by Ian Rankin
‘Donald Devlin. First time he saw me afterwards, he guessed I’d done it. That’s why he came up with that story, someone loitering outside. He was trying to protect me.’
‘Why would he do that, David?’ It felt strange using his name. She wanted to call him Quizmaster.
‘Because of everything we talked about … committing murder, getting away with it.’
‘Professor Devlin?’
He looked at her. ‘Oh yes, he’s killed too, you know. Old bugger as good as said so, daring me to be like him … maybe he was just too good a teacher, eh?’ He ran his hands over the headstone. ‘We had these long talks on the stairwell. He wanted to know all about me, my early days, the angry days. I went to his flat once. He showed me these cuttings … people who’d disappeared or drowned. There was even one about a German student … ’
‘That’s where you got the idea?’
‘Maybe.’ He shrugged. ‘Who knows where ideas come from?’ He paused. ‘I helped her, you know. She was dead impressed, all those clues … pulling her hair out until I came along … ’ He laughed. ‘Flip was never much good with computers. I gave her the name Flipside, then sent the first clue.’
'You turned up at the flat, told her you’d solved Hellbank … ’
Costello nodded, remembering. ‘She wasn’t going to go with me until I promised to drop her off afterwards … She’d just kicked me out again—final this time, she’d piled my clothes on a chair—and after Hellbank she was heading off for a drink with all those bloody friends of hers …’ He screwed his eyes shut for a moment, then opened them and blinked, turning his head to face Siobhan. ‘Once you’re there, it’s hard to go back …’ He shrugged.
‘There never was a Stricture?’
He shook his head slowly. ‘That clue was all for you, Siobhan … ’
‘I don’t know why you kept going back to her, David, or what you thought the game would prove, but one thing I do know: you never loved her. What you wanted was to control her.’ She nodded at the truth of this.
‘Some people like to be controlled, Siobhan.’ His eyes were staring into hers. ‘Don’t you?’
She thought for a moment … or tried to think. Opened her mouth and was about to speak, but a noise interrupted. He snapped his head round: two men approaching. And two more fifty yards beyond them. He turned slowly back to Siobhan.
‘I’m disappointed in you.’
She was shaking her head. ‘Not my doing.’
He leapt from the headstone, hurtled towards the wall, his hands reaching the top, feet scrabbling for purchase. The detectives were running now, one yelling, ‘Stop him!’ Siobhan just watched, rooted to the spot. Quizmaster … she’d given him her word … One of his feet had found a half-inch of ledge, pushing up …
Siobhan threw herself at the wall, grabbed the other leg with both hands and pulled. He tried kicking her off, but she held on, one hand reaching up towards his jacket, trying to haul him back. Then they were both flying backwards, his the only cry. His sunglasses seemed to float past her in slow motion. She was watching them when she hit the ground. He landed heavily on top of her, the air exploding from her lungs. She felt pain as her head connected with the grass. Costello was on his feet and running, but two of the officers had him, wrestled him back on to the ground. He managed to slide his head round so he was looking at Siobhan, the two of them only a couple of yards apart. Hatred filled his face, and he spat in her direction. The saliva hit her on the chin and hung there. Suddenly she didn’t have the strength to wipe it off …
Jean was asleep, but the doctor assured Rebus she’d be fine: cuts and bruises, ‘nothing time can’t heal’.
‘I very much doubt that,’ he told the doctor.
Ellen Wylie was there by the bedside. Rebus walked over and stood beside her. ‘I wanted to say thanks,’ he told her.
‘For what?’
‘Helping break down Devlin’s door, for one thing. I’d never have done it on my own.
Her reply was a shrug. ‘How’s the ankle?’ she asked.
‘Ballooning nicely, thank you.’
‘A week or two on the sick,’ she said.
‘Maybe more, if I swallowed any of the Water of Leith.’
‘I hear Devlin took a good few gulps himself.’ She stared at him. ‘Got a good story prepared?’
He smiled. 'You offering to tell a lie or two on my behalf?’
‘Just say the word.’
He nodded slowly. ‘Problem is, a dozen witnesses could say otherwise.’
‘But will they?’
‘We’ll just have to wait and see,’ Rebus said.
He limped along to A&E, where Siobhan was having a couple of stitches put into a head wound. Eric Bain was there. The conversation stopped as Rebus approached.
‘Eric here,’ Siobhan said, ‘was just explaining how you worked out where I’d be.’ Rebus nodded. ‘And how you gained entry to David Costello’s flat.’
Rebus made an O with his lips.
‘Mr Strongarm,’ she went on, ‘kicking in a suspect’s door without authority or any sniff of a warrant.’
‘Technically,’ Rebus told her, ‘I was on suspension. That means I wasn’t a serving officer.’
‘Making it even worse.’ She turned to Bain. ‘Eric, you’re going to have to cover for him.’
‘Door was open when we got there,’ Bain recited. ‘Botched break-in, probably … ’
Siobhan nodded and smiled at him. Then she gave Bain’s hand a squeeze …
Donald Devlin was under police guard in one of the Western General’s private rooms. He’d half drowned in the river and was now in what the doctors were calling a coma.
‘Let’s hope he stays there,’ ACC Cohn Carswell had said. ‘Save us the expense of a prosecution.’
Carswell hadn’t said anything at all to Rebus. Gill said not to worry: ‘He’s ignoring you because he hates making apologies.’
Rebus nodded. ‘I’ve just seen a doctor,’ he told her.
She looked at him. ‘So?’
