the cupboard beneath the sink. When you opened the door, the lid of the bin opened automatically. Inside, Rebus saw two crushed beer cans and the red-stained wrappings from what smelled like a kebab. The flat’s solitary bedroom was bare, no clothes in the built-in wardrobe, not even a coat-hanger. But Bain was dragging something out of the tiny bathroom. It was a blue rucksack, a Karrimor.

‘Looks like he came in, had a wash, changed clothes and buggered off out again pronto.’

They started emptying the rucksack. Apart from clothing, they found a personal stereo and some tapes – Soundgarden, Crash Test Dummies, Dancing Pigs – and a copy of Iain Banks’s Whit.

‘I meant to buy that,’ Rebus said.

‘Take it now. Who’s watching?’

Rebus looked at Bain. The eyes seemed innocent, but he shook his head anyway. He couldn’t go handing anyone any more ammunition. He pulled a carrier bag out of one of the side pockets: new tapes – Neil Young, Pearl Jam, Dancing Pigs again. The receipt was from HMV in Aberdeen.