‘Anything interesting?’ Abernethy asked.

‘Someone killed a bouncer. Quiet little backwater, eh?’

‘A story like that, in London it wouldn’t rate a column inch.’

‘How long are you staying here?’

‘I’ll be off today, want to drop in on Carlisle. They’re supposed to have another old Nazi. After that, it’s Blackpool and Wolverhampton before home.’

‘A sucker for punishment.’

Rebus drove them the tourist route: down The Mound and across Princes Street. He double parked in Heriot Row, but Joseph Lintz wasn’t home.

‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘I know where he’ll probably be.’

He took them down Inverleith Row and turned right into Warriston Gardens, stopping at the cemetery gates.

‘What is he, a gravedigger?’ Abernethy got out of the car and zipped his jacket.

‘He plants flowers.’

‘Flowers? What for?’

‘I’m not sure.’

A cemetery should have been about death, but Warriston didn’t feel that way to Rebus. Much of it resembled a rambling park into which some statuary had been dropped. The newer section, with stone driveway, soon gave way to an earthen path between fading inscriptions. There were obelisks and Celtic crosses, lots of trees and birds, and the electric movements of squirrels. A tunnel beneath a walkway took you to the oldest part of the cemetery, but between tunnel and driveway sat the heart of the place, with its roll-call of Edinburgh’s past. Names like Ovenstone, Cleugh, and Flockhart, and professions such as actuary, silk merchant, ironmonger. There were people who’d died in India, and some who’d died in infancy. A sign at the gate informed visitors that the place had been the subject of a compulsory purchase by the City of Edinburgh, because previous private owners had let it fall into neglect. But that same neglect was at least part of its charm. People walked their dogs here, or came to practise photography, or just mused among the tombstones. Gays came looking for company, others for solitude.

After dark, of course, the place had another reputation entirely. A Leith prostitute - a woman Rebus had known and liked - had been found murdered here earlier in the year. Rebus wondered if Joseph Lintz knew about that ...

‘Mr Lintz?’

He was trimming the grass around a headstone, doing so with a half-sized pair of garden shears. There was a sheen of sweat on his face as he forced himself upright.

‘Ah, Inspector Rebus. You have brought a colleague?’

‘This is D I Abernethy.’

Abernethy was examining the headstone, which belonged to a teacher called Cosmo Merriman.

‘They let you do this?’ he asked, his eyes finally finding Lintz’s. ‘No one has tried to stop me.’

‘Inspector Rebus tells me you plant flowers, too.’

‘People assume I am a relative.’

‘But you’re not, are you?’

‘Only in so far as we are the family of man, Inspector Abernethy.’

‘You’re a Christian then?’

‘Yes, I am.’

‘Born and bred?’

Lintz took out a handkerchief and wiped his nose. ‘You’re wondering if a Christian could commit an atrocity like Villefranche. It’s perhaps not in my interest to say this, but I think it entirely possible. I’ve been explaining this to Inspector Rebus.’