Falls

by Ian Rankin

  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 Haddingron. 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.

  Just the one child. John Balfour himself was an only child, but Jacqueline had two sisters and a brother, none of them currently living in Scotland. The brother had followed in his father’s footsteps and was on a Washington posting with the Foreign Office. It struck Rebus that the Balfour dynasty was in trouble. He couldn’t see Philippa rushing to join Daddy’s bank, and wondered why the couple hadn’t tried for a son.

  None of which, in all probability, was pertinent to the inquiry. All the same, it was what Rebus enjoyed about the job: constructing a web of relationships, peering into other people’s lives, wondering and questioning …

  He turned to the notes on David Costello. Dublin-born and educated, the family moving just south of the city to Dalkey in the early nineties. The father, Thomas Costello, didn’t seem to have turned a day’s work in his life, his needs supplied by a trust fund set up by his father, a land developer. David’s grandfather owned several prime sites in the centre of Dublin, and made a comfortable living from them. He owned half a dozen racehorses, too, and spent all his time these days concentrating on that side of things.

  David’s mother, Theresa, was something else again. Her background could at best be called lower middle class, mother a nurse, father a teacher. Theresa had gone to art school but dropped out and got a job instead, providing for the family when her mother got cancer and her father fell apart. She worked behind the counter in a department store, then moved to window-dressing, and from there to interior design—for shops at first, and then for wealthy individuals. Which was how she met Thomas Costello. By the time they married, both her parents were dead. Theresa probably didn’t need to work, but she worked anyway, building up her one-woman company until it had grown into a business with a turnover in the low millions and a workforce of five, not including herself. There were overseas clients, and the list was still growing. She was fifty- one now, and showing no signs of slacking, while her husband, a year her junior, remained the man about town. Press clippings from the Irish news showed him at racing events, garden parties and the like. In none of the photos did he appear with Theresa. Separate rooms in their Edinburgh hotel … As their son said, it was hardly a crime.

  David had been late going to university, having taken a year out to travel the world. He was now in the third year of his MA degree in English Language and Literature. Rebus remembered the books in his living room: Milton, Wordsworth, Hardy …

  ‘Enjoying the view, John?’

  Rebus opened his eyes. ‘Deep in thought, George.’

  'You weren’t dropping off, then?’

  Rebus glared at him. ‘Far from it.’

  As Hi-Ho Silvers moved away, Siobhan came and rested against the side of Rebus’s desk.

  ‘So how deep in thought were you?’

  ‘I was wondering if Rabbie Burns could have murdered one of his lovers.’ She just stared at him. ‘Or whether someone who reads poetry could.’

  ‘Don’t see why not. Didn’t some death-camp commander listen to Mozart of an evening?’

  ‘Now there’s a cheery thought.’

  ‘Always here to make your day that little bit brighter. Now
what about doing me a favour?’

  ‘How can I refuse?’

  She handed him a sheet of paper. ‘Tell me what you think that means.’

  Subj: Helibank

  Date: 5/9

  From: Quizmaster@PaganOmerta.com

  To: Flipside1223@HXRmail.com

  Did you survive Hellbank? Time running out. Stricture awaits your call.

  QuiM

  Rebus looked up at her. ‘Going to give me a clue?’

  She took back the sheet of paper. ‘It’s an e-mail printout. Philippa had a couple of dozen messages waiting for her, dating back to the day she went missing. All of them except this one are addressed to her other name.’

  ‘Her other name?’

  ‘ISPs —’ she paused—‘Internet service providers will usually allow you a range of log-on names, as many as five or six.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘So you can be … different people, I suppose. Flipside 1223 is a sort of alias. Her other e-mails all went to Flip-dot-Balfour.’

  ‘So what does it mean?’

  Siobhan expelled air. ‘That’s what I’m wondering. Maybe it means she had a side we don’t know about. There’s not a single saved message from her or to her in the name of Flipside 1223. So either she’s been erasing them as she goes, or else this got to her by mistake.’

  ‘Doesn’t look like coincidence, does it, though?’ Rebus said. ‘Her nickname’s Flip.’

  Siobhan was nodding. ‘Hellbank, Stricture, PaganOmerta … ’

  ‘Omerta’s the mafia code of silence,’ Rebus stated.

