by Ian Rankin
‘Next call,’ he said now, ‘if we’re offered tea, we take it.’
Hawes nodded. She was in her late thirties or early forties, hair brown and shoulder-length. Her face was freckled and fleshed-out, as though she’d never quite lost her puppy fat. Grey trouser-suit and an emerald blouse, pinned at the neck with a silver Celtic brooch. Rebus could imagine her at a ceilidh, being spun during Strip the Willow, her face bearing the same concentration she brought to her work.
Below the main door flat, down a curving set of external steps, was the ‘garden flat’, so called because the garden at the back of the building came with it. At the front, the stone slabs were covered in more tubs of flowers. There were two windows, with two more at ground level – the place boasted a sub-basement. A pair of wooden doors was set into the wall opposite the entrance. They would lead into cellars beneath the pavement. Though they would have been checked before, Rebus tried opening them both, but they were locked. Hawes checked her notes.
‘Grant Hood and George Silvers got there before you,’ she said.
‘But were the doors locked or unlocked?’
‘I unlocked them,’ a voice called out. They turned to see an elderly woman standing just inside the flat’s front door. ‘Would you like the keys?’
‘Yes please, madam,’ Phyllida Hawes said. When the woman had turned back into the flat, she turned to Rebus and made a T shape with the index finger of either hand. Rebus held both his thumbs up in reply.
Mrs Jardine’s flat was a chintz museum, a home for china waifs and strays. The throw which covered the back of her sofa must have taken weeks to crochet. She apologised for the array of tin cans and metal pots which all but covered the floor of her conservatory – ‘never seem to get round to fixing the roof’. Rebus had suggested they take their tea there: every time he turned round in the living room he feared he was about to send some ornament flying. When the rain started, however, their conversation was punctuated by drips and dollops, and the splashes from the pot nearest Rebus threatened to give him the same sort of soaking he’d have had outside.
‘I didn’t know the lassie,’ Mrs Jardine said ruefully. ‘Maybe if I got out a bit more I’d have seen her.’
Hawes was staring out of the window. ‘You manage to keep your garden neat,’ she said. This was an understatement: the long, narrow garden, slivers of lawn and flowerbed either side of a meandering path, was immaculate.
‘My gardener,’ Mrs Jardine said.
Hawes studied the notes from the previous interview, then shook her head almost imperceptibly: Silvers and Hood hadn’t mentioned a gardener.
‘Could we have his name, Mrs Jardine?’ Rebus asked, his voice casually polite. Still, the old woman looked at him with concern. Rebus offered her a smile and one of her own drop scones. ‘It’s just that I might need a gardener myself,’ he lied.
The last thing they did was check the cellars. An ancient hot-water tank in one, nothing but mould in the other. They waved Mrs Jardine goodbye and thanked her for her hospitality.
‘All right for some,’ Grant Hood said. He was waiting for them on the pavement, collar up against the rain. ‘So far we’ve not been offered as much as the time of day.’ His partner was Distant Daniels. Rebus nodded a greeting.
‘What’s up, Tommy? Working a double shift?’
Daniels shrugged. ‘Did a swap.’ He tried to suppress a yawn. Hawes was tapping her sheaf of notes.
‘You,’ she told Hood, ‘didn’t do your job.’
‘Eh?’
‘Mrs Jardine has a gardener,’ Rebus explained.
‘We’ll be talking to the bin-men next,’ Hood said.
‘We already have,’ Hawes reminded him. ‘And been through the bins, too.’
The two of them looked to be squaring up. Rebus considered brokering the peace – he was St Leonard’s, same as Hood: he should be sticking up for him – but lit another cigarette instead. Hood’s cheeks had reddened. He was a DC, same rank as Hawes, but she had more years behind her. Sometimes you couldn’t argue with experience, which wasn’t stopping Hood from trying.
‘This isn’t helping Philippa Balfour,’ Distant Daniels said at last, stopping the confab dead.
