‘Just trying to be friendly. We’re always accused of being rude to English people.’
‘Just piss off, will you?’
Nic pushed the car forwards, then stopped, so he could turn round and see her face properly. She had a scarf around her neck, chin and mouth tucked into it. As she walked past, for all the world as if they didn’t exist, Nic caught Jerry’s eye and started nodding.
‘Lesbian, Jerry,’ he confirmed loudly, closing the window and moving off again.
Siobhan didn’t know quite why she was walking. But, entering Waverley Station by the back way, seeing it as a shortcut of sorts, she knew why she was shaking.
Lesbian.
Sod them all. The whole lot of them. She’d turned down Derek Linford’s offer of a lift. Said she felt like a walk; unsure straight away why she’d said it. They’d parted amicably enough. No handshake or peck on the cheek, that wasn’t the Edinburgh way, not on a first dinner-date. Just smiles and a promise to do it again some time: a promise she was pretty sure she’d be breaking. It was strange, taking the lift down from the restaurant through the museum. Workmen were still busy, even at that hour. Cables and ladders, the sound of an electric drill.
‘I thought this place was open for business,’ Linford had said.
‘It is,’ she’d told him. ‘It’s just not ready yet, that’s all.’
She’d walked up George IV Bridge, decided to head down the High Street. But that car, those men... she’d wanted off that street. A long flight of dark steps, shadows all around, shouts and music from still-open pubs. Then Waverley. She would cut through, back up on to Princes Street, then down Broughton Street, the city’s so-called gay village.
Which was where she lived. It was where a lot of people lived.
Lesbian.
Sod them all.
She thought back on the evening, trying to calm herself. Derek had been nervous, but then who was she to talk? The sex crimes secondment, it had put her off men. The register of offenders... all those hungry faces... the details of their crimes. And then her time with Sandra Carnegie, swapping stories and feelings. One officer who’d worked sex crimes for the best part of four years had warned her: ‘It’s a passion-basher, puts you right off.’ Three tramps had attacked a student, another student had been assaulted on one of the South Side’s richest streets. A car cruising past, an attempted chat-up and stinging punchline; small beer by comparison. All the same, she’d remember that name — Jerry — and the shiny black Sierra.
From the pedestrian bridge, she could look down on to the railway tracks and the concourse. Above her was the station’s leaky glass roof. When something plummeted, just on the edge of her vision, she thought she was imagining it. She looked across and saw snow falling. No, not snow: big flakes of glass. There was a hole in the roof, and below on one of the platforms someone was yelling. A couple of taxi drivers had opened their doors, were making for the scene.
Another leaper: that’s what it was. An area of darkness on the platform: it was like staring into a black hole. But really it was a long coat, the coat the leaper had been wearing. Siobhan made for the steps down to the concourse. Passengers were waiting for the sleeper to London. A woman was crying. One of the taxi drivers had taken off his jacket and laid it over the top half of the body. Siobhan moved forward. The other taxi driver put a hand out to stop her.
‘I wouldn’t, love,’ he said. For a moment she misheard him: I wouldn’t love. I wouldn’t love because love makes you weak. I wouldn’t love because your job will kill it dead.
‘I’m a police officer,’ she told him, reaching for her warrant card.
So many people had jumped from North Bridge, the Samaritans had bolted a sign to the parapet. North Bridge connected Old Town Edinburgh to the New Town and passed over the deep gully which housed Waverley Station. By the time Siobhan got there, no one was around. Distant shapes and voices: drinkers heading home. Taxis and cars. If anyone had seen the fall, they hadn’t bothered stopping. Siobhan leaned over the parapet, looked down on Waverley’s roof. Almost directly below was the hole. Through it, she could glimpse movement on the platform. She’d called for assistance, told them to alert the mortuary. She was off duty; let one of the uniforms — Rebus called them woolly suits — deal with it. From the dead man’s clothes, she was assuming he was a tramp. Only you didn’t call them tramps these days, did you? Problem was, she couldn’t think of the right word. Already in her head she was writing her report. Looking around at the empty street, she realised she could just walk away. Leave it to others. Her foot touched something. A plastic carrier bag. She nudged it and felt resistance. Stooping, she picked it up. It was one of the oversized bags you carried skirts or dresses home in. A Jenners bag, no less. The upmarket department store was a couple of minutes’ walk away. She doubted the leaper had ever shopped there. But she guessed his whole life was contained in the bag, so she took it with her back down to Waverley.
She’d dealt with suicides before. People who turned on the gas and sat down next to the fire. Cars left running in locked garages. Pill bottles by the bed, blue lips flecked with white. A CID officer had jumped from Salisbury Crags not so long ago. Plenty of places like that in Edinburgh; no shortage of suicide spots.
‘You could go home, you know,’ a uniform told her. She nodded. The woman officer smiled. ‘So what’s keeping you?’
A good question. It was as if she knew, knew there was so little to go home to.
‘You’re one of DI Rebus’s, aren’t you?’ the uniform asked.
Siobhan glared at her. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
The woman shrugged. ‘Sorry I spoke.’ Then she turned and walked away. They’d cordoned off the section of platform where the body lay. A doctor had confirmed death, and one of the mortuary vans was getting ready to remove the remains. Station staff were in search of a hose, wanted to get a jet-spray on to the platform. Blood and brains would be washed on to the tracks.
The sleeper passengers had departed, the station readying to close for the night. No taxis now. Siobhan wandered over to the left-luggage lockers. There was a desk there, and a male uniform was emptying the Jenners bag on to it, picking out each item gingerly, as if dealing with contamination.
‘Anything?’ Siobhan asked.
‘Just what you see.’
There had been no form of ID on the deceased, nothing in his pockets but a handkerchief and some coins. Siobhan studied the items on the table. A polythene bread bag seemed to contain a rudimentary wash-kit. There were a few articles of clothing, an old copy of Reader’s Digest. A small transistor radio, its back held on with sticking tape. The day’s evening paper, folded and crumpled...
You’re one of DI Rebus’s. Meaning what? Meaning she’d grown to be like him: a loner, a drifter? Were there just the two types of cop: John Rebus or Derek Linford? And did she have to choose?
A sandwich wrapped in greaseproof paper; a child’s lemonade bottle, half-filled with water. More clothing was appearing from the bag, which was all but empty now. The uniform tipped the remnants out. They looked like things the deceased had collected on his travels: a few pebbles, a cheap ring, shoelaces and buttons. A small, thin cardboard box which, from the faded picture on it, had once contained the radio. Siobhan picked it up and shook it, pulled it open and shook out a little book which at first she took for a passport.
‘It’s a passbook,’ the uniform said. ‘Building society.’
‘So it’ll have a name on it,’ Siobhan said.
The uniform opened the book. ‘Mr C. Mackie. There’s an address in the Grassmarket.’