‘Evening, John.’ Rebus smiled, leaned back in his chair. ‘Jack, you must be a bloody mind reader ...’

14

Mid-morning, Rebus walked through the cemetery. He’d been to the hospital to check on Sammy - no change. Now, he felt he had time to kill ...

‘A bit cooler today, Inspector.’

Joseph Lintz rose from his knees and pushed his glasses back up to the bridge of his nose. There were damp patches on his trousers from where he’d been kneeling. He dropped his trowel on to a white polythene bag. Beside the bag stood pots of small green plants. ‘Won’t the frost get them?’

Rebus asked. Lintz shrugged.

‘It gets all of us, but we’re allowed to bloom for a while.’

Rebus turned away. Today, he wasn’t in the mood for games. Warriston Cemetery was vast. In the past, it had been a history lesson to Rebus - headstones telling the story of nineteenth-century Edinburgh - but now he found it a jarring reminder of mortality. They were the only living souls in the place. Lintz had pulled out a handkerchief.

‘More questions?’ he asked.

‘Not exactly.’

‘What then?’

‘Truth is, Mr Lintz, I’ve got other things on my mind.’

The old man looked at him. ‘Maybe all this archaeology is beginning to bore you, Inspector?’

‘I still don’t get it, planting things before the first frost?’

‘Well, I can’t plant very much afterwards, can I? And at my age ... any day now I could be lying in the ground. I like to think there might be a few flowers surviving above me.’

He’d lived in Scotand the best part of half a century, but there was still something lurking beneath the local accent, peculiarities of phrasing and tone that would be with Joseph Lintz until he died, reminders of his far less recent history.

‘So,’ he said now, ‘no questions today?’

Rebus shook his head. ‘You’re right, Inspector, you do seem preoccupied. Is it something I can help with?’

‘In what way?’

‘I don’t really know. But you’ve come here, questions or no. I take it there’s a reason?’

A dog was bounding through the long grass, crunching on the fallen leaves, nose brushing the ground. It was a yellow Labrador, short-haired and overweight. Lintz turned towards it and almost growled. Dogs were the enemy.

‘I was just wondering,’ Rebus was saying, ‘what you’re capable of.’

Lintz looked puzzled. The dog began to paw at the ground. Lintz reached down, picked up a stone, and hurled it. It didn’t reach the dog. The Labrador’s owner was rounding the corner. He was young, crop-haired and skinny.

‘That thing should be kept on its lead!’ Lintz roared.

‘Jawohl!’ the owner snapped back, clicking his heels. He was laughing as he passed them.

‘I am a famous man now,’ Lintz reflected, back to his old self after the outburst. ‘Thanks to the newspapers.’

He looked up at the sky, blinked. ‘People send me hate by the Royal Mail. A car was parked outside my home the other night ... they put a brick through the windscreen. It wasn’t my car, but they didn’t know that. Now my neighbours keep clear of that spot, just in case.’