The Falls (56 page)

Rebus was the last to leave. Some of the cars were making three-point turns. A tractor-trailer was waiting to get past. Rebus didn’t recognise the driver. Siobhan was standing on the verge, leaning her arms on her car roof, in no hurry. Rebus crossed the road, nodded a greeting.

‘Thought we might see you here,’ was all she said. Rebus leaned one of his own arms on the roof. ‘Get a bollocking, did you?’

‘Like I told Gill, it’s not against the law.’

‘You saw Marr arriving?’

Rebus nodded. ‘What’s the story?’

‘Carswell’s driving him up to the house. Marr wants a couple of minutes with Balfour to explain things.’

‘What things?’

‘We’re next in line.’

‘Doesn’t sound to me like he’s about to confess to murder.’

‘No,’ she said.

‘I was wondering …’ Rebus let the utterance fade.

She tore her eyes away from the spectacle of Carswell attempting a three-pointer in the Maserati. ‘Yes?’

‘The latest clue: Stricture. Any more ideas?’ Stricture, he was thinking, as in confinement. There was nothing in life quite as confining as a coffin …

She blinked a couple of times, then shook her head. ‘What about you?’

‘I did wonder if “boxing” might mean putting things in boxes.’

‘Mmm.’ She looked thoughtful. ‘Maybe.’

‘Want me to keep trying?’

‘Can’t do any harm.’ The Maserati was roaring down the road, Carswell having applied just too much pressure to the accelerator.

‘I suppose not.’ Rebus turned to face her. ‘You heading on to Junipers?’

She shook her head. ‘Back to St Leonard’s.’

‘Things to do, eh?’

She took her arms off the car roof, slid her right hand into the pocket of her black Barbour jacket. ‘Things to do,’ she agreed.

Rebus noticed that she held the car keys in her left hand. He wondered what was in that right-hand pocket.

‘Ca’ canny then, eh?’ he said.

‘See you back at the ranch.’

‘I’m still on the blacklist, remember?’

She took her hand out of her pocket, opened her driver’s-side door. ‘Right,’ she said, getting in. He leaned down to peer through the window. She offered him a brief smile and nothing more. He took a step back as the car came to life, wheels sliding before finding tarmac.

She’d done just what he’d have done: kept to herself whatever it was she’d found. Rebus jogged to where his own car was parked and made set to follow.

Driving back through Falls, Rebus slowed a little outside Bev Dodds’s cottage. He’d half expected to see her at the funeral. The interment had brought with it a number of sightseers, though police cars each end of the road had dissuaded the casual intruder. Parking space was at a premium in the village, too, though most Wednesdays he had the feeling there’d be room to spare. The potter’s makeshift sign had been replaced with something more eye-catching and professionally made. Rebus pushed a little harder on the accelerator, keeping Siobhan’s car in view. The coffins were still in the bottom drawer of his desk. He knew Dodds wanted the one from Falls back in her possession. Maybe he’d be charitable, pick it up this afternoon and drop it off Thursday or Friday. One more excuse to visit the ranch, where he could have another go at Siobhan – always supposing that was where she was headed …

He remembered there was a half-bottle of whisky under his driver’s seat. He really did feel like a drink – it was what you did after funerals. The alcohol washed away death’s inevitability. ‘Tempting,’ he said to himself, slotting home a cassette tape. Early Alex Harvey: ‘The Faith Healer’. Problem was, early Alex Harvey wasn’t too far removed from late Alex Harvey. He wondered how big a part alcohol had played in the Glasgow singer’s demise. You started making a line of booze deaths, it would just refuse ever to come to an end …

‘You think I killed her, don’t you?’

Three of them in the interview room. An unnatural hush outside the door: whispers and tippy-toes and phones snatched up almost before they could ring. Gill Templer, Bill Pryde, and Ranald Marr.

‘Let’s not jump to conclusions, Mr Marr,’ Gill said.

‘Isn’t that what you’re doing?’

‘Just a few follow-up questions, sir,’ Bill Pryde said.

Marr snorted, not inclined to grace such a remark with anything more.

‘How long did you know Philippa Balfour, Mr Marr?’

He looked to Gill Templer. ‘Since she was born. I was her godfather.’

Gill made a note of this. ‘And when did the two of you start feeling a physical attraction for one another?’

‘Who says we did?’

‘Why did you leave home like that, Mr Marr?’

‘It’s been a very stressful time. Look,’ Marr shifted in his chair, ‘should I have a lawyer present, do you think?’

