The Falls

by Ian Rankin

Rebus opened his eyes. ‘Deep in thought, George.’

  ‘You weren’t dropping off, then?’

  Rebus glared at him. ‘Far from it.’

  As Hi-Ho Silvers moved away, Siobhan came and rested against the side of Rebus’s desk.

  ‘So how deep in thought were you?’

  ‘I was wondering if Rabbie Burns could have murdered one of his lovers.’ She just stared at him. ‘Or whether someone who reads poetry could.’

  ‘Don’t see why not. Didn’t some death-camp commander listen to Mozart of an evening?’

  ‘Now there’s a cheery thought.’

  ‘Always here to make your day that little bit brighter. Now what about doing me a favour?’

  ‘How can I refuse?’

  She handed him a sheet of paper. ‘Tell me what you think that means.’

  Subj: Hellbank

  Date: 5/9

  From: Quizmaster@PaganOmerta.com

  To: Flipside1223@HXRmail.com

  Did you survive Hellbank? Time running out. Stricture awaits your call.

  QuiM

  Rebus looked up at her. ‘Going to give me a clue?’

  She took back the sheet of paper. ‘It’s an e-mail printout. Philippa had a couple of dozen messages waiting for her, dating back to the day she went missing. All of them except this one are addressed to her other name.’

  ‘Her other name?’

  ‘ISPs—’ she paused – ‘Internet service providers will usually allow you a range of log-on names, as many as five or six.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘So you can be … different people, I suppose. Flipside 1223 is a sort of alias. Her other e-mails all went to Flip-dot-Balfour.’

  ‘So what does it mean?’

  Siobhan expelled air. ‘That’s what I’m wondering. Maybe it means she had a side we don’t know about. There’s not a single saved message from her or to her in the name of Flipside 1223. So either she’s been erasing them as she goes, or else this got to her by mistake.’

  ‘Doesn’t look like coincidence, does it, though?’ Rebus said. ‘Her nickname’s Flip.’

  Siobhan was nodding. ‘Hellbank, Stricture, Pagan Omerta …’

  ‘Omerta’s the mafia code of silence,’ Rebus stated.

  ‘And Quizmaster,’ Siobhan said. ‘Signs herself or himself QuiM. Little touch of juvenile humour there.’

  Rebus looked at the message again. ‘Beats me, Siobhan. What do you want to do?’

  ‘I’d like to track down whoever sent this, but that’s not going to be easy. Only way I can think of is to reply.’

  ‘Let whoever it is know that Philippa’s gone missing?’

  Siobhan lowered her voice. ‘I was thinking more along the lines of her replying.’

  Rebus was thoughtful. ‘Think it would work? What would you say?’

  ‘I haven’t decided.’ The way she folded her arms, Rebus knew she was going to do it anyway.

  ‘Run it past DCS Templer when she gets in,’ he cautioned. Siobhan nodded and made to leave, but he called her back. ‘You went to uni. Tell me, did you ever mix with the likes of Philippa Balfour?’

  She snorted. ‘That’s another world. No tutorials or lectures for them. Some of them I only ever saw in the exam hall. And you know what?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The sods always passed …’

  That evening, Gill Templer hosted a celebratory gathering at the Palm Court in the Balmoral Hotel. A tuxedoed pianist was playing in the opposite corner. A bottle of champagne sat in an ice-bucket. Bowls of nibbles had been brought to the table.

  ‘Remember to leave space for supper,’ Gill told her guests. A table in Hadrian’s had been booked for eight-thirty. It had just gone half past seven, and the last arrival was coming through the door.

  Slipping off her coat, Siobhan apologised. A waiter appeared and took the coat from her. Another waiter was already pouring champagne into her glass.

  ‘Cheers,’ she said, sitting down and lifting the glass. ‘And congratulations.’

  Gill Templer lifted her own glass and allowed herself a smile. ‘I think I deserve it,’ she said, to enthusiastic agreement.

  Siobhan already knew two of the guests. Both were fiscals depute, and Siobhan had worked with them on several prosecutions. Harriet Brough was in her late forties, her black hair permed (and maybe even dyed, too), her figure hidden behind layers of tweed and thick cotton. Diana Metcalf was early forties, with short ash-blonde hair and sunken eyes which, rather than masking, she exaggerated with dark eye-shadow. She always wore brightly coloured clothes, which helped to heighten still further her waif-like, undernourished look.

