The Falls

  ‘Bloody hell,’ he said, grinning. ‘We cracked it!’

  He looked ready to hug her, but she moved away towards the bust. It sat on a low plinth, pillars either side and sandwiched by tables. Siobhan looked all around, but couldn’t see anything.

  ‘I’ll tip it,’ Grant said. He took hold of Victoria by her head-dress and eased her from the plinth.

  ‘Excuse me,’ a voice said behind them. ‘Is something the matter?’

  Siobhan slid her hand under the bust and drew out a folded sheet of paper. She beamed at Grant, who turned towards the waitress.

  ‘Two teas, please,’ he instructed her.

  ‘And two sugars in his,’ Siobhan added.

  They sat down at the nearest table. Siobhan held the note by one corner. ‘Think we’d get any prints?’ she asked.

  ‘Worth a try.’

  She got up and walked over to a cutlery tray in the corner, came back with a knife and fork. The waitress nearly dropped their crockery when she saw the customer attempting, as she thought, to dine on a sheet of paper.

  Grant took the cups from the waitress and thanked her. Then he turned back to Siobhan. ‘What does it say?’

  But Siobhan looked up at the waitress. ‘We found this under there,’ she said, pointing to the bust. The waitress nodded. ‘Any idea how it could have got there?’ The waitress shook her head. She had the look of a small, frightened animal. Grant sought to reassure her.

  ‘We’re the police,’ he said.

  ‘Any chance of talking to the manager?’ Siobhan added.

  When the waitress had retreated, Grant repeated his earlier question.

  ‘See for yourself,’ Siobhan said, using the knife and fork to turn the sheet of paper in his direction.

  B4 Scots Law sounds dear.

  ‘Is that it?’ he said.

  ‘Your eyes are as good as mine.’

  He reached up to scratch his head. ‘Not much to go on, is it?’

  ‘We didn’t have much to go on last time.’

  ‘We had more than this.’

  She watched him stir sugar into his tea. ‘If Quizmaster placed this clue here …’

  ‘He’s a local?’ Grant guessed

  ‘Either that or someone local is helping him.’

  ‘He knows this restaurant,’ Grant said, looking around. ‘Not everyone who ventures in would bother coming upstairs.’

  ‘You think he might be a regular?’

  Grant shrugged. ‘Look at what’s nearby, on George IV Bridge. The Central Library and the National Library. Academics and bookworms are great ones for puzzles.’

  ‘That’s a good point. The Museum’s not far away either.’

  ‘And the law courts … and the parliament …’ He smiled. ‘Just for a second there I thought we might be narrowing things down.’

  ‘Maybe we are,’ she said, lifting her cup as though to make a toast. ‘Here’s to us anyway for solving the first clue.’

  ‘How many more till we get to Hellbank?’

  Siobhan grew thoughtful. ‘That’s up to Quizmaster, I suppose. He told me it was the fourth stage. I’ll send an e-mail when we get back, just to let him know.’ She placed the sheet of paper in an evidence bag. Grant was studying the clue again. ‘First thoughts?’ she asked.

  ‘I was remembering a bit of graffiti from primary school. It was in the boys’ toilets.’ He wrote it down on the paper serviette.

  LOLO

  AQIC

  I82Q

  B4IP

  Siobhan read it aloud and smiled. ‘Be-fore I pee,’ she repeated. ‘You think maybe that’s what B4 means?’

  He shrugged. ‘Could be part of an address.’

  ‘Or a coordinate … ?’

  He looked at her. ‘From a map?’

  ‘But which one?’

  ‘Maybe that’s what the rest of the clue tells us. How’s your Scots Law?’

  ‘The exams were a while back.’

  ‘Ditto. Is there some Latin word for “dear”, maybe something to do with the law?’

  ‘There’s always the library,’ she suggested. ‘With a big bookshop just past it.’

  He checked his watch. ‘I’ll go put more money in the meter,’ he said.

  Rebus was at his desk, five sheets of paper spread out in front of him. He’d shifted everything else on to the floor: files, memos, the lot. The office was quiet: most of the shift had headed to Gayfield Square for a briefing. They wouldn’t thank him for the obstacle course he’d constructed in their absence. His computer monitor and keyboard now sat in the centre aisle between the rows of desks, just next to his multi-tiered in-tray.