  ‘And Quizmaster,’ Siobhan said. ‘Signs herself or himself QuiM. Little touch of juvenile humour there.’

  Rebus looked at the message again. ‘Beats me, Siobhan. What do you want to do?’

  ‘I’d like to track down whoever sent this, but that’s not going to be easy. Only way I can think of is to reply.’

  ‘Let whoever it is know that Philippa’s gone missing?’

  Siobhan lowered her voice. ‘I was thinking more along the lines of her replying.’

  Rebus was thoughtful. ‘Think it would work? What would you say?’

  ‘I haven’t decided.’ The way she folded her arms, Rebus knew she was going to do it anyway.

  ‘Run it past DCS Templer when she gets in,’ he cautioned. Siobhan nodded and made to leave, but he called her back. You went to uni. Tell me, did you ever mix with the likes of Philippa Balfour?’

  She snorted. ‘That’s another world. No tutorials or lectures for them. Some of them I only ever saw in the exam hall. And you know what?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The sods always passed … ’

  That evening, Gill Templer hosted a celebratory gathering at the Palm Court in the Balmoral Hotel. A tuxedoed pianist was playing in the opposite corner. A bottle of champagne sat in an ice-bucket. Bowls of nibbles had been brought to the table.

  ‘Remember to leave space for supper,’ Gill told her guests. A table in Hadri an’s had been booked for eight thirty. It had just gone half past seven, and the last arrival was coming through the door.

  Slipping off her coat, Siobhan apologised. A waiter appeared and took the coat from her. Another waiter was already pouring champagne into her glass.

  ‘Cheers,’ she said, sitting down and lifting the glass. ‘And congratulations.’

  Gill Templer lifted her own glass and allowed herself a smile. ‘I think I deserve it,’ she said, to enthusiastic agreement.

  Siobhan already knew two of the guests. Both were fiscals depute,. and Siobhan had worked with them on several prosecutions. Harriet Brough was in her late forties, her black hair permed (and maybe even dyed, too), her figure hidden behind layers of tweed and thick cotton. Diana Metcalf was early forties, with short ash-blonde hair and sunken eyes which, rather than masking, she exaggerated with dark eye-shadow. She always wore brightly coloured clothes, which helped to heighten still further her waif- like, undernourished look.

  ‘And this is Siobhan Clarke,’ Gill was telling the last member of the party. ‘A detective constable in my station.’ The way she said ‘my station’, it was as if she’d taken on ownership of the place, which, Siobhan supposed, wasn’t so far from the truth. ‘Siobhan, this is Jean Burchill. Jean works at the museum.’

  ‘Oh? Which one?’

  ‘The Museum of Scotland,’ Burchill answered. ‘Have you ever been?’

  ‘I had a meal in The Tower once,’ Siobhan said.

  ‘Not quite the same thing.’ Burchill’s voice trailed off.

  ‘No, what I meant was … ’ Siobhan tried to find a diplomatic way of putting it. ‘I had a meal there just after it opened. The guy I was with … well, bad experience. It put me off going back.’

  ‘Understood,’ Harriet Brough said, as though every mishap in life could be explained by reference to the opposite sex.

  ‘Well,’ Gill said, ‘it’s women only tonight, so we can all relax.’

  ‘Unless we hit a nightclub later,’ Diana Metcalf said, her eyes glinting.

  Gill caught Siobhan’s eye. ‘Did you send that e-mail?’ she asked.

  Jean Burchill tutted. ‘No shop talk, please.’

  The fiscals agreed noisily, but Siobhan nodded anyway, to let Gill know the message had gone out. Whether anyone would be fooled by it was another matter. It was why she’d been late getting here. She’d spent too long going over Philippa’s e-mails, all the ones she’d sent to friends, trying to work out what sort of tone might be convincing, what words to use and how to order them. She’d gone through over a dozen drafts before deciding to keep it simple. But then some of Philippa’s e-mails were like long chatty letters: what if her previous messages to Quizmaster had been the same? How would he or she react to this curt, out-of-character reply? Problem. Need to talk to you. Flipside. And then a telephone number, the number for Siobhan’s own mobile.

  ‘I saw the press conference on TV tonight,’ Diana Metcalf said.