  ‘And this is Siobhan Clarke,’ Gill was telling the last member of the party. ‘A detective constable in my station.’ The way she said ‘my station’, it was as if she’d taken on ownership of the place, which, Siobhan supposed, wasn’t so far from the truth. ‘Siobhan, this is Jean Burchill. Jean works at the museum.’

  ‘Oh? Which one?’

  ‘The Museum of Scotland,’ Burchill answered. ‘Have you ever been?’

  ‘I had a meal in The Tower once,’ Siobhan said.

  ‘Not quite the same thing.’ Burchill’s voice trailed off.

  ‘No, what I meant was …’ Siobhan tried to find a diplomatic way of putting it. ‘I had a meal there just after it opened. The guy I was with … well, bad experience. It put me off going back.’

  ‘Understood,’ Harriet Brough said, as though every mishap in life could be explained by reference to the opposite sex.

  ‘Well,’ Gill said, ‘it’s women only tonight, so we can all relax.’

  ‘Unless we hit a nightclub later,’ Diana Metcalf said, her eyes glinting.

  Gill caught Siobhan’s eye. ‘Did you send that e-mail?’ she asked.

  Jean Burchill tutted. ‘No shop talk, please.’

  The fiscals agreed noisily, but Siobhan nodded anyway, to let Gill know the message had gone out. Whether anyone would be fooled by it was another matter. It was why she’d been late getting here. She’d spent too long going over Philippa’s e-mails, all the ones she’d sent to friends, trying to work out what sort of tone might be convincing, what words to use and how to order them. She’d gone through over a dozen drafts before deciding to keep it simple. But then some of Philippa’s e-mails were like long chatty letters: what if her previous messages to Quizmaster had been the same? How would he or she react to this curt, out-of-character reply? Problem. Need to talk to you. Flipside. And then a telephone number, the number for Siobhan’s own mobile.

  ‘I saw the press conference on TV tonight,’ Diana Metcalf said.

  Jean Burchill groaned. ‘What did I just say?’

  Metcalf turned to her with those big, dark, wary eyes. ‘This isn’t shop, Jean. Everyone’s talking about it.’ Then she turned to Gill. ‘I don’t think it was the boyfriend, do you?’

  Gill just shrugged.

  ‘See?’ Burchill said. ‘Gill doesn’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘More likely the father,’ Harriet Brough said. ‘My brother was at school with him. A very cold fish.’ She spoke with a confidence and authority that revealed her upbringing. She’d probably wanted to be a lawyer from nursery school on, Siobhan guessed. ‘Where was the mother?’ Brough now demanded of Gill.

  ‘Couldn’t face it,’ Gill answered. ‘We did ask her.’

  ‘She couldn’t have made a worse job than those two,’ Brough stated, picking cashews out of the bowl nearest her.

  Gill looked suddenly tired. Siobhan decided on a change of subject and asked Jean Burchill what she did at the museum.

  ‘I’m a senior curator,’ Burchill explained. ‘My main specialism is eighteenth- and nineteenth-century.’

  ‘Her main specialism,’ Harriet Brough interrupted, ‘is death.’

  Burchill smiled. ‘It’s true I put together the exhibits on belief and—’

  ‘What’s truer,’ Brough cut in, her eyes on Siobhan, ‘is that she puts together old c
offins and pictures of dead Victorian babies. Gives me the collywobbles whenever I happen to be on whichever floor it is.’

  ‘The fourth,’ Burchill said quietly. She was, Siobhan decided, very pretty. Small and slender, with straight brown hair hanging in a pageboy cut. Her chin was dimpled, her cheeks well defined and tinged pink, even in the discreet lighting of the Palm Court. She wore no make-up that Siobhan could see, nor did she need any. She was all muted, pastel shades: jacket and trousers which had probably been called ‘taupe’ in the shop; grey cashmere sweater beneath the jacket, and a russet pashmina fixed at the shoulder with a Rennie Mackintosh brooch. Late forties again. It struck Siobhan that she was the youngest person here by probably fifteen years.

  ‘Jean and I were at school together,’ Gill explained. ‘Then we lost touch and bumped into one another just four or five years back.’

  Burchill smiled at the memory.

  ‘Wouldn’t want to meet anyone I was at school with,’ Harriet Brough said through a mouthful of nuts. ‘Arseholes, the lot of them.’

