Authors: Ian Rankin
‘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.’
He handed her the paper and she saw that Peter Bee was the name of the crossword’s compiler.
‘Twelve across,’ Grant said, ‘he had me looking for the name of an old Roman weapon. But all it was in the end was an anagram.’
‘Very interesting,’ Siobhan said, tossing the paper on to the table, where it covered the half-dozen map-books.
‘I’m just trying to explain that sometimes you have to clear your mind for a while, start again from scratch.’
She glared at him. ‘Are you saying we’ve just wasted half the day?’
He shrugged.
‘Well, thanks very much!’ She pulled herself out of her chair and stomped off to the toilets. Inside, she stood leaning against the wash-bowl, staring down at its bright white surface. The sod was, she knew Grant was right. But she couldn’t let go the way he could. She’d wanted to play the game, and now it had drawn her in. She wondered if Flip Balfour had become obsessed in much the same way. If she’d got stuck, would she have asked for help? Siobhan reminded herself that she had yet to ask any of Flip’s friends or family about the game. No one had mentioned it in the dozens of interviews, but then why would they? Maybe to them it had just been a bit of fun, a computer game. Nothing to get worked up about …
Gill Templer had offered her the Press Liaison job, but only after engineering the ritual humiliation of Ellen Wylie. It would be nice to feel she’d rejected the offer out of a sense of solidarity with Wylie, but that had had nothing to do with it. Siobhan herself feared that it was more the influence of John Rebus. She’d worked beside him for several years now, coming to understand his strengths as well as his faults. And when it came down to it, like a lot of other officers she preferred the maverick approach, and wished she could be like that. But the force itself had other ideas. There could be room for only one Rebus, and meantime advancement was hers for the taking. Okay, so it would land her squarely in Gill Templer’s camp: she’d follow orders, back her boss up, never take risks. And she would be safe, would continue to rise through the ranks … Detective Inspector, then maybe DCI by the time she was forty. She saw now that Gill had invited her to drinks and dinner that evening to show her how it was done. You cultivated the right friends, you treated them well. You were patient, and the rewards came. One lesson for Ellen Wylie, and a very different one for her.
Back out in the café, she watched as Grant Hood completed the crossword and threw the paper back down, leaning back in his seat and nonchalantly slipping his pen into his pocket. He was trying hard not to look at the table next to him, where a lone female coffee-drinker had been appraising his performance over the top of her paperback book.
Siobhan started forwards. ‘Thought you’d already done that one?’ she said, nodding towards the
Scotsman
.
‘Easier the second time,’ he answered in a voice which, had it been any more of an undertone, would have leapt up and broken into the chorus of ‘Teenage Kicks’. ‘Why are you grinning like that?’
The woman had gone back to her book. It was something by Muriel Spark. ‘I was just remembering an old song,’ Siobhan said.
Grant looked at her, but she wasn’t about to enlighten him, so he reached a hand out and touched the crossword. ‘Know what a homonym is?’
‘No, but it sounds rude.’
‘It’s when a word sounds like another word. Crosswords use them all the time. There’s even one in today’s, and second time around it got me thinking.’
‘Thinking what?’
‘About our latest clue. “Sounds dear”: we were thinking of “dear” meaning expensive or cherished, right?’
Siobhan nodded.
‘But it could be a homonym, signalled by “sounds”.’
‘I’m not following.’ But she’d tucked one leg beneath her and leaned forward, interested.
‘It could be telling us that the word we want isn’t d-e-a-r but d-e-e-r.’
She frowned. ‘So we end up with “B4 Scots Law deer”? Is it just me, or does that actually make less sense than before?’
He shrugged, turned his attention to the window again. ‘If you say so.’
She slapped at his leg. ‘Don’t be like that.’
‘You think you’re the only one who can take a moody?’
‘I’m sorry.’
He looked at her. She was smiling again. ‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘Now … wasn’t there some story about how Holyrood got its name? One of the ancient kings shooting arrows at a deer?’
‘Search me.’
‘Excuse me.’ The voice came from the table next to them. ‘I couldn’t help overhearing.’ The woman put her book down on the table. ‘It was David the First, back in the twelfth century.’
‘Was it now?’ Siobhan said.
The woman ignored her tone. ‘He was out hunting when a stag pinned him to the ground. He reached for its antlers only to find that it had vanished and in its place he was holding a cross. Holy rood means holy cross. David saw it as a sign and built the abbey of Holyrood.’
‘Thank you,’ Grant Hood said. The woman bowed her head and went back to her book. ‘Nice to see an educated person,’ he added, for Siobhan’s benefit. She narrowed her eyes and wrinkled her nose at him. ‘So it might have something to do with the Palace of Holyrood.’
‘One of the rooms could be called B4,’ Siobhan said. ‘Like a school classroom.’
He saw that she wasn’t being serious. ‘There could be part of Scots Law relating to Holyrood – it would make another royal connection, like Victoria.’
Siobhan unfolded her arms. ‘Could be,’ she conceded.
‘So all we have to do is find ourselves a friendly lawyer.’
‘Would someone from the Procurator Fiscal’s office do?’ Siobhan asked. ‘If so, I might know just the person …’