  And on his desk, five lives. Five victims, possibly. Caroline Farmer the youngest. Just sixteen when she’d disappeared. He’d finally got through to her mother this morning. Not an easy call to make.

  ‘Oh my God, don’t tell me there’s news?’ That sudden blooming of hope, wizened by his response. But he’d found out what he had to. Caroline had never come back. There had been unconfirmed sightings in the early days, when her photo was in all the papers. But nothing since.

  ‘We moved last year,’ her mother said. ‘It meant emptying her bedroom …’

  But for the quarter-century before that, Rebus surmised, Caroline’s room had been waiting for her: same posters on the walls, same early-seventies teenage girl’s clothes neatly folded in the chest of drawers.

  ‘Back at the time, they seemed to think we’d done something to her,’ the mother continued. ‘I mean, her own family.’

  Rebus didn’t like to say: all too often it’s a father or uncle or cousin.

  ‘Then they started picking on Ronnie.’

  ‘Caroline’s boyfriend?’ Rebus guessed.

  ‘Yes. Just a laddie.’

  ‘They’d split up, hadn’t they?’

  ‘You know what teenagers are like.’ It was as though she were talking about events from a week or two back. Rebus didn’t doubt that the memories stayed fresh, always ready to torment her waking hours, maybe even the sleeping ones too.

  ‘But he was ruled out?’

  ‘They gave up on him, yes. But he wasn’t the same after that, family moved from the area. He wrote to me for a few years …’

  ‘Mrs Farmer—’

  ‘It’s Ms Colquhoun now. Joe left me.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I wasn’t.’

  ‘Did it have … ?’ He stopped. ‘Sorry, none of my business.’

  ‘He never talked much about it,’ was all she said. Rebus wondered if Caroline’s father had been able to let her go, in a way her mother hadn’t.

  ‘This may seem a strange question, Ms Colquhoun, but did Dunfermline Glen have any significance for Caroline?’

  ‘I … I’m not sure what you mean.’

  ‘Me neither. It’s just that something’s come to our attention, and we’re wondering if it might tie in with your daughter’s disappearance.’

  ‘What is it?’

  He didn’t suppose she’d take the coffin in the Glen as good news; resorted instead to the old cliché: ‘I’m not at liberty to disclose that at present.’

  There was silence on the line for a few seconds. ‘She liked to walk in the Glen.’

  ‘By herself ?’

  ‘When she felt like it.’ Her voice caught. ‘Is it something you’ve found?’

  ‘Not the way you think, Ms Colquhoun.’

  ‘You’ve dug her up, haven’t you?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘What then?’ she shrieked.

  ‘I’m not at lib—’

  She’d put the phone down. He stared at the mouthpiece, then did the same.

  In the men’s toilets he splashed water on his face. His eyes were grey and puffy. Last night, he’d left Surgeons’ Hall and driven to Portobello, parking outside Jean’s house. Her lights had been off. He’d got as far as opening the car door, but had stopped. What was he planning to say to her? What was it he wanted? He’d closed the door again as
quietly as he could, and just sat there, engine and headlamps off, Hendrix playing quietly: ‘The Burning of the Midnight Lamp’.

  Back at his desk, one of the station’s civvy staff had just arrived with a large cardboard document-box. Rebus lifted the top off and peered inside. The box was actually not quite half full. He pulled out the topmost folder and examined the typed label: Paula Jennifer Gearing (née Mathieson); d.o.b. – 10.4.50; d.o.d. – 6.7.77. The Nairn drowning. Rebus sat down, pulled in his chair and started to read. About twenty minutes in, as he was scribbling another note on a lined A4 pad, Ellen Wylie arrived.

  ‘Sorry I’m late,’ she said, shedding her coat.

  ‘We must have different ideas of a start-time,’ he said. Remembering what she’d said yesterday, she reddened, but when she glanced in his direction he was smiling.

  ‘What have you got?’ she asked.

  ‘Our friends in the north came good.’

  ‘Paula Gearing?’

  Rebus nodded. ‘She was twenty-seven. Married four years to a husband who worked on a North Sea oil platform. Nice bungalow on the outskirts of town. No kids. She had a part-time job in a newsagent’s … probably for company more than financial necessity.’

  Wylie came over to his desk. ‘Was foul play ruled out?’

  Rebus tapped his notes. ‘Nobody could ever explain it, according to what I’ve read so far. She didn’t seem suicidal. Doesn’t help that they’ve no idea whereabouts on the coast she actually entered the water.’

