Their eyes met. His were questioning; hers tentative. Then their faces collapsed into smiles.

‘I’d love one,’ he said. Just as he was turning off the ignition, his mobile started ringing.

‘I just thought you’d want to know,’ Donald Devlin said. His voice trembled slightly, body likewise.

Rebus nodded. They were standing just inside the imposing front doors of Surgeons’ Hall. There were people upstairs, but speaking in hushed tones. Outside, one of the grey transit vans from the mortuary was waiting, a police car standing beside it, roof-lights flashing, turning the front of the building blue every couple of seconds.

‘What happened?’ Rebus asked.

‘Heart attack, it looks like. People were enjoying a postprandial brandy, leaning against the railing.’ Devlin pointed upwards. ‘He suddenly went very pale, leaned over the rail. They thought he was going to be sick. But he just slumped, and his weight took him over.’

Rebus looked down at the marble floor. There was a smear of blood which would need cleaning. Men stood on the periphery, some outside on the lawns. They smoked and spoke of the awful shock. When Rebus looked back at Devlin, the old man seemed to be studying him, as if he were some specimen in a jar.

‘Are you all right?’ Devlin asked, watching as Rebus nodded. ‘The two of you were pretty close, I gather.’

Rebus didn’t answer. Sandy Gates walked up, mopping his face with what looked like a napkin swiped from the dining room.

‘Bloody awful,’ was all he said. ‘Probably have to be an autopsy, too.’

The body was being stretchered away. A blanket covered the body-bag. Rebus resisted the temptation to stop the attendants and pull the zip down. He wanted his last memories of Conor Leary to be of the lively man he’d shared that drink with.

‘He’d just made a fascinating speech,’ Devlin said. ‘A sort of ecumenical history of the human body. Everything from the sacrament to Jack the Ripper as haruspex.’

‘As what?’

‘Someone who foretells the truth by looking at the entrails of animals.’

Gates belched. ‘Half of it was above my head,’ he said.

‘And the other half you slept through, Sandy,’ Devlin commented with a smile. ‘He did the whole thing without notes,’ he added admiringly. Then he looked up at the first-floor landing again. ‘The fall of man, that was his starting point.’ He rummaged in his pocket for a handkerchief.

‘Here,’ said Gates, handing over the napkin. Devlin blew his nose loudly.

‘The fall of man, and then he fell,’ Devlin said. ‘Perhaps Stevenson was right.’

‘What about?’

‘He called Edinburgh a “precipitous city”. Maybe vertigo is in the nature of the place …’

Rebus thought he knew what Devlin meant. Precipitous city … each and every one of its inhabitants falling slowly, almost imperceptibly …