Ian Rankin - Standing in another's man grave

Five minutes later, Rebus’s phone sounded. It was Nina Hazlitt, pretty much on cue. Clarke watched him as he shook his head slowly and let the call go to messaging. He stared from the window, but saw no sign of her. After three quarters of an hour, Dempsey and Page arrived. Dempsey gathered her team together and gave them an update. A stray pubic hair had been found on Annette McKie’s body. A comparison was under way, but it didn’t appear to be one of her own. DNA had been gathered from the families of Jemima Salton, Amy Mearns, Zoe Beddows and Brigid Young.

‘Not Sally Hazlitt?’ Clarke interrupted.

Dempsey shook her head. ‘Pathologist doesn’t think any of the bodies goes back that far. She’s not even sure about 2002, when Brigid Young disappeared. If we end up with a body lacking a match, we’ll bring Sally Hazlitt back into the running.’

Clarke nodded her understanding, and Dempsey went on with the briefing. Afterwards, Clarke and Rebus sought out James Page.

‘We’re feeling a bit marooned here,’ Clarke informed him.

‘There’s plenty you can be doing,’ he snapped back, his eyes on Gillian Dempsey, making sure she didn’t leave him behind.

‘A bit of leadership might help.’

He directed a moment’s furious attention towards Clarke. ‘Would you prefer to be back in Edinburgh? That can always be arranged, you know.’

‘You’re acting like a groupie,’ she said. ‘Putting up with any old crap in exchange for proximity.’ She turned and stormed out of the room. Rebus lingered, meeting Page’s look.

‘Something to add?’ Page asked.

Rebus shook his head. ‘Just enjoying the moment,’ he explained with a smile.

Clarke wasn’t difficult to find. She was seated in her car, hands gripping the steering wheel, staring hard at the windscreen. Rebus got into the passenger seat and closed the door.

‘You all right?’ he asked.

‘Just fine.’ But there was a tremor in her voice.

‘It’s not all his fault, you know.’

‘It’s me,’ she said. ‘In Edinburgh, I got used to being needed. Reached the point where I even started to believe I ran the show.’

‘And now you’re not even the drummer in the support band?’

Some of the tension melted from her face. ‘Did I really just call him a groupie?’

‘I believe you did.’

‘I’ll have to apologise for that.’ She exhaled loudly. ‘So what do we do now?’

‘Maybe we should take a look at some dolphins.’

‘You mean go for a drive?’

‘Weather’s starting to clear — there’s even a bit of blue up there.’ Rebus nodded towards the sky.

‘Maybe we could take your car.’

Rebus looked at her, and in explanation she lifted her hands from the steering wheel. They were shaking.

‘My car it is,’ he said.

They drove over the Kessock Bridge and took a right on to the Black Isle. Another right at Fortrose took them to Chanonry Point. The Moray Firth was ahead of them, a golf course laid out either side of the single-track road, busy despite the gusts of wind.

‘You ever played golf?’ Clarke asked from the Saab’s passenger seat.

‘Christ, no.’

‘You must have tried.’

‘What? Because I’m Scottish?’

‘I bet you have, though.’

Rebus thought back. ‘When I was a kid,’ he conceded. ‘Couldn’t get the hang of it.’

‘It’s an odd little country, this, isn’t it?’ Clarke was staring out of the window.

‘Not so much of the “little”.’

‘Don’t get all prickly. I just mean it’s hard to fathom sometimes. I’ve lived here most of my life and I still don’t understand the place.’

‘What’s to understand?’

‘ Everything .’

There was a car coming from the opposite direction. Rebus pulled into a passing place and acknowledged the wave from the other driver. ‘People are just people,’ he said. ‘Good, bad and indifferent. It’s just that we tend to deal with the second group.’ They had reached a turning circle with some parking spaces beyond. Rebus stopped the car. The water looked choppy, the beach made up of pebbles, seaweed and shells. There were gulls overhead, hovering as best they could. Vehicles had been parked, but there were no signs of anyone in them. Then, far over to the left, just past a lighthouse, Rebus saw figures standing by the edge of the shore.

‘Looks like that’s where the action is,’ he said. ‘You game?’

Siobhan Clarke was already opening her door and getting out, but he called her back.

‘I’ve screwed things up between you and Page, haven’t I?’

‘Maybe.’

‘It’s because I don’t want you selling yourself short, settling for second best.’

‘You’re not my dad, John.’

‘I know that.’ He paused. ‘In fact, that’s something else I wanted to tell you. .’

‘What?’

He looked out at the water. ‘That trip I took — there was a reason I didn’t want you along.’

‘Oh?’

‘I had a notion to visit Sammy.’

‘And did you?’

He gave a slow nod. ‘She wasn’t at home, though.’

‘Because you didn’t tell her you were coming?’

‘A slight oversight on my part. Thing is, Siobhan, I nearly lost her. Years back, before you joined CID. Some nutcase got his hands on her. .’

‘So this is personal for you?’ She nodded her understanding. ‘Didn’t they teach you at college — you don’t get emotionally involved.’ She stared at him as he shrugged. ‘You’re a complicated sod, aren’t you?’

‘Who isn’t?’

‘I thought you said people are just people?’

‘And dolphins are just dolphins — so let’s see if we can nab one.’

They walked side by side, Rebus with his coat zipped to his throat, wishing he had a hat of some kind as protection from the horizontal wind. As they got closer, he saw that half a dozen people were all facing the same direction, almost like statues, albeit statues with cameras. Someone had even brought a tripod and a zoom lens, plus binoculars, a folding chair and a flask. The resident expert, Rebus guessed, so he asked if there’d been any sightings. The man nodded in the direction everyone was facing. ‘About thirty or forty feet into the firth,’ he said. Rebus turned and watched too. Clarke had wrapped her arms around herself, cheeks reddened, squinting towards the water.

‘Is that one?’ she asked, pointing.

‘Not yet,’ the man said.

She kept looking as the man offered some advice: ‘The harder you look, the more you start to see things — especially when you want to see them.’

‘True enough,’ Rebus agreed under his breath.

Siobhan’s mouth opened in a gasp as a sleek pale-blue shape emerged almost exactly where the man had said it would. After a moment the creature disappeared again, but there seemed to be a second dolphin just behind it. And then a third. There were laughs and whoops from the spectators.

‘Feeding time,’ the expert explained. ‘When the current’s right, they hang around here until their bellies are full.’

‘Did you see?’ Clarke was asking Rebus.

‘I saw,’ he said. But his attention had been caught by the opposite shore. There seemed to be battlements there.

‘Fort George,’ the man on the folding seat said, as if reading Rebus’s mind. Then he got busy with his camera as the dolphins broke the surface again. Clarke had taken out her phone and snapped a photo, but was disappointed with the result. She angled the screen towards Rebus. Too far away, and the dolphins themselves too similar in colour to the water around them.

‘Here,’ the man said, handing her his binoculars. She thanked him and pressed them to her eyes, adjusting the focus. Rebus stood with his hands in his pockets. A couple of the onlookers were tourists — tanned faces, brand-new mountain jackets, bought to ward off anything the Scottish climate threw at them. They were grinning whenever anyone made eye contact. One woman had brought her dog, and she was soon off again, rounding the point and tossing a ball for the collie to fetch. After a couple of minutes Rebus retreated to the lighthouse’s boundary wall, seeking enough shelter to get a cigarette lit. The show seemed to be over anyway. Clarke had handed back the binoculars and was being shown some of the photographer’s collection of shots. She caught up with Rebus and they started walking towards the car.