44 Scotland Street

he said. “They just don’t.”

“Oh yes we do,” she said. “We understand very well.”

“Then explain it!” Todd had crowed.

“But that’s what I just asked you to do,” she said. “I asked you what the difference was, and you don’t answer that question by batting it back to me. What’s the difference? You tell me.”

Todd had said nothing. He was confident that Muirfield was special, but he was not sure that he could explain it. Ultimately, it had something to do with the people who played there; special people. But that was not something one could put into words –

without a measure of embarrassment – and it was certainly not something that his wife would understand. She would not think of these people as special; that was her mistake.

The firm preferred, if at all possible, to employ sporting assistants. Both brothers found that they could relate easily to sporty types, and such people were also rather good at generating business. Business was done on golf courses (or some of them), and it helped to have sociable employees who would meet clients at parties and in pubs. It was a sociable profession.

Bruce was popular in the firm. Both brothers liked him, to an extent, and Todd had given him a spare seat at Murrayfield on several occasions. Todd had a daughter, Lizzie, who might be suitable for Bruce, so Todd thought, if only she would get over her unreasonable prejudice about him. She seemed to have taken against him on first meeting, and it was quite unfair, although there was perhaps something about this young man which was not quite right – something to do with the way he preened himself? Todd had seen him preening once, looking at himself in the rearview mirror of the firm’s Land Rover, and he had been slightly surprised by it.

“Satisfied?” he had said to him, in a joking tone, and Bruce had leapt up, surprised, and muttered something about needing a haircut. But there had been something else going on, and Todd had remembered it.

Now, as he arrived in the office that morning, the morning on which Pat began at the gallery, Bruce saw that Todd had put 20

A Full Survey

a file on his desk, to await him. He was to do a survey by eleven o’clock that morning, to report back to the client by eleven-thirty.

The property in question, a large top-floor flat overlooking the Dean Valley, had offers closing at noon and the client wanted to bid. This was tight, as he would need to pick up the keys, inspect the property, and dictate a short written report within half an hour of returning to the office.

Bruce took a taxi to the firm of solicitors in York Place. It did not take long to sign for the keys, go back to fetch the company car, and then make his way over the Dean Bridge to the quiet terrace where the flat was located. Once inside, he moved from room to room, noting the condition of the floors and the many other things which it had become second nature to observe.

Power points. Fireplaces. The state of the cornices (if any).

He walked through to the kitchen, which was the last room he inspected. There was nothing exceptional about it. The cupboards were in bad taste, of course, because they had stinted on the joinery, but the floor (a sealed cork) was new, and that would not need replacing for some years. So you could live with this kitchen.

He walked past a large microwave oven, which had been placed at eye-level. Its wide, opaque door of smoked glass made him stop. There was something inside it. No. Just me.

He stood still for a moment, and then smiled.

Nice micro-onde, he wrote in his notebook. Bruce liked to give French names to certain things, if he knew the words. Of course he would use English terms in his official report. Imagine Todd wrestling with words like micro-onde!

Now for le toit, Bruce said to himself.

7. A Full Survey

The flat which Bruce was surveying was on the top floor of a four-storey, late-Georgian tenement. The way into the roof space A Full Survey

21

was through a trapdoor in the ceiling immediately above the top landing of the common stair. A stepladder was needed to reach this trapdoor, but there was one conveniently to hand in the hall cupboard of the flat. Bruce set this up below the trapdoor and climbed up to open it.

He pushed against the trapdoor, but it would not budge. He tried again, and this time it opened, reluctantly, but only halfway.

Something – a heavy object of some sort – was preventing the trapdoor from opening inwards into the roof space. Bruce lowered it, and then tried again. Still it would not open sufficiently for him to crawl through.

Bruce swore softly under his breath. Looking at his watch, he realised that he now had only fifteen minutes or so to finish the survey if he was going to have sufficient time to write it up by the deadline. Looking up, he peered through the half-open trapdoor into the darkened roof space. He sniffed: if there was rot he might be able to smell it. He knew surveyors who could diagnose the various forms of rot merely by smelling. He could not yet trust himself to rely on that, but he was still able to recognise at least some of the musty smells that could mean that something was wrong. He sniffed again. The air was quite fresh.

There was no rot up there.

Closing the trapdoor, Bruce climbed down the ladder. He would have a look from outside, he decided. He had a pair of binoculars in the car and he could use those. He would be able to see if there was anything that needed to be done, which he was sure that there wasn’t.

He replaced the ladder, locked the flat, and then made his way downstairs. On the other side of the street there was a set of gardens which sloped steeply down the hill to the Water of Leith below. Bruce crossed over and stood on the pavement, his binoculars trained on the roof of the building. It was by no means ideal, he thought; the angle from which he had to observe the roof made it impossible for him to see more than the first third of it, but