‘Want one?’

She shook her head. ‘Three years I’ve managed so far.’

‘Good for you.’ Rebus looked up and down the street. ‘If this was a net curtain kind of place, they’d be twitching right now.’

‘If they had net curtains, you wouldn’t be able to peer in and see what you’re missing.’

Rebus held the smoke, let it billow out through his nostrils. ‘See, when I was younger, there was always something rakish about the New Town. Kaftans and wacky baccy, parties and ne’er-do-wells.’

‘Not much space left for them these days,’ Hawes agreed. ‘Where do you live?’

‘Marchmont,’ he told her. ‘You?’

‘Livingston. It was all I could afford at the time.’

‘Bought mine years back, two wages coming in …’

She looked at him. ‘No need to apologise.’

‘Prices weren’t as crazy back then, that’s all I meant.’ He was trying not to sound defensive. It was that meeting with Gill: the little joke she’d made, just to unsettle him. And the way his visit to Costello had KO’d the surveillance … Maybe it was time to talk to someone about the drinking … He flicked the stub of his cigarette on to the roadway. The surface was made of shiny rectangular stones called setts. When he’d first arrived in the city he’d made the mistake of calling them cobbles; a local had put him right.

‘Next call,’ he said now, ‘if we’re offered tea, we take it.’

Hawes nodded. She was in her late thirties or early forties, hair brown and shoulder-length. Her face was freckled and fleshed-out, as though she’d never quite lost her puppy fat. Grey trouser-suit and an emerald blouse, pinned at the neck with a silver Celtic brooch. Rebus could imagine her at a ceilidh, being spun during Strip the Willow, her face bearing the same concentration she brought to her work.

Below the main door flat, down a curving set of external steps, was the ‘garden flat’, so called because the garden at the back of the building came with it. At the front, the stone slabs were covered in more tubs of flowers. There were two windows, with two more at ground level – the place boasted a sub-basement. A pair of wooden doors was set into the wall opposite the entrance. They would lead into cellars beneath the pavement. Though they would have been checked before, Rebus tried opening them both, but they were locked. Hawes checked her notes.

‘Grant Hood and George Silvers got there before you,’ she said.

‘But were the doors locked or unlocked?’

‘I unlocked them,’ a voice called out. They turned to see an elderly woman standing just inside the flat’s front door. ‘Would you like the keys?’