Steve Holly was still on his way into work when his mobile sounded. He lived in the New Town, only three streets from what he’d recently called in print ‘the tragic death flat’. Not that his own place was in the same league as Flip Balfour’s. He was at the top of an unmodernised tenement – one of few still left in the New Town. And his street didn’t have the cachet of Flip’s address. Still, he’d watched the paper value of his flat soar. Four years ago, he’d decided he wanted to live in this part of town. But even then it had seemed beyond his means, until he started reading the death notices in the city’s daily and evening papers. When he saw a New Town address, he’d head round there with an envelope marked ‘Urgent’ and addressed to ‘The Owner’. The letter inside was short. He introduced himself as someone who’d been born and raised in whichever street, but whose family had moved away and encountered bad fortune since. With both parents dead, he now wished to return to a street which held such fond memories, and should the owner ever wish to consider selling …

And bloody hell, it had worked. An old woman – house-ridden for a decade – had died, and her niece, who was her closest living relative, had read Holly’s letter, phoning him that afternoon. He’d gone to look at the place – three bedrooms, a bit smelly and dark but he knew such things could be fixed. Nearly shot himself in the foot when the niece asked which number he’d lived at, but he’d managed to fool her well enough. Then his pitch: all the estate agents and solicitors getting their cut … better to agree a fair price between them and cut out the middle-men.

The niece lived in the Borders, didn’t seem to know what flats in Edinburgh were fetching. She’d even thrown in a lot of the old lady’s furniture, for which he’d thanked her profusely, turfing out the lot his first weekend in residence.

If he sold up now he’d have a hundred grand in his pocket, a nice nest egg. In fact, only this morning he’d wondered about trying something similar with the Balfours … only somehow he reckoned they’d know to the last penny what Flip’s place was worth. He stopped, halfway up the Dundas Street climb, and answered his mobile.

‘Steve Holly speaking.’

‘Mr Holly, this is Detective Sergeant Wylie, Lothian and Borders CID.’

Wylie? He tried to place her. Of course! That brilliant press conference! ‘Yes, DS Wylie, and what can I do for you this morning?’

‘It’s about a story you ran three years or so back … the German student.’

‘Would that be the student with the twenty-foot reach?’ he asked with a grin. He was outside a small art gallery, peered in through the window, curious about the prices first, paintings second.

‘That’s the one, yes.’

‘Don’t tell me you’ve caught the killer?’