He was desperately tidying the living room when he heard the toilet flush. He looked around and shook his head. It was like picking up a duster after a bomb-strike: futile. So instead he went back into the kitchen and spooned coffee into two mugs. The milk in the fridge was Thursday’s, but usable. She was standing in the doorway, watching him.

‘Thank God I have an excuse for all the mess,’ he said.

‘I had my place rewired a few years back,’ she commiserated. ‘At the time, I was thinking of selling.’ When he looked up, she saw she’d hit a chord.

‘I’m putting it on the market,’ he admitted.

‘Any particular reason?’

Ghosts, he could have told her, but he just shrugged instead.

‘A fresh start?’ she guessed.

‘Maybe. Do you take sugar?’ He handed her the mug. She studied its milky surface.

‘I don’t even take milk,’ she told him.

‘Christ, sorry.’ He tried taking the mug from her, but she resisted.

‘This’ll be fine,’ she said. Then she laughed. ‘Some detective. You just watched me drink two cups of coffee in the restaurant.’

‘And never noticed,’ Rebus agreed, nodding.

‘Is there space to sit down in the living room? Now that we’ve got to know one another a little, it’s time to show you the dolls.’

He cleared an area of the dining table. She placed her shoulder-bag on the floor and pulled out a folder.

‘Thing is,’ she said, ‘I know this may sound barmy to some people. So I’m hoping you’ll keep an open mind. Maybe that’s why I wanted to know you a bit better …’

She handed over the folder and he pulled out a sheaf of press cuttings. While she spoke, he started arranging them before him on the table.

‘I came across the first one when someone wrote a letter to the Museum. This was a couple of years back.’ He held up the letter and she nodded. ‘A Mrs Anderson in Perth. She’d heard the story of the Arthur’s Seat coffins and wanted me to know that something similar had happened near Huntingtower.’

The clipping attached to the letter was from the Courier. ‘Mysterious Find Near Local Hotel’: a coffin-shaped wooden box with a scrap of cloth nearby. Found beneath some leaves in a copse when a dog had been out for its daily walk. The owner had taken the box to the hotel, thinking maybe it was some sort of toy. But no explanation had been found. The year was 1995.

‘The woman, Mrs Anderson,’ Jean was saying, ‘was interested in local history. That’s why she kept the cutting.’

‘No doll?’

Jean shook her head. ‘Could be some animal ran off with it.’

‘Could be,’ Rebus agreed. He turned to the second cutting. It was dated 1982 and was from a Glasgow evening paper: ‘Church Condemns Sick Joke Find’.