‘As you were informed earlier, that’s entirely up to you.’

Marr thought about it, then shrugged. ‘Proceed,’ he said.

‘Were you having a relationship with Philippa Balfour?’

‘What sort of relationship?’

Bill Pryde’s voice was a bear-growl. ‘The sort her dad would string you up by the balls for.’

‘I think I take your meaning.’ Marr looked as though he was thinking through his answer. ‘Here’s what I will say: I’ve spoken to John Balfour and he has taken a responsible attitude to that conversation. The talk we had – whatever I said to him – has no bearing on this case. And that’s pretty much it.’ He sat back in his chair.

‘Fucking your own goddaughter,’ Bill Pryde said disgustedly.

‘DI Pryde!’ Gill Templer said by way of warning. Then, to Marr: ‘I apologise for my colleague’s outburst.’

‘Apology accepted.’

‘It’s just that he has a bit more trouble hiding his revulsion and contempt than I do.’

Marr almost smiled.

‘And as to whether something does or does not have “bearing” on a case is up to us to decide, wouldn’t you say, sir?’

Colour rose to Marr’s cheeks, but he wasn’t going to take the bait. He shrugged merely, and folded his arms to let them know that, so far as he was concerned, the discussion was now at an end.

‘A moment of your time, DI Pryde,’ Gill said, angling her head towards the door. As they stepped out of the room, two uniforms stepped in to stand guard. Officers were already homing in, so Gill pushed Pryde through the door marked ‘Ladies’, and stood with her back against the door to deter the curious.

‘Well?’ she asked.

‘Nice place,’ Pryde said, looking around. He walked over to the washbasin and fished the waste-bin out from beneath, spitting his venerable collection of gum into it and pulling two fresh sticks from their packet.

‘They’ve stitched something up between them’ he said at last, admiring his features in the mirror.

‘Yes,’ Gill agreed. ‘We should have brought him straight here.’

‘Carswell’s blooper,’ Pryde said, ‘yet again.’

Gill nodded. ‘You think he confessed to Balfour?’

‘I think he probably said something. He’s had all night to come up with the right way of saying it: “John, it just happened … it was a long time ago and just the once … I’m so sorry.” Spouses say it all the time.’

Gill almost smiled. Pryde spoke as if from experience.

‘And Balfour didn’t string him up by the balls?’

Pryde shook his head slowly. ‘The more I hear about John Balfour, the less I like him. Bank’s looking like going down the toilet, house filled with account-holders … his best friend walks up and says, in so many words, that he’s been getting his end away with the daughter, and what does Balfour do? He does a deal.’

‘The pair of them keeping quiet, keeping the lid on it?’

It was Pryde’s turn to nod. ‘Because the alternative is scandal, resignation, public fisticuffs and the collapse of all they hold dearest: namely, cold hard cash.’

‘Then we’ll be hard pushed to get anything out of him.’

Pryde looked at her. ‘Unless we push him really hard.’

‘I’m not sure Mr Carswell would like that.’

‘With respect, DCS Templer, Mr Carswell couldn’t find his own arse if it didn’t come with a label marked “Insert tongue here”.’

‘That’s not the sort of language I can countenance,’ Gill said with something approaching a grin. There was pressure on the door from outside, and she yelled for whoever was there to stop it.

‘I’m desperate!’ a female voice called back.

‘Me too,’ Bill Pryde said with a wink, ‘but maybe I should head for the more rudimentary shores of the Gents’.’ As Gill nodded and began to open the door, he took a final, wistful look round. ‘Though it’ll be in my thoughts from now on, believe me. A man could get used to luxury like this …’

Back in the interview room, Ranald Marr had the look of someone who knew he’d soon be back behind the wheel of his Maserati. Gill, unable to bear such palpable smugness, decided to play her last card.

‘Your affair with Philippa, it lasted quite a while, didn’t it?’

‘God, are we back to that again,’ Marr said, rolling his eyes.

‘Fairly common knowledge, too. Philippa told Claire Benzie all about it.’

‘Is that what Claire Benzie says? I seem to have been here before. That little madam would say anything to hurt Balfour’s.’

Gill was shaking her head. ‘I don’t think so, because knowing what she did, she could have used it at any time: one call to John Balfour, and she’d have blown the whole secret wide open. She didn’t do that, Mr Marr. I can only assume it’s because Claire has some principles.’

‘Or she was biding her time.’

