Ian Rankin: The Falls

At last, Pryde finished giving instructions to the group of officers around him. As they melted away, he caught sight of Rebus and gave a huge wink, rubbing his hand over his forehead as he approached.

‘Got to be careful,’ Rebus said. ‘Power corrupts, and all that.’

‘Forgive me,’ Pryde said, dropping his voice, ‘but I’m getting a real buzz.’

‘That’s because you can do it, Bill. It’s just taken the Big House twenty years to recognise the fact.’

Pryde nodded. ‘Rumour is, you turned down DCI a while back.’

Rebus snorted. ‘Rumours, Bill. Like the Fleetwood Mac album, best left unplayed.’

The room was a choreography of movement, each participant now working on his or her allotted task. Some were donning coats, picking up keys and notebooks. Others rolled their sleeves as they got comfortable at their computers or telephones. New chairs had appeared from some darkened corner of the budget. Pale blue swivel jobs: those who’d managed to grab one were on the defensive, sliding across the floor on castors rather than getting up to walk, lest someone else snatch the prized possession in the interim.

‘We’re done with babysitting the boyfriend,’ Pryde said. ‘Orders from the new boss.’

‘I heard.’

‘Pressure from the family,’ Pryde added.

‘Won’t do any harm to the operation budget,’ Rebus commented, straightening up. ‘So is there work for me today, Bill?’

Pryde flicked through the sheets of paper on his clipboard. ‘Thirty-seven phone calls from the public,’ he said.

Rebus held up his hands. ‘Don’t look at me. Cranks and desperadoes are for the L-plates, surely?’

Pryde smiled. ‘Already allocated,’ he admitted, nodding towards where two DCs, recently promoted out of uniform, were looking dismayed at the workload. Cold calls constituted the most thankless task around. Any high-profile case threw up its share of fake confessions and false leads. Some people craved attention, even if it meant becoming a suspect in a police investigation. Rebus knew of several such offenders in Edinburgh.

‘Craw Shand?’ he guessed.

Pryde tapped the sheet of paper. ‘Three times so far, ready to admit to the murder.’

‘Bring him in,’ Rebus said. ‘It’s the only way to get rid of him.’

Pryde brought his free hand to the knot in his tie, as if checking for defects. ‘Neighbours?’ he suggested.

Rebus nodded. ‘Neighbours it is,’ he said.

He gathered together the notes from initial interviews. Other officers had been assigned the far side of the street, leaving Rebus and three others — working teams of two — to cover the flats either side of Philippa Balfour’s. Thirty-five in total, three of them empty, leaving thirty-two. Sixteen addresses per team, maybe fifteen minutes at each... four hours total.

Rebus’s partner for the day, DC Phyllida Hawes, had done the arithmetic for him as they climbed the steps of the first tenement. Actually, Rebus wasn’t sure you could call them ‘tenements’, not down in the New Town, with its wealth of Georgian architecture, its art galleries and antique emporia. He asked Hawes for advice.

‘Blocks of flats?’ she suggested, raising a smile. There were one or two flats per landing, some adorned with brass nameplates, others ceramic. A few went so low as to boast just a piece of sellotaped card or paper.

‘Not sure the Cockburn Association would approve,’ Hawes remarked.

Three or four names listed on the bit of card: students, Rebus guessed, from backgrounds less generous than Philippa Balfour’s.

The landings themselves were bright and cared for: welcome mats and tubs of flowers. Hanging baskets had been placed over banisters. The walls looked newly painted, the stairs swept. The first stairwell went like clockwork: two flats with nobody home, cards dropped through either letterbox; fifteen minutes in each of the other flats — ‘just a few back-up questions... see if you’ve thought of anything to add...’ The householders had shaken their heads, had professed themselves still shocked. Such a quiet little street.

There was a main door flat at ground level, a much grander affair, with a black-and-white-chequered marble entrance hall, Doric columns either side. The occupier was renting it long term, worked in ‘the financial sector’. Rebus saw a pattern emerging: graphic designer; training consultant; events organiser... and now the financial sector.

‘Does no one have real jobs any more?’ he asked Hawes.

‘These are the real jobs,’ she told him. They were back on the pavement, Rebus enjoying a cigarette. He noticed her staring at it.

‘Want one?’

She shook her head. ‘Three years I’ve managed so far.’

‘Good for you.’ Rebus looked up and down the street. ‘If this was a net curtain kind of place, they’d be twitching right now.’

‘If they had net curtains, you wouldn’t be able to peer in and see what you’re missing.’

Rebus held the smoke, let it billow out through his nostrils. ‘See, when I was younger, there was always something rakish about the New Town. Kaftans and wacky baccy, parties and ne’er-do-wells.’

‘Not much space left for them these days,’ Hawes agreed. ‘Where do you live?’

‘Marchmont,’ he told her. ‘You?’

‘Livingston. It was all I could afford at the time.’

‘Bought mine years back, two wages coming in...’

She looked at him. ‘No need to apologise.’

‘Prices weren’t as crazy back then, that’s all I meant.’ He was trying not to sound defensive. It was that meeting with Gill: the little joke she’d made, just to unsettle him. And the way his visit to Costello had KO’d the surveillance... Maybe it was time to talk to someone about the drinking... He flicked the stub of his cigarette on to the roadway. The surface was made of shiny rectangular stones called setts. When he’d first arrived in the city he’d made the mistake of calling them cobbles; a local had put him right.

‘Next call,’ he said now, ‘if we’re offered tea, we take it.’

Hawes nodded. She was in her late thirties or early forties, hair brown and shoulder-length. Her face was freckled and fleshed-out, as though she’d never quite lost her puppy fat. Grey trouser-suit and an emerald blouse, pinned at the neck with a silver Celtic brooch. Rebus could imagine her at a ceilidh, being spun during Strip the Willow, her face bearing the same concentration she brought to her work.

Below the main door flat, down a curving set of external steps, was the ‘garden flat’, so called because the garden at the back of the building came with it. At the front, the stone slabs were covered in more tubs of flowers. There were two windows, with two more at ground level — the place boasted a sub-basement. A pair of wooden doors was set into the wall opposite the entrance. They would lead into cellars beneath the pavement. Though they would have been checked before, Rebus tried opening them both, but they were locked. Hawes checked her notes.

‘Grant Hood and George Silvers got there before you,’ she said.

‘But were the doors locked or unlocked?’

‘I unlocked them,’ a voice called out. They turned to see an elderly woman standing just inside the flat’s front door. ‘Would you like the keys?’

‘Yes please, madam,’ Phyllida Hawes said. When the woman had turned back into the flat, she turned to Rebus and made a T shape with the index finger of either hand. Rebus held both his thumbs up in reply.

Mrs Jardine’s flat was a chintz museum, a home for china waifs and strays. The throw which covered the back of her sofa must have taken weeks to crochet. She apologised for the array of tin cans and metal pots which all but covered the floor of her conservatory — ‘never seem to get round to fixing the roof’. Rebus had suggested they take their tea there: every time he turned round in the living room he feared he was about to send some ornament flying. When the rain started, however, their conversation was punctuated by drips and dollops, and the splashes from the pot nearest Rebus threatened to give him the same sort of soaking he’d have had outside.