Ian Rankin: Set in Darkness

Dickie seemed to spend half his time at their meetings totting up figures on his pad of paper. Rebus had never seen the man write down anything as mundane as a phrase or sentence. Dickie was late thirties, big-framed with a head like an artillery shell stood on end. His black hair was cropped close to the skull and his eyes were as small and rounded as a china doll’s. Rebus had tried the comparison out on Bobby Hogan, who’d commented that any doll resembling Joe Dickie would ‘give a bairn nightmares’.

‘I’m a grown-up,’ Hogan had continued, ‘and he still scares me.’

Climbing the stairs, Rebus smiled again. Yes, he was glad to have Bobby Hogan around.

‘When people think of archaeology,’ Gilfillan was saying, ‘they almost always see it in terms of digging down , but one of our most exciting finds here was in the attic. A new roof was built over the original one, and there are traces of what looks like a tower. We’d have to climb a ladder to get to it, but if anyone’s interested...?’

‘Thank you,’ a voice said. Derek Linford: Rebus knew its nasal quality only too well by now.

‘Creep,’ another voice close to Rebus whispered. It was Bobby Hogan, bringing up the rear. A head turned: Ellen Wylie. She’d heard, and now gave what looked like the hint of a smile. Rebus looked to Hogan, who shrugged, letting him know he thought Wylie was all right.

‘How will Queensberry House be linked to the parliament building? Will there be covered walkways?’ The questions came from Linford again. He was out in front with Gilfillan. The pair of them had rounded a corner of the stairs, so that Rebus had to strain to hear Gilfillan’s hesitant reply.

‘I don’t know.’

His tone said it all: he was an archaeologist, not an architect. He was here to investigate the site’s past rather than its future. He wasn’t sure himself why he was giving this tour, except that it had been asked of him. Hogan screwed up his face, letting everyone in the vicinity know his own feelings.

‘When will the building be ready?’ Grant Hood asked. An easy one: they’d all been briefed. Rebus saw what Hood was doing — trying to console Gilfillan by putting a question he could answer.

‘Construction begins in the summer,’ Gilfillan obliged. ‘Everything should be up and running here by the autumn of 2001.’ They were coming out on to a landing. Around them stood open doorways, through which could be glimpsed the old hospital wards. Walls had been gouged at, flooring removed: checks on the fabric of the building. Rebus stared out of a window. Most of the workers looked to be packing up: dangerously dark now to be scrabbling over roofs. There was a summer house down there. It was due to be demolished, too. And a tree, drooping forlornly, surrounded by rubble. It had been planted by the Queen. No way it could be moved or felled until she’d given her permission. According to Gilfillan, permission had now been granted; the tree would go. Maybe formal gardens would be recreated down there, or maybe it would be a staff car park. Nobody knew. 2001 seemed a ways off. Until this site was ready, the parliament would sit in the Church of Scotland Assembly Hall near the top of The Mound. The committee had already been on two tours of the Assembly Hall and its immediate vicinity. Office buildings were being turned over to the parliament, so that the MSPs could have somewhere to work. Bobby Hogan had asked at one meeting why they couldn’t just wait for the Holyrood site to be ready before, in his words, ‘setting up shop’. Peter Brent, the civil servant, had stared at him aghast.

‘Because Scotland needs a parliament now .’

‘Funny, we’ve done without for three hundred years...’

Brent had been about to object, but Rebus had butted in. ‘Bobby, at least they’re not trying to rush the job.’

Hogan had smiled, knowing he was talking about the newly opened Museum of Scotland. The Queen had come north for the official opening of the unfinished building. They’d had to hide the scaffolding and paint tins till she’d gone.

Gilfillan was standing beside a retractable ladder, pointing upwards towards a hatch in the ceiling.

‘The original roof is just up there,’ he said. Derek Linford already had both feet on the ladder’s bottom rung. ‘You don’t need to go all the way,’ Gilfillan continued as Linford climbed. ‘If I shine the torch up...’

But Linford had disappeared into the roof space.

‘Lock the hatch and let’s make a run for it,’ Bobby Hogan said, smiling so they’d assume he was joking.

Ellen Wylie hunched her shoulders. ‘There’s a real... atmosphere in here, isn’t there?’

‘My wife saw a ghost,’ Joe Dickie said. ‘Lots of people who worked here did. A woman, she was crying. Used to sit on the end of one of the beds.’

‘Maybe she was a patient who died here,’ Grant Hood offered.

Gilfillan turned towards them. ‘I’ve heard that story, too. She was the mother of one of the servants. Her son was working here the night the Act of Union was signed. Poor chap got himself murdered.’

Linford called down that he thought he could see where the steps to the tower had been, but nobody was listening.

‘Murdered?’ Ellen Wylie said.

Gilfillan nodded. His torch threw weird shadows across the walls, illuminating the slow movements of cobwebs. Linford was trying to read some graffiti on the wall.

‘There’s a year written here... 1870, I think.’

‘You know Queensberry was the architect of the Act of Union?’ Gilfillan was saying. He could see that he had an audience now, for the first time since the tour had begun in the brewery car park next door. ‘Back in 1707. This’, he scratched a shoe over the bare floorboards, ‘is where Great Britain was invented. And the night of the signing, one of the young servants was working in the kitchen. The Duke of Queensberry was Secretary of State. It was his job to lead the negotiations. But he had a son, James Douglas, Earl of Drumlanrig. The story goes, James was off his head...’

‘What happened?’

Gilfillan looked up through the open hatch. ‘All right up there?’ he called.

‘Fine. Anyone else want to take a look?’

They ignored him. Ellen Wylie repeated her question.

‘He ran the servant through with a sword,’ Gilfillan said, ‘then roasted him in one of the kitchen fireplaces. James was sitting munching away when he was found.’

‘Dear God,’ Ellen Wylie said.

‘You believe this?’ Bobby Hogan slid his hands into his pockets.

Gilfillan shrugged. ‘It’s a matter of record.’

A blast of cold air seemed to rush at them from the roof space. Then a rubber-soled wellington appeared on the ladder, and Derek Linford began his slow, dusty descent. At the bottom, he removed the pen from between his teeth.

‘Interesting up there,’ he said. ‘You really should try it. Could be your first and last chance.’

‘Why’s that then?’ Bobby Hogan asked.

‘I very much doubt we’ll be letting tourists in here, Bobby,’ Linford said. ‘Imagine what that would do for security.’

Hogan stepped forward so swiftly that Linford flinched. But all Hogan did was lift a cobweb from the young man’s shoulder.

‘Can’t have you heading back to the Big House in less than showroom condition, can we, son?’ Hogan said. Linford ignored him, probably feeling that he could well afford to ignore relics like Bobby Hogan, just as Hogan knew he had nothing to fear from Linford: he’d be heading for retirement long before the younger man gained any position of real power and prominence.

‘I can’t see it as the powerhouse of government,’ Ellen Wylie said, examining the water stains on the walls, the flaking plaster. ‘Wouldn’t they have been better off knocking it down and starting again?’