  ‘More champagne, ladies?’ the waiter said, lifting the bottle from its ice-bucket.

  ‘About bloody time,’ Brough snapped.

  *

  Between dessert and coffee, Siobhan headed to the loo. Walking back along the corridor to the brasserie, she met Gill.

  ‘Great minds,’ Gill said with a smile.

  ‘It was a lovely meal, Gill. Are you sure I can’t … ?’

  Gill touched her arm. ‘My treat. It’s not every day I have something worth celebrating.’ The smile melted from her lips. ‘You think your e-mail will work?’ Siobhan just shrugged, and Gill nodded, accepting the assessment. ‘What did you reckon to the press conference?’

  ‘The usual jungle.’

  ‘Sometimes it works,’ Gill mused. She’d had three glasses of wine on top of the champagne, but the only sign that she wasn’t stone-cold sober was a slight tilt to her head and heaviness to her eyelids.

  ‘Can I say something?’ Siobhan asked.

  ‘We’re off duty, Siobhan. Say what you like.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have given it to Ellen Wylie.’

  Gill fixed her with a stare. ‘It should have been you, eh?’

  ‘That’s not what I mean. But to give someone that as their first liaison job …’

  ‘You’d have done it better?’

  ‘I’m not saying that.’

  ‘Then what are you saying?’

  ‘I’m saying it was a jungle and you threw her in there without a map.’

  ‘Careful, Siobhan.’ Gill’s voice had lost all its warmth. She considered for a moment, then sniffed. When she spoke, her eyes surveyed the hallway. ‘Ellen Wylie’s been bending my ear for months. She wanted liaison, and as soon as I could, I gave it to her. I wanted to see if she was as good as she thinks she is.’ Now her eyes met Siobhan’s. Their faces were close enough for Siobhan to smell the wine. ‘She fell short.’

  ‘How did that feel?’

  Gill held up a finger. ‘Don’t push this, Siobhan. I’ve enough on my plate as it is.’ It seemed she was about to say something more, but she merely wagged the finger and forced a smile. ‘We’ll talk later,’ she said, sliding past Siobhan and pushing open the door to the loos. Then she paused. ‘Ellen’s no longer liaison officer. I was thinking of asking you …’ The door closed behind her.

  ‘Don’t do me any favours,’ Siobhan said, but she said it to the same closed door. It was as if Gill had hardened overnight, the humiliation of Ellen Wylie an early show of strength. The thing was … Siobhan did want liaison, but at the same time she felt disgusted with herself, because she’d enjoyed watching the press conference. She’d enjoyed Ellen Wylie’s defeat.

  When Gill emerged from the toilets, Siobhan was sitting on a chair in the corridor. Gill stood over her, gazing down.

  ‘The spectre at the feast,’ she commented, turning away.

  3

  ‘I was expecting some pavement artist,’ Donald Devlin said. To Rebus’s eyes, he was wearing the exact same clothes as when they’d last met. The retired pathologist was seated at a desk beside a computer and the only detective at Gayfield Square who seemed to know how to use the Facemaker programme. Facemaker was a database of eyes, ears, noses and lips, consolidated by special effects which could morph the details. Rebus got an idea of how the Farmer’s old colleagues had been able to graft his features on to beefcake torsos.

  ‘Things have moved on a little,’ was all Rebus said, in reply to Devlin’s comment. He was drinking coffee from a local café; not up to his barista’s standards, but better than the stuff from the station’s vending machine. He’d had a broken night, waking up sweating and shaking in his living-room chair. Bad dreams and night sweats. Whatever any doctor could tell him, he knew his heart was okay – he could feel it pumping, doing its work.

  Now, the coffee was just barely stopping him from yawning. The detective at the computer had finished the draft and was printing it out.

  ‘There’s something … something not quite right,’ Devlin said, not for the first time. Rebus took a look. It was a face, anonymous and forgettable. ‘It could almost be female,’ Devlin went on. ‘And I’m pretty sure he was not a she.’

  ‘How about this?’ the detective asked, clicking the mouse. Onscreen, the face developed a full, bushy beard.

  ‘Oh, but that’s absurd,’ Devlin complained.

  ‘DC Tibbet’s idea of humour, Professor,’ Rebus apologised.

  ‘I am doing my best, you know.’

  ‘We appreciate that, sir. Lose the beard, Tibbet.’

  Tibbet lost the beard.

  ‘You’re sure it couldn’t have been David Costello?’ Rebus asked.