‘Maybe so.’

‘Is that what this boils down to: my word against hers?’

‘There’s the fact that you were keen to explain to Philippa how to erase e-mails.’

‘Which I’ve also explained to your officers.’

‘Yes, but now we know the real reason why you did it.’

Marr tried staring her out, but it wasn’t going to work. He couldn’t know that Gill had interviewed more than a dozen killers in the course of her CID career. She’d been stared at by eyes filled with fire, eyes turned insane. He dropped his gaze and his shoulders slumped.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘there’s one thing …’

‘We’re waiting, Mr Marr,’ Bill Pryde said, sitting as straight in his chair as a kirk elder.

‘I … didn’t tell the whole truth about the game Flip was involved in.’

‘You haven’t told the whole truth about anything,’ Pryde interrupted, but Gill quietened him with a look. Not that it mattered; Marr hadn’t been listening.

‘I didn’t know it
was
a game,’ he was saying, ‘not back then. It was just a question … maybe a crossword clue, that’s what I thought.’

‘So she did bring one of the clues to you?’

Marr nodded. ‘The mason’s dream. She thought I might know what it meant.’

‘And why would she think that?’

He managed the ghost of a smile. ‘She was always overestimating me. She was … I don’t think you’ve been getting anything like the whole picture of the kind of person Flip was. I know what you saw at first: spoilt little rich kid, spending her university days gazing at a few paintings, then graduating and marrying someone with even more money.’ He was shaking his head. ‘That wasn’t Flip at all. Maybe it was one side to her, but she was complex, always capable of surprising you. Like with this puzzle thing, on the one hand I was dumbstruck when I heard about it, but on the other … in many ways it’s
so
much like Flip. She would take these sudden interests, passions in things. For years, she’d been going to the zoo once a week on her own, just about
every
week, and I only found out by chance, a few months back. I was leaving a meeting at the Posthouse Hotel and she was coming out of the zoo, practically next door.’ He looked up at them. ‘Do you see?’

Gill wasn’t at all sure that she did, but she nodded anyway. ‘Go on,’ she said. But it was as though her words had broken the spell. Marr paused for breath, then seemed to lose some of his animation.

‘She was …’ His mouth opened and closed, but soundlessly. Then he shook his head. ‘I’m tired and I want to go home. I have some things I need to talk about with Dorothy.’

‘Are you okay to drive?’ Gill asked.

‘Perfectly.’ He took a deep breath. But when he looked at her again, tears were welling in his eyes. ‘Oh, Christ,’ he said, ‘I’ve made such an utter balls-up, haven’t I? And I’d do it again and again and again if it meant I had those same moments with her.’

‘Rehearsing what you’re going to say to the missus?’ Pryde said coolly. Only then did Gill realise that she alone had been affected by Marr’s story. As if to stress his point, Pryde blew out something approaching a bubble, which popped with an audible clack.

‘My God,’ Marr said, almost with a sense of awe, ‘I hope and pray I never grow a skin as thick as yours.’

‘You’re the one shagging his pal’s daughter all these years. Compared to me, Mr Marr, you’re a fucking armadillo.’

This time, Gill had to draw her colleague from the interview room by his arm.

Rebus walked through St Leonard’s like the spectre at the feast. The feeling was, between Marr and Claire Benzie, they’d get something. Surely to hell they’d get
something
.

‘Not if you haven’t worked for it,’ Rebus muttered. Not that anyone was listening. He found the coffins in his drawer, along with some paperwork and a used coffee beaker someone too lazy to find a bin had placed there. Easing himself into the Farmer’s chair, he drew the coffins out and laid them on his desk, pushing aside more paperwork to make room. He could feel a killer slipping through his fingers. Problem was, for Rebus to get a second chance would mean some new victim turning up, and he wasn’t sure he wanted that. The evidence he’d taken home, the notes pinned to his wall – he couldn’t fool himself, it didn’t amount to evidence at all. It was a jumble of coincidence and speculation, a thin gossamer pattern created almost from air, the merest flutter of breath beginning to snap its tensed threads. For all he knew, Betty-Anne Jesperson had eloped with her secret lover, while Hazel Gibbs had staggered drunkenly on the bank of White Cart Water and slipped in, knocking herself unconscious. Maybe Paula Gearing had hidden her depression well, walking into the sea of her own volition. And the schoolgirl Caroline Farmer, could she have started a new life in some English city, far from small-town Scottish teenage blues?