Falls

by Ian Rankin

  'You don’t think she’s been kidnapped, Mrs Balfour?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘What then?’

  She stared at him, her eyes red-veined from crying, and shadowed underneath from lack of sleep. ‘She’s dead.’ It came out almost in a whisper. You think so too, don’t you?’

  ‘It’s far too early to be thinking that. I’ve known MisPers turn up weeks or months later.’

  ‘Weeks or months? I can’t bear the thought. I’d rather know … one way or the other.’

  ‘When was the last time you saw her?’

  ‘About ten days ago. We went shopping in Edinburgh, just the usual places. Not really meaning to buy anything. We had a bite to eat.’

  ‘Did she come to the house often?’

  Jacqueline Balfour shook her head. ‘He poisoned her.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘David Costello. He poisoned her memories, made her think she could remember things, things which never happened. That last time we met … Flip kept asking about her childhood. She said it had been miserable for her, that we’d ignored her, hadn’t wanted her. Utter rubbish.’

  ‘And David Costello put these ideas in her head?’

  She straightened her back, took a deep breath and released it. ‘That’s my belief.’

  Rebus was thoughtful. ‘Why would he do something like that?’

  ‘Because of who he is.’ She left the statement hanging in the air. The ringing of the phone was a sudden cacophony. She fumbled to find the right button to press.

  ‘Hello?’

  Then her face relaxed a little. ‘Hello, darling, what time will you be home … ?’

  Rebus waited till the call was finished. He was thinking of the press conference, the way John Balfour had said ‘I’ rather than ‘we’, as if his wife had no feelings, no existence …

  ‘That was John,’ she said. Rebus nodded.

  ‘He’s in London a lot, isn’t he? Doesn’t it get lonely out here?’

  She looked at him. ‘I do have friends, you know.’

  ‘I wasn’t suggesting otherwise. You probably go into Edinburgh a lot.’

  ‘Once or twice a week, yes.’

  ‘Do you see much of your husband’s business partner?’

  She looked at him again. ‘Ranald? He and his wife are probably our best friends … Why do you ask?’

  Rebus made show of scratching his head. ‘I don’t know. Just making conversation, I suppose.’

  ‘Well don’t.’

  ‘Don’t make conversation?’

  ‘I don’t like it. I feel like everyone’s trying to trap me. It’s like at business parties, John’s always warning me not to give anything away, you never know who’s fishing for some info on the bank.’

  ‘We’re not competitors here, Mrs Balfour.’

  She bowed her head a little. ‘Of course not. I apologise. It’s just …'

  ‘No need for apologies,’ Rebus said, getting to his feet. ‘This is your home, your rules. Wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Well, when you put it like that … ’ She seemed to brighten a little. All the same, Rebus reckoned that whenever Jacqueline Balfour’s husband was at home, it was his rules they played by …

  Inside the house, he found two colleagues sitting comfortably in the lounge. The WPC introduced herself as Nicola Campbell. The other officer was CID based at Fettes HQ. His name was Eric Bain, more usually called ‘Brains’. Bain was seated at a desk upon which sat a landline telephone, notebook and pen, and a recording machine, along with a mobile phone connected to a laptop. Having established that the current caller was Mr Balfour, Bain had slid the headphones back down around his neck. He was drinking straw- berry yoghurt straight from the pot, and nodded a greeting at Rebus.

  ‘Cushy number,’ Rebus said, admiring the surroundings.

  ‘If you don’t mind the crushing boredom,’ Campbell admitted.

  ‘What’s the deal with the laptop?’

  ‘It connects Brains to his nerdy friends.’

  Bain wagged a finger at her. ‘It’s part of the TT technology: tracking and tracing.’ Concentrating on the last vestiges of his snack, he didn’t see Campbell mouth the word ‘nerd’ at Rebus.

  ‘Which would be great,’ Rebus said, ‘if there was anything worth the effort.’

  Bain nodded. ‘Lots of sympathy calls to start with, friends and family. Impressively low number of crackpots. Not being listed in the book probably helps.’