‘Well said, son,’ Rebus added. It was true: big inquiries could blind you to the single essential truth. You became a tiny cog in the machine, and as such you made demands in order to assure yourself of your importance. The ownership of chairs became an issue, because it was an easy argument, something that could be resolved quickly either way. Unlike the case itself, the case which was growing almost exponentially, making you seem ever smaller, until you lost sight of that single essential truth – what Rebus’s mentor Lawson Geddes had called ‘the SET’ – which was that a person or persons needed your help. A crime had to be solved, the guilty brought to justice: it was good to be reminded sometimes.
They split up amicably in the end, Hood noting the gardener’s details and promising to talk to him. After which there was nothing else to do but start climbing stairs again. They’d spent the best part of half an hour at Mrs Jardine’s; already Hawes’ calculations were unravelling, proving another truism: inquiries ate up time, as if the days went into fast forward and you couldn’t show how the hours had been spent, were hard pressed to explain your exhaustion, knowing only the frustration of something left incomplete.
Two more no-one-homes, and then, on the first landing, the door was opened by a face Rebus recognised but couldn’t place.
‘It’s about Philippa Balfour’s disappearance,’ Hawes was explaining. ‘I believe two of my colleagues spoke to you earlier. This is just by way of a follow-up.’
‘Yes, of course.’ The gloss-black door opened a little wider. The man looked at Rebus and smiled. ‘You’re having trouble placing me, but I remember you.’ The smile widened. ‘You always remember the virgins, don’t you?’
As they were shown down the hall, the man introduced himself as Donald Devlin, and Rebus knew him. The first autopsy Rebus had ever attended as a CID officer, Devlin had done the cutting. He’d been Professor of Forensic Medicine at the university, and the city’s chief pathologist at the time. Sandy Gates had been his assistant. Now, Gates was Professor of Forensic Medicine, with Dr Curt as his ‘junior’. On the walls of the hallway were framed photos of Devlin receiving various prizes and awards.
‘The name’s not coming to me,’ Devlin said, gesturing for the two officers to precede him into a cluttered drawing room.
‘DI Rebus.’
‘It would have been Detective Constable back then?’ Devlin guessed. Rebus nodded.
‘Moving out, sir?’ Hawes asked, looking around her at the profusion of boxes and black bin-liners. Rebus looked too. Tottering towers of paperwork, drawers which had been wrenched from their chests and now threatened to spill mementoes across the carpet. Devlin chuckled. He was a short, portly man, probably in his mid-seventies. His grey cardigan had lost most of its shape and half its buttons, and his charcoal trousers were held up with braces. His face was puffy and red-veined, his eyes small blue dots behind a pair of metal-framed spectacles.
‘In a manner of speaking, I suppose,’ he said, pushing a few strands of hair back into some semblance of order across the expanse of his domed scalp. ‘Let’s just say that if the Grim Reaper is the ne plus ultra of removers, then I’m acting as his unpaid assistant.’
Rebus recalled that Devlin had always spoken like this, never settling for six words where a dozen would do, and tossing the odd spanner into the dictionary. It had been a nightmare trying to take notes while Devlin worked an autopsy.
‘You’re moving into a home?’ Hawes guessed. The old man chuckled again.
‘Not quite ready for the heave-ho yet, alas. No, all I’m doing is dispensing with a few unwanted items, making it easier for those family members who’ll wish to pick over the carcass of my estate after I’ve shuffled off.’
‘Saving them the trouble of throwing it all out?’
Devlin loo
ked at Rebus. ‘A correct and concise summary of affairs,’ he noted approvingly.
Hawes had reached into a box for a leatherbound book. ‘You’re binning all of it?’
‘By no means,’ Devlin tutted. ‘The volume in your hand, for example, an early edition of Donaldson’s anatomical sketches, I intend to offer to the College of Surgeons.’
‘You still see Professor Gates?’ Rebus asked.
‘Oh, Sandy and I enjoy the occasional tincture. He’ll be retiring himself soon enough, I don’t doubt, making way for the young. We fool ourselves that this makes life cyclical, but of course it’s anything but, unless you happen to practise Buddhism.’ He smiled at what he saw as this little joke.
