Ian Rankin: The Falls

He limped along to A&E, where Siobhan was having a couple of stitches put into a head wound. Eric Bain was there. The conversation stopped as Rebus approached.

‘Eric here,’ Siobhan said, ‘was just explaining how you worked out where I’d be.’ Rebus nodded. ‘And how you gained entry to David Costello’s flat.’

Rebus made an O with his lips.

‘Mr Strongarm,’ she went on, ‘kicking in a suspect’s door without authority or any sniff of a warrant.’

‘Technically,’ Rebus told her, ‘I was on suspension. That means I wasn’t a serving officer.’

‘Making it even worse.’ She turned to Bain. ‘Eric, you’re going to have to cover for him.’

‘Door was open when we got there,’ Bain recited. ‘Botched break-in, probably...’

Siobhan nodded and smiled at him. Then she gave Bain’s hand a squeeze...

Donald Devlin was under police guard in one of the Western General’s private rooms. He’d half drowned in the river and was now in what the doctors were calling a coma.

‘Let’s hope he stays there,’ ACC Colin Carswell had said. ‘Save us the expense of a prosecution.’

Carswell hadn’t said anything at all to Rebus. Gill said not to worry: ‘He’s ignoring you because he hates making apologies.’

Rebus nodded. ‘I’ve just seen a doctor,’ he told her.

She looked at him. ‘So?’

‘Does that count as my check-up...?’

David Costello was in custody at Gayfield Square. Rebus didn’t go near. He knew they’d be cracking open a few bottles of whisky and cans of beer, sounds of celebration drifting into the room where Costello was being questioned. He thought of the time he’d asked Donald Devlin whether his young neighbour was capable of killing: not cerebral enough for David . Well, Costello had found his method all the same, and Devlin had protected him... the old man sheltering the young.

When Rebus went home, he took a tour of his flat. It represented, he realised, the only fixed point of his life. All the cases he’d worked, the monsters he’d encountered... he dealt with them here, seated in his chair, staring out of his window. He found room for them in the bestiary of his mind, and there they stayed.

If he gave this up, what would be left? No still centre to his world, no cage for his demons...

Tomorrow he’d call the solicitor, tell her he wasn’t moving.

Tomorrow.

For tonight, he had new cages to fill...

It was a Sunday afternoon of sharp, low sunlight, the shadows impossibly long and skewed into an elastic geometry. Trees bowed by the wind, clouds moving like oiled machines. Falls, twinned with Anguish... Rebus drove past the signpost, glanced towards Jean, quiet in the passenger seat. She’d been quiet all week; slow to answer her phone or come to the door. The doctor’s words: nothing time can’t heal...

He’d given her the option, but she’d decided to come with him. They parked next to a sparkling BMW. There were traces of soapy water in the gutters. Rebus pulled on the hand-brake and turned to Jean.

‘I’ll only be a minute. You want to wait here?’

She thought about it, then nodded. He reached into the back for the coffin. It was wrapped in newspaper, a frontpage headline by Steven Holly. He got out of the car, leaving his door open. Knocked on the door of Wheel Cottage.

Bev Dodds answered. She had a smile fixed to her face and a frilly apron tied across her chest.

‘Sorry, not a tourist,’ Rebus said. Her smile faded. ‘Doing a roaring trade in tea and buns?’

‘What can I do for you?’

He lifted up the parcel. ‘Thought you might like this back. It’s yours, after all, isn’t it?’

She parted the sheets of newsprint. ‘Oh, thanks,’ she said.

‘It really is yours, isn’t it?’

She wouldn’t look at him. ‘Finders keepers, I suppose...’

But he was shaking his head. ‘I mean, you made it, Ms Dodds. This new sign of yours...’ He nodded in its direction. ‘Care to tell me who made it? I’m willing to bet you did it yourself. Nice piece of wood... I’m guessing you’ve a few chisels and such-like.’

‘What do you want?’ Her voice had grown chilly.

‘When I brought Jean Burchill here — there she is in the car, and she’s fine by the way, thanks for asking — when I brought her here, you said you often went to the Museum.’

‘Yes?’ She was staring over his shoulder, but averted her gaze when Jean’s eyes met hers.

‘Yet you’d never come across the Arthur’s Seat coffins.’ Rebus affected a frown. ‘It should have clicked with me right there.’ He stared at her, but she didn’t say anything. He watched her neck redden, watched her turn the coffin in her hands. ‘Still,’ he said, ‘brought you some extra business, eh? But I’ll tell you one thing...’

Her eyes were liquid; she brought them up to meet his. ‘What?’ she asked, voice cracking.

He pointed a finger at her. ‘You’re lucky I didn’t tag you sooner. I might have said something to Donald Devlin. And then you’d look like Jean back there, if not a damned sight worse.’

He turned away, headed back to the car. On the way, he unhooked the ‘Pottery’ sign and tossed it into the gutter. She was still watching from her doorway as he started the ignition. A couple of day-trippers were approaching along the pavement. Rebus knew exactly where they were headed and why. He made sure to turn the steering-wheel hard, running the sign over, front and back tyres both.

On the way back into Edinburgh, Jean asked if they were going to Portobello. He nodded, and asked if that was okay with her.

‘It’s fine,’ she told him. ‘I need someone to help me move that mirror out of the bedroom.’ He looked at her. ‘Just until the bruises have healed,’ she said quietly.

He nodded his understanding. ‘Know what I need, Jean?’

She turned towards him. ‘What?’

He shook his head slowly. ‘I was hoping you might tell me...’

Firstly, a big thank-you to Mogwai, whose ‘Stanley Kubrick’ EP was playing in the background throughout the final draft of this book.

The collection of poetry in David Costello’s flat is I Dream of Alfred Hitchcock by James Robertson, and the poem from which Rebus quotes is entitled ‘Shower Scene’.

After the first draft of this book was written, I discovered that in 1999 the Museum of Scotland commissioned two American researchers, Dr Allen Simpson and Dr Sam Menefee of the University of Virginia, to examine the Arthur’s Seat coffins and formulate a solution. They concluded that the most likely explanation was that the coffins had been made by a shoemaker acquaintance of the murderers Burke and Hare, using a shoemaker’s knife and brass fittings adapted from shoe buckles, the idea being to give the victims some vestige of Christian burial, since a dissected corpus could not be resurrected.

The Falls is, of course, a work of fiction, a flight of fancy. Dr Kennet Lovell exists only between its pages.

In June 1996, a man’s body was found near the summit of Ben Alder. He’d died of gunshot wounds. His name was Emmanuel Caillet, the son of a French merchant banker. What he was doing in Scotland was never ascertained. The report, produced from autopsy and scene-of-crime evidence, concluded that the young man had committed suicide. But there are enough discrepancies and unanswered questions to persuade his parents that this is not the real solution...