But Rebus was damned if he could find it.

Lintz’s correspondence was all business, either to lawyers or else to do with local charities and committees. He’d been resigning from his committees. Rebus wondered if pressure had been applied. Edinburgh could be cruel and cold that way.

‘Well?’

Hogan said, sticking his head round the door.

‘I’m just wondering ...’

‘What?’

‘Whether to add on a conservatory and knock through from the kitchen.’

‘We’d lose some garden space,’ Hogan said. He came in, rested against the desk. ‘Anything?’

‘A missing phone bill, and a sudden change from being itemised.’

‘Worth a call,’ Hogan admitted. ‘I found a chequebook in his bedroom. Stubs show payments of £60 a month to E. Forgan.’

‘Where in the bedroom?’

‘Marking his place in a book.’

Hogan reached into the desk’s top drawer, lifted out the address book.

Rebus got up. ‘Pretty rich street this. Wonder how many of them do their own dusting.’

Hogan shut the book. ‘No listing for an E. Forgan. Think the neighbours will know?’

‘Edinburgh neighbours know everything. It’s just that they most often keep it to themselves.’

Hogan was nodding. ‘And remember to get me copies of your files. Are you busy otherwise?’

‘Bobby, if time was money, I’d be in hock to every lender in town.’

16

Joseph Lintz’s neighbours: an artist and her husband on one side; a retired advocate and his wife on the other. The artist used a Ccleaning lady called Ella Forgan. Mrs Forgan lived in East Claremont Street. The artist gave them a telephone number.

Conclusions drawn from the two interviews: shock and horror that Lintz was dead; praise for the quiet, considerate neighbour. A Christmas card every year, and an invitation to drinks one Sunday afternoon each July. Hard to tell when he’d been at home and when he’d been out. He went off on holiday without telling anyone except Mrs Forgan. Visitors to his home had been few - or few had been noticed, which wasn’t quite the same thing.

‘Men? Women?’

Rebus had asked. ‘Or a mixture?’

‘A mixture, I’d say,’ the artist had replied, measuring her words. ‘Really, we knew very little about him, to say we’ve been neighbours these past twenty-odd years ...’

Ah, and that was Edinburgh for you, too, at least in this price bracket. Wealth was a very private thing in the city. It wasn’t brash and colourful. It stayed behind its thick stone walls and was at peace.

Rebus and Hogan held a doorstep conference.

‘I’ll call the cleaning lady, see if I can meet her, preferably here.’

Hogan looked back at Lintz’s front door.

‘I’d love to know where he got the money to buy this place,’ Rebus said.

‘That could take some excavating.’

Rebus nodded. ‘Solicitor would be the place to start. What about the address book? Worth tracking down some of these elusive friends?’

‘I suppose so.’

Hogan looked dispirited at the prospect.

‘I’ll follow up on the phone bills,’ Rebus said. ‘If that’ll help.’