  ‘Just remember,’ Rebus warned, ‘the person we’re looking for might be a crackpot too.’

  ‘Probably no shortage of nutters around here,’ Campbell said, crossing her legs. She was seated on one of the room’s three sofas, copies of Caledonia and Scottish Field spread out in front of her. There were other magazines on a table behind her sofa. Rebus got the feeling they belonged to the house, and that she’d read each and every one of them at least once.

  ‘How do you mean?’ he asked.

  ‘Been through the village yet? Albinos in the trees picking at banjos?’

  Rebus smiled. Bain looked puzzled. ‘I didn’t see any,’ he said.

  Campbell’s look said it all: that’s because in some parallel world, you’re up in the trees with them .

  ‘Tell me something,’ Rebus said, ‘at the press conference, Mr Balfour mentioned his mobile phone … ’

  ‘Shouldn’t have done that,’ Bain said, shaking his head. ‘We’d asked him not to.’

  ‘Not so easy to trace a mobile call?’

  ‘They’re more flexible than landlines, aren’t they?’

  ‘But still traceable?’

  ‘Up to a point. Lot of dodgy mobiles out there. We could trace one to an account, only to find it’d been nicked the previous week.’

  Campbell suppressed a yawn. You see how it is?’ she told Rebus. ‘Thrill after thrill after thrill … ’

  He took his time heading back into town, aware of traffic picking up in the opposite direction. The rush hour was starting, executive cars streaming back into the countryside. He knew of people who commuted to and from Edinburgh every day now from as far afield as the Borders, Fife and Glasgow. They all said housing was to blame. A three-bedroom semi in a nice part of the city could cost £250,000 or more. For that money, you could buy a big detached place in West Lothian, or half a street in Cowdenbeath. On the other hand, Rebus had had cold callers to his flat in Marchmont. He’d had letters addressed to ‘The Occupier’ from desperate buyers. Because that was the other thing about Edinburgh: no matter how high the prices seemed to go, there were always buyers. In Marchmont it was often landlords, looking for something to add to their portfolio, or parents whose kids wanted a flat near the university. Rebus had lived in his tenement twenty-odd years, and had seen the area change. Fewer families and old people, more students and young, childless couples. The groups didn’t seem to mix. People who’d lived in Marchmont all their lives watched their children move away, unable to afford a place nearby. Rebus didn’t know anyone in his tenement now, or the ones either side of him. As far as he could tell, he was the only owner-occupier left. More worrying still, he seemed to be the oldest person there. And still the letters and offers came, and the prices kept rising.

  Which was why he was moving out. Not that he’d found a place to buy yet. Maybe he’d go back into the rental market, that way he had freedom of choice: a year in a country cottage, then a year by the seaside, and a year or two above a pub … The flat was too big for him, he knew that. Nobody ever stayed in the spare bedrooms, and many nights he slept on the chair in the living room. A studio flat would be big enough for him; everything else was excess.

  Volvos, BMWs, sporty Audis … they were all passing him on their way home. Rebus was wondering if he wanted to commute. From Marchmont he could walk to work. It took about fifteen minutes, the only exercise he ever got. He wouldn’t fancy the drive every day between Falls and the city. The streets had been quiet when he’d been there, but he guessed tonight the narrow m
ain road would be lined with cars.

  When he started looking for a parking space in Marchmont, however, he was reminded of another reason for moving out. In the end, he left the Saab on a yellow line, and went into the nearest shop for an evening paper, milk, rolls and bacon. He’d called into the station, asked if he was needed: he wasn’t. Back in his flat, he took a can of beer from the fridge and settled into his chair by the living-room window. The kitchen was more of a mess than usual: some of the hall stuff was in there while the rewiring went on. He didn’t know when the electrics had last been done. He didn’t think they’d been touched since he bought the place. After the rewiring, he had a painter booked to slap on some magnolia, freshen the place up. He’d been told not to make too many renovations: whoever bought the place would probably just do it all over again anyway. Rewiring and decorating: he’d stop at that. The Property Centre had said it was impossible to tell how much he’d get for the place. In Edinburgh, you put your home on the market for ‘offers over’, but that premium could reach thirty or forty per cent. A conservative estimate valued his Arden Street shell at £125,000 to £140,000. There was no mortgage outstanding. It was cash in the bank.