  ‘Pathology report?’

  ‘It’s in here. Can you get on to Donald Devlin, see if he can spare us some time?’

  ‘Professor Devlin?’

  ‘He’s the person I bumped into yesterday. He’s agreed to study the autopsies for us.’ He didn’t say anything about the actual circumstances of Devlin’s involvement, how Gates and Curt had turned him down. ‘His number will be on file,’ Rebus said. ‘He’s one of Philippa Balfour’s neighbours.’

  ‘I know. Have you seen this morning’s paper?’

  ‘No.’

  She fetched it from her bag, opened it to one of the inside pages. A photofit: the man Devlin had seen outside the tenement on the days preceding Philippa’s disappearance.

  ‘Could be anybody,’ Rebus said.

  Wylie nodded agreement. Short dark hair, straight nose, narrowed eyes and a thin line of a mouth. ‘We’re getting desperate, aren’t we?’ she said.

  It was Rebus’s turn to nod. Releasing the photofit to the media, especially one as clearly generalised as this, was an act of desperation. ‘Get on to Devlin,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  She took the newspaper with her, sat down at a spare desk and gave her head a little shake, as if clearing the cobwebs. Then she picked up the telephone, preparing to make the first call of another long day.

  Rebus went back to his reading, but not for long. A name leaped out at him, the name of one of the police officers involved in the Nairn inquiry.

  A detective inspector with the surname Watson.

  The Farmer.

  ‘Sorry to bother you, sir.’

  The Farmer smiled, slapped a hand on Rebus’s back. ‘You don’t have to call me “sir” any more, John.’

  He gestured for Rebus to precede him down the hall. It was a farmhouse conversion just south of the bypass. The interior walls were painted a pale green and the furniture was fifties and sixties vintage. A wall had been knocked through so that the kitchen was separated from the living room only by a breakfast bar and dining area. The dining table gleamed. The kitchen’s work surfaces were similarly clean, and the hob was spotless, not a dish or dirty pot in sight.

  ‘Fancy a cuppa?’ the Farmer asked.

  ‘Some tea would go down.’

  The Farmer chuckled. ‘My coffee always scared you off, didn’t it?’

  ‘You got better at it towards the end.’

  ‘Sit yourself down. I’ll not be long.’

  But Rebus made a circuit of the living room. Glass-fronted cabinets with china and ornaments behind. Framed photos of family. Rebus recognised a couple which until recently had graced the Farmer’s office. The carpet had been vacuumed, the mirror and TV showed no signs of dust. Rebus walked over to the french doors and gazed out at a short expanse of garden which ended with a steep grassy bank.

  ‘Maid been in today, has she?’ he called.

  The Farmer chuckled again, setting a tea-tray out on the worktop. ‘I enjoy a bit of housework,’ he called. ‘Ever since Arlene passed away.’

  Rebus turned, looked back at the framed photos. The Farmer and his wife at someone’s wedding, and on some foreign beach, and with a gathering of grandchildren. The Farmer beaming, mouth always slightly open. His wife a little more reserved, maybe a foot shorter than him and half his weight. She’d died a few years back.

  ‘Maybe it’s my way of remembering her,’ the Farmer said.

  Rebus nodded: not letting go. He wondered if her clothes were still in the wardrobe, her jewellery in a box on the dressing table …

  ‘How’s Gill settling in?’

  Rebus moved towards the kitchen. ‘She’s off to a flyer,’ he said. ‘Ordered me to take a medical, and got on the wrong side of Ellen Wylie.’

  ‘I saw that news conference,’ the Farmer admitted, studying the tray to make sure he’d not forgotten anything. ‘Gill didn’t give Ellen time to find her feet.’

  ‘Purposely so,’ Rebus added.

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘It’s funny, not having you around, sir.’ Rebus laid stress on the last word. The Farmer smiled.

  ‘Thanks for that, John.’ He walked over to the kettle, which was beginning to boil. ‘All the same, I’m assuming this isn’t a purely sentimental visit.’

  ‘No. It’s about a case you worked on in Nairn.’

  ‘Nairn?’ The Farmer raised an eyebrow. ‘That’s twenty-odd years ago. I went up there from West Lothian. I was based in Inverness.’

  ‘Yes, but you went to Nairn to look into a drowning.’

  The Farmer was thoughtful. ‘Oh yes,’ he said at last. ‘What was her name?’