  Jean Burchill groaned. ‘What did I just say?’

  Metcalf turned to her with those big, dark, wary eyes. ‘This isn’t shop, Jean. Everyone’s talking about it.’ Then she turned to Gill. ‘I don’t think it was the boyfriend, do you?’

  Gill just shrugged.

  ‘See?’ Burchill said. ‘Gill doesn’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘More likely the father,’ Harriet Brough said. ‘My brother was at school with him. A very cold fish.’ She spoke with a confidence and authority that revealed her upbringing. She’d probably wanted to be a lawyer from nursery school on, Siobhan guessed. ‘Where was the mother?’ Brough now demanded of Gill.

  ‘Couldn’t face it,’ Gill answered. ‘We did ask her.’

  ‘She couldn’t have made a worse job than those two,’ Brough stated, picking cashews out of the bowl nearest her.

  Gill looked suddenly tired. Siobhan decided on a change of subject and asked Jean Burchill what she did at the museum.

  ‘I’m a senior curator,’ Burchill explained. ‘My main specialism is eighteenth- and nineteenth-century.’

  ‘Her main specialism,’ Harriet Brough interrupted, ‘is death.’

  Burchill smiled. ‘It’s true I put together the exhibits on belief and—’

  ‘What’s truer,’ Brough cut in, her eyes on Siobhan, ‘is that she puts together old coffins and pictures of dead Victorian babies. Gives me the collywobbles whenever I happen to be on whichever floor it is.’

  ‘The fourth,’ Burchill said quietly. She was, Siobhan decided, very pretty. Small and slender, with straight brown hair hanging in a pageboy cut. Her chin was dimpled, her cheeks well defined and tinged pink, even in the discreet lighting of the Palm Court. She wore no make-up that Siobhan could see, nor did she need any. She was all muted, pastel shades: jacket and trousers which had probably been called ‘taupe’ in the shop; grey cashmere sweater beneath the jacket, and a russet pashmina fixed at the shoulder with a Rennie Mackintosh brooch. Late forties again. It struck Siobhan that she was the youn
gest person here by probably fifteen years.

  ‘Jean and I were at school together,’ Gill explained. ‘Then we lost touch and bumped into one another just four or five years back.’

  Burchill smiled at the memory.

  ‘Wouldn’t want to meet anyone I was at school with,’ Harriet Brough said through a mouthful of nuts. ‘Arseholes, the lot of them.’

  ‘More champague, ladies?’ the waiter said, lifting the bottle from its ice-bucket.

  ‘About bloody time,’ Brough snapped.

  Between dessert and coffee, Siobhan headed to the loo. Walking back along the corridor to the brasserie, she met Gill.

  ‘Great minds,’ Gill said with a smile.

  ‘It was a lovely meal, Gill. Are you sure I can’t …?’

  Gill touched her arm. ‘My treat. It’s not every day I have something worth celebrating.’ The smile melted from her lips. 'You think your e-mail will work?’ Siobhan just shrugged, and Gill nodded, accepting the assessment. ‘What did you reckon to the press conference?’

  ‘The usual jungle.’

  ‘Sometimes it works,’ Gill mused. She’d had three glasses of wine on top of the champague, but the only sign that she wasn’t stone- cold sober was a slight tilt to her head and heaviness to her eyelids.

  ‘Can I say something?’ Siobhan asked.

  ‘We’re off duty, Siobhan. Say what you like.’

  'You shouldn’t have given it to Ellen Wylie.’

  Gill fixed her with a stare. ‘It should have been you, eh?’

  ‘That’s not what I mean. But to give someone that as their first liaison job …'

  'You’d have done it better?’

  ‘I’m not saying that.’

  ‘Then what are you saying?’

  ‘I’m saying it was a jungle and you threw her in there without a map.’

  ‘Careful, Siobhan.’ Gill’s voice had lost all its warmth. She considered for a moment, then sniffed. When she spoke, her eyes surveyed the hallway. ‘Ellen Wylie’s been bending my ear for months. She wanted liaison, and as soon as I could, I gave it to her. I wanted to see if she was as good as she thinks she is.’ Now her eyes met Siobhan’s. Their faces were close enough for Siobhan to smell the wine. ‘She fell short.’