When she opened her eyes again, she saw what she’d hoped to find: Dr Kennet Lovell’s grave. The headstone had been set into the cemetery’s eastern wall, and was now cracked and soot-blackened, its edges fallen away to reveal the sandstone beneath. It was a small thing, close to the ground. ‘Dr Kennet Anderson Lovell,’ Jean read, ‘an eminent Physician of this City.’ He’d died in 1863, aged fifty-six. There were weeds rising from ground level, obscuring much of the inscription. Jean crouched down and started pulling them away, encountering a used condom which she brushed aside with a dock leaf. She knew that there were people who used Calton Hill at night, and imagined them coupling against this wall, pressing down on the bones of Dr Lovell. How would Lovell feel about that? For a moment, she formed a picture of another coupling: herself and John Rebus. Not her type at all really. In the past she’d dated researchers, university lecturers. One brief dalliance with a sculptor in the city – a married man. He’d taken her to cemeteries, his favourite places. John Rebus probably liked cemeteries, too. When they’d first met she’d seen him as a challenge and a curiosity. Even now she had to work hard not to think of him in terms of an exhibit. There were so many secrets there, so much of him that he refused to show to the world. She knew there was digging still to be done …

As she cleared the weeds, she found that Lovell had married no fewer than three times, and that each wife had passed away before him. No evidence of any children … she wondered if the offspring might be buried elsewhere. Maybe there were no children. But then hadn’t John said something about a descendant … ? As she examined the dates, she saw that the wives had died young, and another thought crossed her mind: they’d died in childbirth, perhaps.

His first wife: Beatrice, née Alexander. Aged twenty-nine.

His second wife: Alice, née Baxter. Aged thirty-three.

His third wife: Patricia, née Addison. Aged twenty-six.

An inscription read: Passed over, to be met again so sweetly in the Lord’s domain.

Jean couldn’t help thinking that it must have been some meeting, Lovell and his three wives. She had a pen in her pocket, but no notepad or paper. She looked around the cemetery, found an old envelope, torn in half. She brushed dirt and dust from it and jotted down the details.

Siobhan was back at her desk, trying to form anagrams from the letters in ‘Camus’ and ‘ME Smith’, when Eric Bain came into the office.

‘All right?’ he asked.

‘I’ll survive.’

‘That good, eh?’ He placed his briefcase on the floor, straightened up and looked around. ‘Special Branch get back to us yet?’