  ‘Paula Gearing.’

  ‘Gearing, that’s right.’ He snapped his fingers, keen not to seem forgetful. ‘But it was cut and dried, wasn’t it … if you’ll pardon the expression.’

  ‘I’m not so sure, sir.’ Rebus watched the Farmer pour water into the teapot.

  ‘Well, let’s take this lot through to the lounge, and you can tell me all about it.’

  So Rebus told the story again: the doll in Falls, then the Arthur’s Seat mystery, and the cluster of drownings and disappearances from 1972 to ’95. He’d brought the cuttings with him, and the Farmer studied them intently.

  ‘I didn’t even know about the doll on Nairn beach,’ he admitted. ‘I was back in Inverness by then. As far as I was concerned, the Gearing death was as closed as it was ever likely to get.’

  ‘Nobody made the connection at the time. Paula’s body had been washed ashore four miles out of town. If anyone thought anything of it, they probably took it as some kind of memorial to her.’ He paused. ‘Gill’s not convinced there’s a connection.’

  The Farmer nodded. ‘She’s thinking of how it would play in a court of law. Everything you’ve got here is circumstantial.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘All the same …’ The Farmer leaned back. ‘It’s quite a set of circumstances.’

  Rebus’s shoulders relaxed. The Farmer seemed to notice, and smiled. ‘Bad timing, isn’t it, John? I manage to go into retirement just before you convince me that you may have stumbled upon something.’

  ‘Maybe you could have a word with Gill, convince her likewise.’

  The Farmer shook his head. ‘I don’t think she’d listen. She’s in charge now … she knows fine well my usefulness is over.’

  ‘That’s a bit harsh.’

  The Farmer looked at him. ‘But you know it’s true all the same. She’s the one you have to convince,
not an old man sitting in his slippers.’

  ‘You’re barely ten years older than me.’

  ‘As I hope you’ll live to find, John, your sixties are very different from your fifties. Maybe that medical wouldn’t be such a bad idea, eh?’

  ‘Even if I already know what he’ll say?’ Rebus lifted his cup and finished the tea.

  The Farmer had picked up the Nairn clipping again. ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘You said the case was cut and dried. Maybe you could think about that, see if anything at the time jarred – anything at all, no matter how small or seemingly incidental.’ He paused. ‘I was also going to ask if you knew what had happened to the doll.’

  ‘But now you know the doll’s come as news to me.’

  Rebus nodded.

  ‘You want all five dolls, don’t you?’ the Farmer asked.

  Rebus admitted as much. ‘It might be the only way to prove they’re connected.’

  ‘Meaning whoever left that first one, back in nineteen seventy-two, also left one for Philippa Balfour?’

  Rebus nodded again.

  ‘If anyone can do it, John, you can. I’ve always had confidence in your sheer pig-headedness and inability to listen to your senior officers.’

  Rebus placed his cup back on its saucer. ‘I’ll take that as a compliment,’ he said. Looking around the room again, preparing to rise and make his farewells, he was struck by something. This house was the only thing the Farmer controlled now. He brought order to it the way he’d controlled St Leonard’s. And if he ever lost the will power or the ability to keep it in shape, he’d curl up his toes and die.

  ‘This is hopeless,’ Siobhan Clarke said.

  They’d spent the best part of three hours in the Central Library, followed by nearly fifty quid at a bookshop, buying maps and touring guides of Scotland. Now they were in the Elephant House coffee-shop, having commandeered a table meant for six. It was right below the window at the back of the café, and Grant Hood was staring out at the view of Greyfriars Churchyard and the Castle.

  Siobhan looked at him. ‘Have you switched off ?’

  He kept his eyes on the view. ‘You have to sometimes.’

  ‘Well, thanks for your support.’ It came out more huffily than she’d expected.

  ‘Best thing you can do,’ he went on, ignoring her tone. ‘There are days when I get stuck with the crossword. I don’t go knocking my brains out. I just put it to one side and pick it up again later. And often I find that one or two answers come to me straight away. Thing is,’ now he turned towards her, ‘you fix your mind on a certain track, until eventually you can’t see all the alternatives.’ He got up, walked over to where the café kept its newspapers, and came back with that day’s Scotsman. ‘Peter Bee,’ he said, folding it so the crossword on the back page was uppermost. ‘He’s cryptic, but doesn’t depend on anagrams the way some of the others do.’