‘Does that count as my check-up … ?’
David Costello was in custody at Gayfleld Square. Rebus didn’t go near. He knew they’d be cracking open a few bottles of whisky and cans of beer, sounds of celebration drifting into the room where Costello was being questioned. He thought of the time he’d asked Donald Devlin whether his young neighbour was capable of killing: not cerebral enough for David. Well, Costello had found his method all the same, and Devlin had protected him … the old man sheltering the young.
When Rebus went home, he took a tour of his flat. It represented, he realised, the only fixed point of his life. All the cases he’d worked, the monsters he’d encountered … he dealt with them here, seated in his chair, staring out of his window. He found room for them in the bestiary of his mind, and there they stayed.
If he gave this up, what would be left? No still centre to his world, no cage for his demons …
Tomorrow he’d call the solicitor, tell her he wasn’t moving.
Tomorrow.
For tonight, he had new cages to fill …
14
It was a Sunday afternoon of sharp, low sunlight, the shadows impossibly long and skewed into an elastic geometry. Trees bowed by the wind, clouds moving like oiled machines. Falls, twinned with Anguish … Rebus drove past the signpost, glanced towards Jean, quiet in the passenger seat. She’d been quiet all week; slow to answer her phone or come to the door. The doctor’s words: nothing time can’t heal .
He’d given her the option, but she’d decided to come with him. They parked next to a sparkling BMW. There were traces of soapy water in the gutters. Rebus pulled on the hand-brake and turned to Jean.
‘I’ll only be a minute. You want to wait here?’
She thought about it, then nodded. He reached into the back for the coffin. It was wrapped in newspaper, a front-page headline by Steven Holly. He got out of the car, leaving his door open. Knocked on the door of Wheel Cottage.
‘Sorry, not a tourist,’ Rebus said. Her smile faded. ‘Doing a roaring trade in tea and buns?’
‘What can I do for you?’
He lifted up the parcel. ‘Thought you might like this back. It’s yours, after all, isn’t it?’
She parted the sheets of newsprint. ‘Oh, thanks,’ she said.
‘It really is yours, isn’t it?’
She wouldn’t look at him. ‘Finders keepers, I suppose … '
But he was shaking his head. ‘I mean, you made it, Ms Dodds. This new sign of yours …’ He nodded in its direction. ‘Care to tell me who made it? I’m willing to bet you did it yourself. Nice piece of wood … I’m guessing you’ve a few chisels and such-like.’
‘What do you want?’ Her voice had grown chilly.
‘When I brought Jean Burchill here—there she is in the car, and she’s fine by the way, thanks for asking—when I brought her here, you said you often went to the Museum.’
'Yes?’ She was staring over his shoulder, but averted her gaze when Jean’s eyes met hers.
'Yet you’d never come across the Arthur’s Seat coffins.’ Rebus affected a frown. ‘It should have clicked with me right there.’ He stared at her, but she didn’t say anything. He watched her neck redden, watched her turn the coffin in her hands. ‘Still,’ he said, ‘brought you some extra business, eh? But I’ll tell you one thing … '
Her eyes were liquid; she brought them up to meet his. ‘What?’ she asked, voice cracking.
He pointed a finger at her. You’re lucky I didn’t tag you sooner. I might have said something to Donald Devlin. And then you’d look like Jean back there, if not a damned sight worse.’
He turned away, headed back to the car. On the way, he unhooked the ‘Pottery’ sign and tossed it into the gutter. She was still watching from her doorway as he started the ignition. A couple of day-trippers were approaching along the pavement. Rebus knew exactly where they were headed and why. He made sure to turn the steering-wheel hard, running the sign over, front and back tyres both.
On the way back into Edinburgh, Jean asked if they were going to Portobello. He nodded, and asked if that was okay with her.
‘It’s fine,’ she told him. ‘I need someone to help me move that mirror out of the bedroom.’ He looked at her. ‘Just until the bruises have healed,’ she said quietly.
He nodded his understanding. ‘Know what I need, Jean?’
She turned towards him. ‘What?’
He shook his head slowly. ‘I was hoping you might tell me …'
Afterword
Firstly, a big thank-you to Mogwai, whose ‘Stanley Kubrick’ EP was playing in the background throughout the final draft of this book.
The collection of poetry in David Costello’s flat is I Dream of Alfred Hitchcock by James Robertson, and the poem from which Rebus quotes is entitled ‘Shower Scene’.
After the first draft of this book was written, I discovered that in 1999 the Museum of Scotland commissioned two American researchers, Dr Allen Simpson and Dr Sam Menefee of the University of Virginia, to examine t~ie Arthur’s Seat coffins and formulate a solution. They concluded that the most likely explanation was that the coffins had been made by a shoemaker acquaintance of the murderers Burke and Hare, using a shoemaker’s knife and brass fittings adapted from shoe buckles, the idea being to give the victims some vestige of Christian burial, since a dissected corpus could not be resurrected.
The Falls is, of course, a work of fiction, a flight of fancy. Dr Kennet Lovell exists only between its pages.
In June 1996, a man’s body was found near the summit of Ben Alder. He’d died of gunshot wounds. His name was Emmanuel Caillet, the son of a French merchant banker. What he was doing in Scotland was never ascertained. The report, produced from autopsy and scene-of-crime evidence, concluded that the young man had committed suicide. But there are enough discrepancies and unanswered questions to persuade his parents that this is not the real solution …
The End
Contents
Title Page
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
Afterword