Falls

by Ian Rankin

  ‘Ms Burchill works at the museum,’ Rebus said.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I’m a curator.’ Jean had slipped the bracelet on to her wrist.

  ‘What a wonderful job. Whenever I’m in town, I try to make time for a visit.’

  ‘Have you heard of the Arthur’s Seat coffins?’ Rebus asked.

  ‘Steve told me about them,’ Dodds said. Rebus presumed she meant Steve Holly, the reporter.

  ‘Ms Burchill has an interest in them,’ Rebus said. ‘She’d like to see the doll you found.’

  ‘Of course.’ She slid open one of the drawers and brought out the coffin. Jean handled it with care, placing it on the kitchen table before examining it.

  ‘It’s quite well made,’ she said. ‘More like the Arthur’s Seat coffins than those others.’

  “’Others”?’ Bev Dodds asked.

  ‘Is it a copy of one of them?’ Rebus asked, ignoring this.

  ‘Not an exact copy, no,’ Jean said. ‘Different nails, and constructed slightly differently, too.’

  ‘By someone who’d seen the museum exhibit?’

  ‘It’s possible. You can buy a postcard of the coffins in the museum shop.’

  Rebus looked at Jean. ‘Has anyone shown interest in the exhibit recently?’

  ’How would I know that?’

  ‘Maybe a researcher or someone?’

  She shook her head. ‘There was a doctoral student last year … but she went back to Toronto.’

  ‘Is there some connection here?’ Bev Dodds asked, wide-eyed. ‘Something between the museum and the abduction?’

  ‘We don’t know that anyone’s been abducted,’ Rebus cautioned her.

  ‘All the same .

  ‘Ms Dodds … Bev .. .’ Rebus fixed her with his eyes. ‘It’s important that this conversation stays confidential.’

  When she nodded understanding, Rebus knew that within minutes of them leaving, she’d be on the phone to Steve Holly. He left his tea unfinished.

  ‘We’d better be off.’ Jean took the hint, and placed her own cup on the draining-board. ‘That was lovely, thanks.’

  'You’re welcome. And thank you for buying the bracelet. My third sale today.’

  As they walked back up the lane, two cars passed them. Day-trippers, Rebus guessed, on their way to the waterfall. And afterwards, maybe they’d stop by the pottery, asking to see the famous coffin. They’d probably buy something too.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ Jean asked, getting into the car and studying the bracelet, holding it up to the light.

  ‘Nothing,’ Rebus lied. He decided to drive through the village. The Rover and BMW stood drying in the late-afternoon sun. A young. couple with two kids stood outside Bev Dodds’ cottage. The father had a video-camera in his hand. Rebus gave way to four or five cars, then continued along the road to Meadowside. Three boys—maybe including the two from his previous visit—were playing football on the grass. Rebus stopped and wound down his window, calling out to them. They looked at him, but weren’t about to interrupt their game. He told Jean he’d only be a second, and got out of the car.

  ‘Hello there,’ he told the boys.

  ‘Who are you?’ The questioner was skinny, ribs protruding, and thin arms ending in bunched fists. His hair had been shorn to the scalp, and as he squinted into the light he managed to be four-feet- six of aggression and mistrust.

  ‘I’m the police,’ Rebus said.

  ‘We haven’t done nothing.’

  ‘Congratulations.’

  The boy kicked the ball hard. It thundered into the upper thigh of one of the other players, leading the third to start laughing.

  ‘I was wondering if you knew anything about this spate of thefts I’ve been hearing about.’

  The boy looked at him. ‘Get a grip,’ he said.

  ‘With pleasure, son. What’ll it be, your neck or your balls?’ The boy tried for a sneer. ‘Maybe you can tell me something about the church getting vandalised?’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘No?’ Rebus sounded surprised. ‘Okay then, last shot … what about this wee coffin that’s been found?’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Have you seen it?’

  The boy shook his head. ‘Tell him to sod off, Chick,’ one of his friends advised.

  ‘Chick?’ Rebus nodded, to let the boy know he was filing the information away.

  ‘Never saw the coffin,’ Chick said. ‘No way I’m going to knock on her door.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because she’s well fucking weird.’ Chick laughed.

