She remembered her first meeting with Siobhan, the story of the ‘bad experience’. Couldn’t have had anything to do with the food, though the bill at the end could sometimes come as a shock. She wondered if she’d treat herself later. The price of a meal went down after ten p.m.; maybe they could squeeze her in. She touched her stomach. Lunch tomorrow … it wouldn’t hurt her to skip dinner tonight. Besides, she wasn’t sure she’d still be here at ten. Her investigation into the life of Kennet Lovell hadn’t thrown up a surfeit of information.

Kennet: she’d first thought the name a misprint, but it kept recurring. Kennet, not Kenneth. Born 1807, in Coylton, Ayrshire, making him just twenty-one at the time of Burke’s execution. His parents were farming folk, his father having employed Robert Burns’s father for a time. Kennet was given an education locally, helped by the local church minister, the Reverend Kirkpatrick …

There was a kettle in the outer office. She got up, walked out of her room. Left the door open, so her shadow stretched across the floor. She didn’t bother with the lights. Switched the kettle on and rinsed a mug under the tap. Tea-bag, powdered milk. She stood in the semi-dark, leaning against the worktop, arms folded. Through the doorway, she could see her desk and the photocopied sheets, all she’d been able to find so far on Dr Kennet Lovell, who’d assisted at a murderer’s autopsy, helped flay William Burke’s skin from his bones. The initial post-mortem examination had been undertaken by Dr Monro, in the presence of a select audience including a phrenologist and a sculptor, as well as the philosopher Sir William Hamilton and the surgeon Robert Liston. This was followed by a public dissection in the university’s packed anatomical theatre, noisy medical students gathered around like so many vultures, hungry for knowledge, while those without tickets hammered at the doors for entry and fought with police.

She was working from history books: some about the Burke and Hare case, others about the history of medicine in Scotland. The Edinburgh Room at the Central Library had proved helpful as ever, as had a contact at the National Library. Both had done photocopying for her. She’d taken a trip to Surgeons’ Hall, too, using their library and database. Hadn’t told Rebus about any of this. She knew why: because she was worried. She felt that the Arthur’s Seat case was a blind alley, and one down which John, with his need for answers, might go careering. Professor Devlin had been right about that: obsession was always a trap into which you could fall. This was history – ancient history, compared to the Balfour case. Whether the killer had known about the Arthur’s Seat coffins or not seemed irrelevant. There was no way of telling. She was conducting this research for her own satisfaction; didn’t want John reading anything more into it. He had enough on his plate without that.