  ‘I know David. It wasn’t him.’

  ‘How well do you know him?’

  Devlin blinked. ‘We spoke several times. Met one another on the stairs one day, and I asked him about the books he was carrying. Milton, Paradise Lost. We started a discussion.’

  ‘Fascinating, sir.’

  ‘It was, believe me. The laddie’s got a brain on him.’

  Rebus was thoughtful. ‘Think he could kill someone, Professor?’

  ‘Kill someone? David?’ Devlin laughed. ‘I doubt he’d find it quite cerebral enough, Inspector.’ He paused. ‘Is he still a suspect?’

  ‘You know what it’s like with police work, Professor. The world’s guilty until proven otherwise.’

  ‘I thought it was the other way round: innocent until proven guilty.’

  ‘I think you’re confusing us with lawyers, sir. You say you didn’t really know Philippa?’

  ‘Again, we passed on the stairs. The difference between David and her is that she never seemed to want to stop.’

  ‘Bit stuck-up, was she?’

  ‘I don’t know that I would say that. She was, however, raised in a somewhat rarefied atmosphere, wouldn’t you think?’ He grew thoughtful. ‘I bank with Balfour’s, actually.’

  ‘Have you met her father then?’

  Devlin’s eyes twinkled. ‘Good Lord, no. I’m hardly one of their more important clients.’

  ‘I meant to ask,’ Rebus said. ‘How’s your jigsaw coming along?’

  ‘Slowly. But then that’s the inherent pleasure of the thing, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’ve never been one for jigsaws.’

  ‘But you like your puzzles. I spoke to Sandy Gates last night, he was telling me all about you.’

  ‘That must have done BT’s profits a power of good.’

  They shared a smile and got back to work.

  At the end of an hour, Devlin decided that a previous incarnation had been closer. Thankfully, Tibbet had stored each and every version.

  ‘Yes,’ Devlin said. ‘It’s far from perfect, but I suppose it’s satisfactory …’ He made to rise from his chair.

  ‘While you’re here, sir …’ Rebus was reaching into a drawer. He pulled out a fat dossier of photographs. ‘Some pictures we’d like you to look at
.’

  ‘Pictures?’

  ‘Photos of Ms Balfour’s neighbours, friends from university.’

  Devlin was nodding slowly, but with no show of enthusiasm. ‘The process of elimination?’

  ‘If you feel you’re up to it, Professor.’

  Devlin sighed. ‘Perhaps some weak tea to aid concentration … ?’

  ‘I think we can manage weak tea.’ Rebus looked over to Tibbet, who was busy with his mouse. As Rebus got closer, he saw a face on the screen. It was a pretty good resemblance of Devlin’s own, save for the addition of horns. ‘DC Tibbet will fetch it,’ Rebus said.

  Tibbet made sure to save the image before rising from his chair …

  By the time Rebus got back to St Leonard’s, news was coming in of another thinly veiled search, this time of the lock-up on Calton Road where David Costello garaged his MG sports car. The forensic unit from Howdenhall had been in, finding nothing of apparent consequence. They already knew Flip Balfour’s prints would be all over the car. No surprise either that some of her belongings – a lipstick, a pair of sunglasses – were in the glove compartment. The garage itself was clean.

  ‘No chest freezer with a padlock on it?’ Rebus guessed. ‘No trapdoor leading to the torture dungeon?’

  Distant Daniels shook his head. He was playing errand boy, transferring paperwork between Gayfield and St Leonard’s. ‘A student with an MG,’ he commented, shaking his head again.

  ‘Never mind the car,’ Rebus told him. ‘That lock-up probably cost more than your flat.’

  ‘Christ, you could be right.’ The smile they shared was sour. Everyone was busy: highlights of yesterday’s news conference – with Ellen Wylie’s performance edited out – had been broadcast on the nightly news. Now, sightings of the missing student were being followed up, meaning lots of phone calls …

  ‘DI Rebus?’ Rebus turned towards the voice. ‘My office.’

  And it was her office. Already, she was making it her own. Either the bunch of flowers on the filing cabinet had freshened the air, or she’d used something out of a can. The Farmer’s chair had gone, too, replaced by a more utilitarian model. Where the Farmer had often slouched, Gill sat straight-backed, as if poised to rise to her feet. She held a piece of paper out, so that Rebus had to get out of the visitor’s chair to reach it.