  ‘Weird how?’

  Chick was losing patience. Somehow he’d been duped into having a conversation. ‘Weird like the rest of them.’

  ‘They’re all a bunch of tampons,’ his pal said, coming to rescue him. ‘Let’s go, Chick.’ They ran off, collecting the third boy and the ball on their way. Rebus watched for a moment, but Chick didn’t look back. As he returned to the car, he saw that Jean’s window was down.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘so I’m not the world’s best at asking questions of schoolkids.’

  She smiled. ‘What did he mean about tampons?’

  Rebus turned the ignition and glanced at her. ‘He meant they’re all stuck-up.’ He didn’t add the final word, didn’t need to. Jean knew exactly what he meant …

  Late that Sunday night, he found himself on the pavement outside Philippa Balfour’s flat. He still had the set of keys in his pocket, but wasn’t going inside, not after what happened last time. Someone had closed the shutters in her living room and bedroom. No light was being allowed into the flat, none at all.

  It was one week since her disappearance, and a reconstruction was underway. A WPC with a passing resemblance to the missing student had been dressed in clothes similar to the ones Flip might have been wearing that evening. A recently bought Versace T-shirt was missing from Flip’s wardrobe, so the WPC was wearing one just like it. She would walk out of the tenement and be photographed by the waiting newsmen. Then she’d walk briskly to the end of the street, where she’d step into a waiting taxi cab, commandeered for the purpose. She’d get out again and start climbing the hill towards the city centre. There would be photographers with her all the way, and uniformed officers stopping pedestrians and drivers, clipboards ready, questions prepared. The WPC would travel all the way to the bar on the South Side …

  Two TV crews—BBC and Scottish—were readying to film the reconstruction. News programmes would show snippets of it.

  It was an exercise, a way of showing that the police were doing something.

  That was all.

  Gill Templer, catching Rebus’s eye from the other side of the street, seemed to acknowledge as much with a shrug. Then she went back to her conversation with Assistant Chief Constable Cohn Carswell. The ACC seemed to have a few points he wished to get across. Rebus didn’t doubt that the words ‘a swift conclusion’ would figure at least once. From past experience, he knew that when Gill Templer was irritated, she tended to play with a string of pearls she sometimes wore. They were around her neck now, and she had slipped a finger beneath them, running it back and forth. Rebus thought of all Bev Dodds’ bracelets, and what the kid called Chick had said: well fucking weird … Books of Wiccan in her living room, only she didn’t call it that, called it her ‘parlour’ instead. A Stones song popped into his head: ‘Spider and the Fly’, B-side to ‘Satisfaction’. He saw Bev Dodds as a spider, her parlour a web. For some reason the image, though fanciful, stuck with him …

  6

  On Monday morning, Rebus took Jean’s press cuttings in to work. Waiting for him on his desk were three messages from Steve Holly and a note in Gill Templer’s handwriting, informing him of a doctor’s appointment at eleven o’clock. He went to her office to plead his case, but a sheet of paper on her door stated that she would be spending the day at Gayfield Square. Rebus went back to his chair, grabbed his cigarettes and lighter, and headed for the car park. He’d jus
t got one lit when Siobhan Clarke arrived.

  ‘Any luck?’ he asked her. Siobhan lifted the laptop she was carrying.

  ‘Last night,’ she told him.

  ‘What happened?’

  She looked at his cigarette. ‘Soon as you finish that foul thing, come upstairs and I’ll show you.’

  The door swung shut behind her. Rebus stared at the cigarette, took one last puff, and flicked it on to the ground.

  By the time he got to the CID room, Siobhan had set up the laptop. An officer called over that there was a Steve Holly on the line. Rebus shook his head. He knew damned well what Holly wanted: Bev Dodds had told him about the trip to Falls. He held up a finger, asking Siobhan to wait a second, then got on the phone to the museum.

  ‘Jean Burchill’s office, please,’ he said. Then he waited.

  ‘Hello?’ It was her voice.

  ‘Jean? John Rebus here.’

  ‘John, I was just thinking of calling you.’

  ‘Don’t tell me: you’re being hassled?’

  ‘Well, not exactly hassled …'

  ‘A reporter called Steve Holly, wanting to talk about the dolls?’

