‘And the coffins date from the early eighteen thirties.’ Rebus was thoughtful. Hadn’t someone once boasted to him about owning a souvenir made from Burke’s skin? ‘What happened to the body afterwards?’ he asked.

Jean Burchill looked at him. ‘There’s a pocket-book in the museum at Surgeons’ Hall.’

‘Made from Burke’s skin?’

She nodded again. ‘I feel sorry for Burke actually. He seems to have been a genial man. An economic migrant. Poverty and chance led to his first sale. A visitor to his home died owing money. Burke knew that there was a crisis in Edinburgh, a successful medical faculty with not enough bodies to go round.’

‘Were people living long lives then?’

‘Far from it. But as I told you, a dissected corpse could not enter heaven. The only bodies available to medical students belonged to executed criminals. The Anatomy Act of eighteen thirty-two put an end to the need to rob graves …’

Her voice had died away. She seemed momentarily lost to the present as she considered Edinburgh’s blood-soaked past. Rebus was there with her. Resurrectionists and wallets made of human skin … witchcraft and hangings. Next to the coffins on the fourth floor he’d seen a variety of witch’s accoutrements: configurations of bones; shrivelled animal hearts with nails protruding.

‘Some place this, eh?’

He meant Edinburgh, but she considered her surroundings. ‘Ever since I was a child,’ she said, ‘I’ve felt more at peace here than anywhere else in the city. You might think my work morbid, Inspector, but fewer would be reconciled to the work you do.’

‘Fair shout,’ he agreed.

‘The coffins interest me because they are such a mystery. In a museum, we live by the rules of identification and classification. Dates and provenance may be uncertain, but we almost always know what we’re dealing with: a casket, a key, the remains of a Roman burial site.’

‘But with the coffins, you can’t be sure what they mean.’

She smiled. ‘Exactly. That makes them frustrating for a curator.’

‘I know the feeling,’ he said. ‘It’s like me with a case. If it can’t be solved, it nips my head.’

‘You keep mulling it over … coming up with new theories …’

‘Or new suspects, yes.’

Now they looked at one another. ‘Maybe we’ve more in common than I thought,’ Jean Burchill said.

‘Maybe we have,’ he admitted.

The clock had begun to sound, though its minute hand had yet to reach twelve. Visitors were summoned to it, the children’s mouths falling open as the various mechanisms brought the garish figures to life. Bells clanged and ominous organ music started playing. The pendulum was a polished mirror. Looking at it, Rebus caught glimpses of himself, and behind him the whole museum, each spectator captured.