Ian Rankin: The Falls

‘We don’t have any motives yet.’ Wylie was sounding flustered.

‘But you accept that it is an abduction?’

‘I don’t... no, that’s not what I meant.’

The screen showed John Balfour trying to answer someone else’s question. The ranks of reporters had become a scrum.

‘Then what did you mean, DS Wylie?’

‘I just... I didn’t say anything about...’

And then Ellen Wylie’s voice was replaced by Gill Templer’s. The voice of authority. The reporters knew her of old, just as she knew them.

‘Steve,’ she said, ‘you know only too well that we can’t speculate on details like that. If you want to make up lies just to sell a few more papers, that’s your concern, but it’s hardly respectful to Philippa Balfour’s family and friends.’

Further questions were handled by Gill, who insisted on some calm beforehand. Although Rebus couldn’t see her, he imagined Ellen Wylie would be shrinking visibly. Siobhan was moving her feet up and down, as though all of a sudden some adrenalin had kicked in. Balfour interrupted Gill to say that he’d like to respond to a couple of the points raised. He did so, calmly and effectively, and then the conference started to break up.

‘A cool customer,’ Pryde said, before moving off to regroup his troops. It was time to get back to the real work again.

Grant Hood approached. ‘Remind me,’ he said. ‘Which station was giving the longest odds on the boyfriend?’

‘Torphichen,’ Rebus told him.

‘Then that’s where my money’s going.’ He looked to Rebus for a reaction, but didn’t get one. ‘Come on, sir,’ he went on, ‘it was written all over his face!’

Rebus thought back to his night-time meeting with Costello... the story of the eyeballs and how Costello had come up close. Take a good long look...

Hood was shaking his head as he made to pass Rebus. The blinds had been opened, the brief interlude of sun now ended as thick grey clouds rolled back over the city. The tape of Costello’s performance would go to the psychologists. They’d be looking for a glimmer of something, a short outburst of bright illumination. He wasn’t sure they’d find it. Siobhan was standing in front of him.

‘Interesting, wasn’t it?’ she said.

‘I don’t think Wylie’s cut out for liaison,’ Rebus answered.

‘She shouldn’t have been there. A case like this for her first outing... she was as good as thrown to the lions.’

‘You didn’t enjoy it?’ he asked slyly.

She stared at him. ‘I don’t like blood sports.’ She made to move away, but hesitated. ‘What did you think, really?’

‘I thought you were right about it being interesting. Singularly interesting.’

She smiled. ‘You caught that too?’

He nodded. ‘Costello kept saying “we”, while her father used “I”.’

‘As if Flip’s mother didn’t matter.’

Rebus was thoughtful. ‘It might mean nothing more than that Mr Balfour has an inflated sense of his own importance.’ He paused. ‘Now wouldn’t that be a first in a merchant banker? How’s the computer stuff going?’

She smiled — ‘computer stuff’ just about summed up Rebus’s knowledge of hard disks and the like. ‘I got past her password.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning I can check her most recent e-mails... soon as I get back to my desk.’

‘No way to access the older ones?’

‘Already done. Of course, there’s no way of telling what’s been deleted.’ She was thoughtful. ‘At least I don’t think there is.’

‘They’re not stored somewhere on the... mainframe?’

She laughed. ‘You’re thinking of sixties spy films, computers taking up whole rooms.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Don’t worry. You’re doing okay for someone who thinks LOL means Loyal Orange Lodge.’

They’d moved out of the office and into the corridor. ‘I’m heading back to St Leonard’s. Need a lift?’

She shook her head. ‘Got my car with me.’

‘Fair enough.’

‘It looks like we’re getting hooked up to HOLMES.’

This was one piece of new technology Rebus did know something about: the Home Office Large Major Enquiry System. It was a software system that collated information and speeded up the whole process of gathering and sifting. Its application meant that Philippa Balfour’s disappearance was now the priority case in the city.

‘Won’t it be funny if she traipses back from an unannounced shopping spree?’ Rebus mused.

‘It would be a relief,’ Siobhan said solemnly. ‘But I don’t think that’s going to happen, do you?’

‘No,’ Rebus said quietly. Then he went to find himself something to eat on the way back to base.

Back at his desk, he went through the files again, concentrating on family background. John Balfour was the third generation of a banking family. The business had started in Edinburgh’s Charlotte Square in the early 1900s. Philippa’s great-grandfather had handed the running of the bank to her grandfather in the 1940s, and he hadn’t taken a back seat until the 1980s, when John Balfour had taken over. Almost the first thing Philippa’s father had done was open a London office, concentrating his efforts there. Philippa had gone to a private school in Chelsea. The family relocated north in the late eighties after the death of John’s father, Philippa changing to a school in Edinburgh. Their home, Junipers, was a baronial mansion in sixteen acres of countryside somewhere between Gullane and Haddington. Rebus wondered how Balfour’s wife Jacqueline felt. Eleven bedrooms, five public rooms... and her husband down in London a minimum of four days each week. The Edinburgh office, still in its original premises in Charlotte Square, was run by an old friend of John Balfour’s called Ranald Marr. The two had met at university in Edinburgh, heading off together to the States for their MBAs. Rebus had called Balfour a merchant banker, but Balfour’s was really a small private bank geared to the needs of its client list, a wealthy elite requiring investment advice, portfolio management, and the kudos of a leatherbound Balfour’s chequebook.

When Balfour himself had been interviewed, the emphasis had been on the possibility of a kidnapping for profit. Not just the family phone, but those in the Edinburgh and London offices were being monitored. Mail was being intercepted in case any ransom demand arrived that way: the fewer fingerprints they had to deal with, the better. But as yet, all they’d had were a few crank notes. Another possibility was a deal gone sour: revenge the motive. But Balfour was adamant that he had no enemies. All the same, he’d denied the team access to his bank’s client base.

‘These people trust me. Without that trust, the bank’s finished.’

‘Sir, with respect, your daughter’s well-being might depend...’

‘I’m perfectly aware of that!’

After which the interview had never lost its edge of antagonism.

The bottom line: Balfour’s was conservatively estimated to be worth around a hundred and thirty million, with John Balfour’s personal wealth comprising maybe five per cent of the whole. Six and a half million reasons for a professional abduction. But wouldn’t a professional have made contact by now? Rebus wasn’t sure.

Jacqueline Balfour had been born Jacqueline Gil-Martin, her father a diplomat and landowner, the family estate a chunk of Perthshire comprising nearly nine hundred acres. The father was dead now, and the mother had moved into a cottage on the estate. The land itself was managed by Balfour’s Bank, and the main house, Laverock Lodge, had become a setting for conferences and other large gatherings. A TV drama had been filmed there apparently, though the show’s title meant nothing to Rebus. Jacqueline hadn’t bothered with university, busying herself instead with a variety of jobs, mainly as a personal assistant to some businessman or other. She’d been running the Laverock estate when she’d met John Balfour, on a trip to her father’s bank in Edinburgh. They’d married a year later, and Philippa had been born two years after that.