  'You could retire on that,’ Siobhan had told him. Well, maybe. He’d have to split it with his ex-wife, he supposed, even though he’d written her a cheque for her share of the place soon after they’d split up. And he could slip some money to Sammy, his daughter. Sammy was another reason for selling, or so he told himself. After her accident, she was finally out of the wheelchair but still used a pair of sticks. Two flights of tenement stairs were beyond her not that she’d been a regular visitor even before the hit-and-run.

  He didn’t have many visitors, was not a good host. When his ex, Rhona, had moved out, he’d never got round to filling the gaps she’d left. Someone had once described the flat as ‘a cave’, and there was some truth in this. It provided a form of shelter for him, and that was about all he asked of it. The students next door were playing something semi-raucous. It sounded like bad Hawkwind from twenty years before, which probably meant it was by some fashionable new band. He looked through his own collection, came up with the tape Siobhan had made, and put it on. The Mutton Birds: three songs from one of their albums. They came from New Zealand, somewhere like that, and one of the instruments had been recorded here in Edinburgh. That was about-as much as she could tell him about them. The second song was ‘The Falls’.

  He sat back down again. There was a bottle on the floor: Talisker, a clean, honed taste. Glass beside it, so he poured, toasted the reflection in the window, leaned back and closed his eyes. He wasn’t having this room redecorated. He’d done it himself not that long back, his old friend and ally Jack Morton helping. Jack was dead now, one of too many ghosts. Rebus wondered if he’d leave them behind when he moved. Somehow he doubted it, and deep down, he would miss them anyway.

  The music was all about loss and redemption. Places changing and people with them, dreams shifting ever further beyond reach. Rebus didn’t think he’d be sorry to see the back of Arden Street. It was time for a change.

  4

  On her way into work next morning, Siobhan thought of nothing but Quizmaster. Nobody had called her mobile, so she was thinking up another message to send him. Him or her. She knew she had to keep an open mind, but couldn’t help thinking of Quizmaster as ‘him’. ‘Stricture’, ‘Hellbank’ … they seemed masculine to her. And the whole idea of some game being played by computer … it all sounded so blokeish, sad anoraks stuck in their bedrooms. Her first message—Problem. Need to talk to you. Flipside—seemed not to have worked. Today, she was going to end the pretence. She would e-mail him as herself, and explain Flip’s disappearance, asking him to get in touch. She’d kept the mobile phone beside her all night, waking every hour or so and checking to see that she hadn’t slept through a call. But no calls came. Finally, as dawn approached, she’d got dressed and gone for a walk. Her flat was just off Broughton Street, in an area undergoing rapid gentrification: not as pricey as the New Town which it neighboured, but close to the city centre. Half her street seemed to be taken up with skips, and she knew that by mid-morning builders’ vans would be struggling to find a parking space.

  She broke the walk with breakfast at an early opener: beans on toast and a mug of tea so strong she feared for tannin poisoning. At the top of Calton Hill, she stopped to watch. the city gearing up for another day. Down by Leith, a container ship was sitting off the coast. The Pentland Hills to the south wore their covering of low cloud like a welcoming duvet. There wasn’t much traffic yet on Princes Street: buses and taxis mostly. She liked Edinburgh best at this time of day, before routine set in. The Balmoral Hotel was one of the closest landmarks. She thought back to the party Gill Templer had hosted there … how Gill had talked of having a lot on her plate. Siobhan wondered if she’d meant the case itself or her new promotion. Thing about the promotion was, John Rebus came with it. He was Gill’s problem now rather than the Farmer’s. Word in the office was, John had already got into a spot of bother: found drunk inside the MisPer’s flat. In the past, people had warned Siobhan that she was growing too much like Rebus, picking up his faults as well as his strengths. She didn’t think that was true.

