Rosalind took a gulp of tea then gave Lindsay a weak smile. “If I hadn’t gone white at twenty, this lot would have done the trick. I’m sorry to drag you into this,” she said, clutching her mug as if it were a lifebelt in a stormy sea. “But I needed your advice.”

“What happened?” Lindsay asked.

“I came back from the office in Edinburgh at lunchtime because I had a report to finish for my Minister by tomorrow morning,” Rosalind said. “You can never get any serious work done in that office. The Minister’s in and out all afternoon, wanting his hand held about something or other, so I thought I’d just pack up the draft and bring it back here.

“When I went to print out the finished report, I realized I was nearly out of computer paper. So I drove down to Byres Road and bought a box, then came straight back. I was only gone for about twenty minutes. As soon as I got out of the lift, I knew something was wrong. The front door was open, you see. I dithered for a minute or two, wondering whether there was still someone inside, but then I decided, to hell with it, and went in. The place was empty, but it was like this. The policeman said he reckoned they must have been keeping an eye out for me, and just did a runner when they saw my car come back.”

“That’s funny,” Lindsay mused.

“What’s funny about that?” Helen objected. “It’s exactly what I’d do if I was a burglar.”

“Well, how would they know it was Rosalind’s car, unless they were specifically targeting her? In a block this big, you’d have to be dead unlucky if the one car that came in while you were turning a flat over actually belonged to that flat’s owner. It looks to me as if they came here with a particular goal in mind and they knew exactly who to keep watch for. This was no random opportunist burglary,” Lindsay said.

Rosalind paled. “You mean, they were actually spying on me? Surely not! I don’t have anything valuable.”

“Did they steal those papers you brought home?”

Miserably, Rosalind nodded. “They walked off with the lot. And the disk from the computer with the finished report. They took all my other disks as well. Luckily, I’ve got backups of most of them safely stowed in Helen’s flat.”

“Do you think the intent was to steal the draft?” Lindsay asked.

“How could it be? Nobody knew what I was bringing home. Not even my secretary knew exactly what it was about. God knows what I’m going to tell the Minister. I’m not supposed to let things like that out of my sight. He’ll go absolutely apeshit.”