‘Just because you’re a Buddhist doesn’t mean you’ll come back again though, does it?’ Rebus said, delighting the old man further. Rebus was staring at a framed news report on the wall to the right of the fireplace: a murder conviction dated 1957. ‘Your first case?’ he guessed.
‘Actually, yes. A young bride bludgeoned to death by her husband. They were in the city on honeymoon.’
‘Must cheer the place up,’ Hawes commented.
‘My wife thought it macabre too,’ Devlin admitted. ‘After she died, I put it back up.’
‘Well,’ Hawes said, dropping the book back into its box and looking in vain for somewhere to sit, ‘sooner we’re finished, the sooner you can get back to your clear-out.’
‘A pragmatist: good to see.’ Devlin seemed content to let the three of them stand there, in the middle of a large and threadbare Persian carpet, almost afraid to move for fear that a domino effect would ensue.
‘Is there any order, sir?’ Rebus asked. ‘Or can we move a couple of boxes on to the floor?’
‘Better to take our tête-à-tête into the dining room, I think.’
Rebus nodded and made to follow, his gaze drifting to an engraved invitation on the marble mantelpiece. It was from the Royal College of Surgeons, something to do with a dinner at Surgeons’ Hall. ‘Black/white tie and decorations’ it said along the bottom. The only decorations he had were in a box in his hall cupboard. They went up every Christmas, if he could be bothered.
The dining room was dominated by a long wooden table and six un-upholstered, straight-backed chairs. There was a serving-hatch – what Rebus’s family would have called a ‘bowley-hole’ – through to the kitchen, and a dark-stained sideboard spread with a dusty array of glassware and silver. The few framed pictures looked like early examples of photography: posed studio shots of Venetian boat-life, maybe scenes from Shakespeare. The tall sash window looked out on to gardens at the rear of the building. Down below, Rebus could see that Mrs Jardine’s gardener had shaped her plot – either by accident or design – so that from above it resembled a question mark.
On the table lay a half-finished jigsaw: central Edinburgh photographed from above. ‘Any and all help,’ Devlin said, waving a hand expansively over the puzzle, ‘will be most gratefully received.’
‘Looks like a lot of pieces,’ Rebus said.
‘Just the two thousand.’
Hawes, who had at last introduced herself to Devlin, was having trouble getting comfortable on her chair. She asked how long Devlin had been retired.
‘Twelve … no, fourteen years. Fourteen years …’ He shook his head, marvelling at time’s ability to speed up even as the heartbeat slowed.
Hawes looked at her notes. ‘At the first interview, you said you’d been home that evening.’
‘That’s right.’
‘And you didn’t see Philippa Balfour?’
‘Your information is correct thus far.’
Rebus, deciding against the chairs, leaned back, putting his weight on the windowsill, and folded his arms.
‘But you knew Ms Balfour?’ he asked.
‘We’d exchanged pleasantries, yes.’
‘She’s been your neighbour for the best part of a year,’ Rebus said.
‘You’ll recall that this is Edinburgh, DI Rebus. I’ve lived in this apartment nearly three decades – I moved in when my wife passed away. It takes time to get to know one’s neighbours. Often, I’m afraid, they move on before one has had the opportunity.’ He shrugged. ‘After a while, one ceases trying.’
‘That’s pretty sad,’ Hawes said.
‘And you live where … ?’
‘If I could just,’ Rebus interrupted, ‘bring us back to the matter in hand.’ He’d moved off the windowsill, hands now resting on the table-top. His eyes were on the loose pieces of the jigsaw.
‘Of course,’ Devlin said.
‘You were in all evening, and didn’t hear anything untoward?’
Devlin glanced up, perhaps appreciative of Rebus’s final word. ‘Nothing,’ he said after a pause.
‘Or see anything?’
‘Ditto.’
Hawes wasn’t just looking uncomfortable now; she was clearly irritated by these responses. Rebus sat down across from her, trying for eye contact, but she was ready with a question of her own.
‘Have you ever had a falling-out with Ms Balfour, sir?’
‘What is there to fall out about?’