  No, that wasn’t true …

  Her walk downhill took her on to Waterloo Place. A right turn, she’d be home in five minutes. A left, and she could be at work in ten. She turned left on to North Bridge, kept walking.

  St Leonard’s was quiet. The CID suite had a musty smell: too many bodies each day spending too long cooped up there. She opened a couple of windows, made herself a mug of weak coffee, and sat down at her desk. When she checked, there were no messages on Flip’s computer. She decided to keep the line open while she composed her new e-mail. But after only a couple of lines, a message told her she had post. It was from Quizmaster, a simple Good morning. She hit reply and asked, How did you know I was here? The response was immediate.

  That’s something Flipside wouldn’t have to ask. Who are you?

  Siobhan typed so quickly, she didn’t correct her errors. I’m a police officer, baesd in Edinburgh. We’re investgating Philippa Balfour’s disappearance. She waited a full minute for his reply.

  Who?

  Flipside, she typed.

  She never told me her real name. That’s one of the rules.

  The rules of the game? Siobhan typed.

  Yes. Did she live in Edinburgh?

  She was a student here. Can we talk? You’ve got my mobile number.

  Again, the wait seemed interminable.

  I prefer this.

  Okay, Siobhan typed, can you tell me about Hellbank?

  You’d have to play the game. Give me a name to call you.

  My name’s Siobhan Clarke. I’m a detective constable with Lothian and Borders Police.

  I get the feeling that’s your real name, Siobhan. You’ve broken one of the first rules. How do you pronounce it?

  Siobhan could feel the blood rising to her face. It’s not a game, Quizmaster.

  But that’s exactly what it is. How do you pronounce your name?

  Shi-vawn.

  There was a longer pause, and she was about to re-send the message when his response came.

  To answer your question, Hellbank is one level of the game.

  Flipside was playing a game?

  Yes. Stricture is the next level.

  What sort of game? Could she have got into trouble?

  Later.

  Siobhan stared at the word. What do you mean?

  We’ll talk later.

  I need your co-operation.

  Then learn patience. I could shut down right now and you’d never find me, do you accept that?

  Yes. Siobhan was about ready to punch the screen.

  Later.

  Later, she typed.

  And that was it. No further messages. He’d gone off-line, or was still there but wouldn’t respond. And all she could do was wait. Or was it? She logged
on to the Internet and tried all the search engines she could find, asking them for sites related to Quizmaster and PaganOmerta. She came up with dozens of Quizmasters, but got the feeling none of them was hers. PaganOmerta was a blank, though separating the words gave her hundreds of sites, almost all of them trying to sell her a new-age religion. When she tried Paganomerta.com there was nothing there. It was an address rather than a site. She made more coffee. The rest of the shift was drifting in. A couple of people said hello, but she wasn’t listening. She’d had another idea. She sat back down at her desk with the phone book and a copy of Yellow Pages, drew her notebook towards her and picked up a pen.

  She tried computer retailers first, until finally someone directed her towards a comic shop on South Bridge. To Siobhan, comics meant things like the Beano and Dandy, though she’d once had a boyfriend whose obsession with 2000AD was at least partly responsible for their break-up. But this shop was a revelation. There were thousands of titles, along with sci-fi books, T-shirts and other merchandise. At the counter, a teenage assistant was arguing the merits of John Constantine with two schoolboys. She’d no way of knowing whether Constantine was a comic character or a writer or artist. Eventually the boys noticed her standing right behind them. They stopped being excited, turned back into awkward, gangling twelve-year-olds. Maybe they weren’t used to women listening in. She didn’t suppose they were used to women at all.

  ‘I heard you talking,’ she said. ‘Thought maybe you could help me with something.’ None of the three said anything. The teenage assistant was rubbing at a patch of acne on his cheek. You ever play games on the Internet?’

  'You mean like Dreamcast?’ She looked blank. ‘It’s Sony,’ the assistant clarified.

  ‘I mean games where there’s someone in charge, and they contact you by e-mail, set you challenges.’

  ‘Role-playing.’ One of the schoolboys nodded, looking to the others for confirmation.

  ‘Have you ever played one?’ Siobhan asked him.