Emery called at eleven forty-three.
She was standing outside the café where she had met Vass, the folder of Vossberg transaction records under her arm in a document sleeve, watching a delivery van navigate the narrow street with excessive confidence, when her phone rang and his name came up on the screen.
She had not given him this number. She had given him, three weeks ago when he called her about the Salthouse appointment, a number attached to a pay-as-you-go she used for new professional contacts. This was her personal phone.
She answered.
"Nadia." Warm, unhurried, genuinely pleased in the way of a man who had spent decades making warmth feel effortless. "I hope Edinburgh's treating you well. I have a lunch meeting that fell through — I'm at the Caledonian until Thursday. Would you join me? One o'clock?"
She looked at the folder under her arm.
"One o'clock is fine," she said.
She called Callum immediately after. He was curt and sensible, which she was finding she appreciated more each hour.
"He's in Edinburgh," she said.
"I know. I found the eighth name. She's in Edinburgh too." A pause. "Checked in last night to a hotel on George Street. Single room, two-night booking. Her PA confirmed she has no meetings on the calendar for today."
The eighth name was a woman called Harriet Fell. Now retired, formerly a senior director of a cultural policy body that had operated across the EU and the UK for twenty years before its dissolution in 2019. The kind of body that moved money and influence without being publicly understood, that existed in the institutional gap between government and private foundation. She had handed Nadia the Vossberg case summary in 2017 in a corridor in London, asked for it back, and Nadia had returned it within the minute.
Witting, 2003–present. Salthouse's hand.
Twenty-two years of knowing. Of attending meetings and shaping policy and writing footnotes that sent particular names toward particular contracts.
"Don't approach her yet," Nadia said.
"I wasn't planning to."
"I mean don't watch her either. Not in a way she'd notice. She'll notice." A pause. "Emery called me on my personal number."
Callum absorbed this. "How much does he think you know?"
"That's what lunch is for."
The restaurant was on Princes Street, quiet for a Tuesday, with the kind of service that had been in the same family for long enough to have opinions about the correct angle for a water glass. Emery was already seated when she arrived, which she noted — he had wanted to be seen as the one waiting, the one with nothing to hide, the one relaxed enough to occupy a table without occupation. He stood when she crossed the room and shook her hand with both of his, which was either affection or territory depending on everything else.
He looked exactly as he had looked three years ago. Silver-haired, carefully dressed, with the physical ease of a man in robust health who had never experienced consequences of a kind that left a mark. He gestured to the chair across from him.
"You look tired," he said, not unkindly.
"Long drive from the coast," she said.
"How is the estate?" He opened his menu without urgency. "Complex inventory?"
"Thorough," she said. "It's a thorough house."
He smiled. "Edmund always did accumulate. I knew him slightly — I think I mentioned that when I called you. Three or four occasions over the years, professional contexts mostly. A quietly remarkable man."
She watched him over the top of her menu. He had not mentioned knowing Salthouse when he called three weeks ago. She had the note from that call in her records. The word contact — came across your name through a mutual professional contact. Not a personal one. Not Edmund.
"You knew him personally?" she said.
"In passing, as I say. The way you know people who move in overlapping circles for long enough." He set the menu down. "Did you find the house rewarding? Some estates are just — furniture and accumulated proximity to the dead. Others have a character."
"Salthouse Manor has considerable character," she said.
He ordered without consulting her on the wine, which she had expected, and he talked for the first twenty minutes about things that had nothing to do with the estate: a case he had concluded in December, a property dispute in Geneva he found diverting, the architecture of a church he had visited recently in the Borders. He was excellent company. He had the gift of making attention feel like a gift rather than a strategy.
She ate and waited.