  ‘He’s been on to you too, then?’

  ‘Best advice I can give, Jean: don’t say anything. Refuse his calls, and if he does get through, tell him you’ve nothing to say. No matter how hard he pushes … ’

  ‘Understood. Did Bev Dodds blab?’

  ‘My fault, I should’ve known she would.’

  ‘I can look after myself, John, don’t worry.’

  They said their goodbyes and he put down the receiver, took the short walk to Siobhan’s desk and read the message on the laptop’s screen.

  This game is not a game. It’s a quest. You’ll need strength and endurance, not to mention intelligence. But your prize will be great. Do you still wish to play?

  ‘I sent back an e-mail saying I was interested, but asking how long the game would take.’ Siobhan was moving her finger across the keypad. ‘He told me it could take a few days, or a few weeks. So then I asked if I could start with Hellbank. He came back straight away, telling me Hellbank was the fourth level, and I’d have to play the whole thing. I said okay. At midnight, this arrived.’

  There was another message on the screen. ‘He’s used a different address,’ Siobhan said. ‘God knows how many he’s got.’

  ‘Making him difficult to track down?’ Rebus guessed. Then he read:

  How can I be sure you are who you say you are?

  ‘He means my e-mail address,’ Siobhan explained. ‘I was using Philippa’s before; now I’m using Grant’s.’

  ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘I told him he’d have to trust me; either that or we could always meet.’

  ‘And was he keen?’

  She smiled. ‘Not overly. But he did send me this.’ She hit another button.

  Seven fins high is king. This queen dines well before the bust.

  ‘Is that it?’

  Siobhan nodded. ‘I asked if he could give me a clue. All he did was send me the message again.

  ‘Presumably because it is the clue.’

  She ran a hand through her hair. ‘I was up half the night. I don’t suppose it means anything to you?’

  He shook his head. You need someone who likes puzzles. Doesn’t young Grant do cryptic crosswords?’

  ‘Does he?’ Siobhan looked across the room to where Grant Hood was making a phone call.

  ‘Why don’t you go and ask?’

  When Hood came off the phone, Siobhan was waiting. ‘How’s the laptop?’ he asked.

  ‘Fine.’ She handed him a sheet of paper. ‘I hear you like a puzzle.’ He took the sheet, but didn’t look at it. ‘Saturday night?’ he asked.

  She nodded. ‘Saturday night was fine.’

  And it had been, too: a couple of drinks and then dinner at a decent, small restaurant in the New Town. They’d talked shop mostly, having not much else in common, but it was good to have a laugh, relive a few stories. He’d been quite the gentleman, walking her home afterwards. She hadn’t asked him up for coffee. He’d said he’d find a cab on Broughton Street.

  Now, Grant nodded back and smiled. ‘Fine’ was good enough for him. Then he looked at the sheet. “’Seven fins high is king”,’ he read aloud. ‘What’s it mean?’

  ‘I was hoping maybe you’d tell me.’

  He studied the message again. ‘Could be an anagram. Unlikely though: not enough vowels, it’s all i’s and e’s. “Before the bust”—drugs bust maybe?’ Siobhan just shrugged. ‘Maybe it would help if you told me a bit about it,’ Hood said.

  Siobhan nodded. ‘Over a coffee, if you like,’ she said.

  Back at his desk, Rebus watched them leave the room, then picked up the first of the cuttings. There was a conversation going on nearby, something about another press conference. The consensus was, if DCS Templer wanted you to front it, it meant she had the knives out. Rebus’s eyes narrowed. There was a sentence he must have missed first time round. It was the 1995 dipping: Huntingtower Hotel near Perth, a dog finding the coffin and scrap of cloth. Three-quarters of the way through the story, an anonymous member of the hotel staff was quoted as saying, ‘If we’re not careful, Huntingtower’s going to get itself a reputation.’ Rebus wondered what was meant by that. He picked up the phone, thinking maybe Jean Burchill would know. But he didn’t make the call, didn’t want her to think he was … well, what exactly? He’d enjoyed yesterday, and thought she had too. He’d dropped her at her home in Portobello, but had declined the offer of coffee.