‘Nothing now,’ Hawes stated coldly.
Devlin gave her a look and turned towards Rebus. ‘I see you’re interested in the table, Inspector.’
Rebus realised that he’d been running his fingers along the grain of the wood.
‘It’s nineteenth-century,’ Devlin went on, ‘crafted by a fellow anatomist.’ He glanced towards Hawes, then back to Rebus again. ‘There was something I remembered … probably nothing important.’
‘Yes, sir?’
‘A man standing outside.’
Rebus knew that Hawes was about to say something, so beat her to it. ‘When was this?’
‘A couple of days before she vanished, and the day before that, too.’ Devlin shrugged, all too aware of the effect his words were having. Hawes had reddened; she was dying to scream out something like when were you going to tell us? Rebus kept his voice level.
‘On the pavement outside?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Did you get a good look at him?’
Another shrug. ‘In his twenties, short dark hair … not cropped, just neat.’
‘Not a neighbour?’
‘It’s always possible. I’m merely telling you what I saw. He seemed to be waiting for someone or something. I recall him checking his watch.’
‘Her boyfriend maybe?’
‘Oh no, I know David.’
‘You do?’ Rebus asked. He was still casually scanning the jigsaw.
‘To talk to, yes. We met a few times in the stairwell. Nice young chap …’
‘How was he dressed?’ Hawes asked.
‘Who? David?’
‘The man you saw.’
Devlin seemed almost to relish the glare which accompanied her words. ‘Jacket and trousers,’ he said, glancing down at his cardigan. ‘I can’t be more specific, never having been a follower of fashion.’
Which was true: fourteen years ago, he’d worn similar cardigans under his green surgeon’s smock, along with bowties which were always askew. You could never forget your first autopsy: those sights, smells and sounds which were to become familiar. The scrape of metal on bone, or the whispering of a scalpel as it parted flesh. Some pathologists carried a cruel sense of humour and would put on an especially graphic performance for any ‘virgins’. But never Devlin; he’d always focused on the corpse, as if the two of them were alone in the room, that intimate final act of filleting carried out with a decorum bordering on ritual.
‘Do you think,’ Rebus asked, ‘that if you thought about it, maybe let your mind drift back, you could come up with a fuller description?’
‘I rather doubt it, but of course if you think it important …’
‘Early days, sir. You know yourself, we can’t rule anything out.’
‘Of course, of course.’
Rebus was treating Devlin as a fellow pro
fessional … and it was working.
‘We might even try to put together a photofit,’ Rebus went on. ‘That way, if it turns out to be a neighbour or someone anyone knows, we can eliminate him straight away.’
‘Seems reasonable,’ Devlin agreed.
Rebus got on his mobile to Gayfield and made an appointment for the next morning. Afterwards, he asked if Devlin would need a car.
‘Should manage to find my own way. Not utterly decrepit just yet, you know.’ But he got to his feet slowly, his joints seemingly stiff as he showed the two detectives out.
‘Thanks again, sir,’ Rebus said, shaking his hand.
Devlin just nodded, avoiding eye contact with Hawes, who wasn’t about to offer him her own thanks. As they made their way up to the next landing, she muttered something Rebus didn’t catch.
‘Sorry?’
‘I said: bloody men.’ She paused. ‘Present company excluded.’ Rebus didn’t say anything, prepared to let her get it off her chest. ‘Do you suppose for one second,’ she went on, ‘that if it had been two female officers down there, he’d have said anything?’
‘I think that would depend how he was handled.’
Hawes glared at him, seeking levity that wasn’t there.
‘Part of our job,’ Rebus went on, ‘is pretending we like everyone, pretending we’re interested in everything they have to say.’
‘He just—’
‘Got on your nerves? Mine too. Bit pompous, but that’s just his way; you can’t let it show. You’re right: I’m not sure he’d have told us anything. He’d dismissed it as irrelevant. But then he opened up, just to put you in your place.’ Rebus smiled. ‘Good work. It’s not often I get to play “good cop” around here.’
‘It wasn’t just that he got on my nerves,’ Hawes conceded.