‘Analysis of the materials suggests they were made in the eighteen thirties.’

Rebus nodded. The information was printed on a series of cards attached to the display. Newspapers of the time suggested that the dolls were used by witches casting death spells on certain individuals. Another popular theory was that they were put there by sailors as good-luck charms prior to sea voyages.

‘Sailors on Arthur’s Seat,’ Rebus mused. ‘Now there’s something you don’t see every day.’

‘Do I detect some homophobic connotation, Inspector?’

He shook his head. ‘It’s just a long way from the docks, that’s all.’

She looked at him, but his face didn’t betray anything.

Rebus was studying the coffins again. Were he a betting man, he’d see short odds on a connection between these objects and the one found in Falls. Whoever had made and placed the coffin by the waterfall knew about the museum exhibit, and had for some reason decided to copy it. Rebus looked around at the various sombre displays of mortality.

‘You put this lot together?’

She nodded.

‘Must make for a popular topic at parties.’

‘You’d be surprised,’ she said quietly. ‘When it comes down to it, aren’t we all curious about the things we fear?’

Downstairs in the old museum, they sat on a bench carved to resemble a whale’s ribcage. There were fish in a water feature nearby, kids almost reaching in to touch them, but then pulling back at the last moment, giggling and squeezing their hands: that mix again of the curious and the fearful.

At the end of the great hall, a huge clock had been erected, its complex mechanism comprising models of skeletons and gargoyles. A naked carving of a woman seemed to be wrapped in barbed wire. Rebus got the feeling there might be other scenes of torture just beyond his vision.

‘Our Millennium Clock,’ Jean Burchill explained. She checked her watch. ‘Ten minutes before it strikes again.’

‘Interesting design,’ Rebus said. ‘A clock full of suffering.’

She looked at him. ‘Not everyone notices straight away …’

Rebus just shrugged. ‘Upstairs,’ he said, ‘the display said something about the dolls connecting to Burke and Hare?’

She nodded. ‘A mock burial for the victims. We think they may have sold as many as seventeen bodies for dissection. It was a horrible crime. You see, a dissected body cannot rise up again on the day of the Last Judgment.’

‘Not without its guts spilling out,’ Rebus agreed.

She ignored him. ‘Burke and Hare were arrested and tried. Hare testified against his friend, and only William Burke went to the gallows. Guess what happened to his body afterwards?’

That was an easy one. ‘Dissection?’ Rebus guessed.

She nodded. ‘His body was taken to Old College, the same route most if not all of his victims were taken, and used by an anatomy class. This was in January eighteen twenty-nine.’