  ‘I’ve taken up too much of your day as it is,’ he’d said. She hadn’t denied it.

  ‘Maybe another time then,’ was all she’d said.

  Driving back to Marchmont, he’d felt that something had been lost between them. He’d almost called her that evening, but had switched on the TV instead, losing himself in a nature programme, unable afterwards to recall anything about it. Until he’d remembered about the reconstruction and headed out to watch it.

  His hand was still resting on the receiver. He picked it up and got a number for the Huntingtower Hotel, asked to speak to the manager.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ the receptionist said. ‘He’s in a meeting at the moment. Can I take a message?’

  Rebus explained who he was. ‘I want to speak to someone who was working at the hotel in nineteen ninety-five.

  ‘What’s their name?’

  He smiled at her mistake. ‘No, I mean, anyone will do.’

  ‘Well, I’ve been here since ninety-three.’

  ‘Then you might remember the little coffin that was found.’

  ‘Vaguely, yes.’

  ‘Only I’ve got a cutting from a newspaper at the time. It says that the hotel might be getting a reputation.’

  ‘And why would that have been?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Maybe it was that American tourist.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘The one who disappeared.’

  He didn’t say anything for a moment, and when he did it was to ask her to repeat what she’d just said.

  Rebus went to the National Library annexe on Causewayside. It wasn’t much more than a five-minute walk from St Leonard’s. When he’d shown his ID and explained what he needed, he was taken to a desk where a microfilm reader sat. This was a large illuminated screen above two spools. The film was placed on one spool and would be wound on to the empty one. Rebus had used the machine before, back when newspapers had been stored at the main building on George IV Bridge. He’d told the staff that today’s was ‘a rush job’. Even so, he sat for the best part of twenty minutes before a librarian arrived with the film boxes. The Courier was Dundee’s daily paper. Rebus’s own family had taken it. He remembered that up until recently it had retained the look of a broadsheet from a previous era, with column-wide ads covering its front page. No news, no photos. The story went that when the Titanic sank, the headline in the Courier had been ‘Dundee Man Lost at Sea’. Not tha
t the paper was parochial or anything.

  Rebus had the Huntingtower cutting with him, and wound the tape forward until he was four weeks shy of its appearance. There, on an inside page, was the headline ‘Tourist’s Disappearance a Mystery, Say Police’. The woman’s name was Betty-Anne Jesperson. She was thirty-eight and married. She’d been a member of a tour party from the USA. The tour was called ‘The Mystical Highlands of Scotland’. The photograph of Betty-Anne came from her passport. It showed a heavy-set woman with dark permed hair and thick-rimmed glasses. Her husband, Garry, said she was in the habit of waking early and going for a pre-breakfast walk. No one in the hotel had seen her depart. The countryside was searched, and police went into Perth town centre armed with copies of the photograph. But as Rebus wound the film forward a week, the story was cut down to half a dozen paragraphs. A further week along and there was just a single paragraph. The story was in the process’ of vanishing as completely as Betty-Anne had.

  According to the hotel receptionist, Garry Jesperson had made several trips back to the area in that first year, with a further month-long trip the year after. But then the last she’d heard, Garry had met someone else and moved from New Jersey to Baltimore.

  Rebus copied the details into his notebook, then sat tapping at the page he’d just written on until one of the browsers cleared their throat, warning him that he’d started to make too much noise.

  Back at the main desk, he put in a request for more papers: the Dunfermline Press, Glasgow Herald and Inverness Courier. Only the Herald was on microfilm, so he started with that. Nineteen eighty-two, the doll in the churchyard … Van Morrison had released Beautiful Vision early in ‘82. Rebus found himself humming ‘Dweller on the Threshold’, then stopped when he remembered where he was. Nineteen eighty-two, he’d been a detective sergeant, working cases with another DS called Jack Morton. They’d been based at Great London Road, back before the station had caught fire. When the Herald film arrived, he spooled it and got to work, the days and weeks a blur across his screen. All the officers above him at Great London Road, they were either dead or retired. He hadn’t kept in touch with any of them. And now the Farmer was gone too. Soon, whether he liked it or not, it would be his turn. He didn’t think he’d go quietly. They’d have to pull him screaming and kicking …