Ghosts, he could have told her, but he just shrugged instead.
‘A fresh start?’ she guessed.
‘Maybe. Do you take sugar?’ He handed her the mug. She studied its milky surface.
‘I don’t even take milk,’ she told him.
‘Christ, sorry.’ He tried taking the mug from her, but she resisted.
‘This’ll be fine,’ she said. Then she laughed. ‘Some detective. You just watched me drink two cups of coffee in the restaurant.’
‘And never noticed,’ Rebus agreed, nodding.
‘Is there space to sit down in the living room? Now that we’ve got to know one another a little, it’s time to show you the dolls.’
He cleared an area of the dining table. She placed her shoulder-bag on the floor and pulled out a folder.
‘Thing is,’ she said, ‘I know this may sound barmy to some people. So I’m hoping you’ll keep an open mind. Maybe that’s why I wanted to know you a bit better...’
She handed over the folder and he pulled out a sheaf of press cuttings. While she spoke, he started arranging them before him on the table.
‘I came across the first one when someone wrote a letter to the Museum. This was a couple of years back.’ He held up the letter and she nodded. ‘A Mrs Anderson in Perth. She’d heard the story of the Arthur’s Seat coffins and wanted me to know that something similar had happened near Huntingtower.’
The clipping attached to the letter was from the Courier. ‘Mysterious Find Near Local Hotel’: a coffin-shaped wooden box with a scrap of cloth nearby. Found beneath some leaves in a copse when a dog had been out for its daily walk. The owner had taken the box to the hotel, thinking maybe it was some sort of toy. But no explanation had been found. The year was 1995.
‘The woman, Mrs Anderson,’ Jean was saying, ‘was interested in local history. That’s why she kept the cutting.’
‘No doll?’
Jean shook her head. ‘Could be some animal ran off with it.’
‘Could be,’ Rebus agreed. He turned to the second cutting. It was dated 1982 and was from a Glasgow evening paper: ‘Church Condemns Sick Joke Find’.
‘It was Mrs Anderson herself told me about this one,’ Jean explained. ‘A churchyard, next to one of the gravestones. A little wooden coffin, this time with a doll inside, basically a wooden clothes-peg with a ribbon around it.’
Rebus looked at the photo printed in the paper. ‘It looks cruder, balsa wood or something.’
She nodded. ‘I thought it was quite a coincidence. Ever since, I’ve been on the lookout for more examples.’
He separated the two final cuttings. ‘And finding them, I see.’
‘I tour the country, giving talks on behalf of the Museum. Each time, I ask if anyone’s heard of such a thing.’
‘You struck lucky?’
‘Twice so far. Nineteen seventy-seven in Nairn, nineteen seventy-two in Dunfermline.’
Two more mystery finds. In Nairn, the coffin had been found on the beach; in Dunfermline, in the town’s glen. One with a doll in it, one without. Again, an animal or child could have made off with the contents.
‘What do you make of it?’ he asked.
‘Shouldn’t that be my question?’ He didn’t answer, sifted back through the reports. ‘Could there be a link with what you found in Falls?’
‘I don’t know.’ He looked up at her. ‘Why don’t we find out?’
Sunday traffic slowed them down, though most of the cars were heading back into the city after a day in the country.
‘Do you think there could be more?’ he asked.
‘It’s possible. But the local history groups, they pick up on oddities like that — and they’ve got long memories, too. It’s a close network. People know I’m interested.’ She rested her head against the passenger-side window. ‘I think I’d have heard.’
As they passed the road sign welcoming them to Falls, she smiled. ‘Twinned with Angoisse,’ she said.
‘Sorry?’
‘The sign back there, Falls is twinned with some place called Angoisse. It must be in France.’
‘How do you work that out?’
‘Well, there was a picture of the French flag next to the name.’
‘I suppose that would help.’
‘But it’s a French word, too: angoisse. It means “anguish”. Imagine that: a town called anguish...’
There were cars parked either side of the main road, making for a bottleneck. Rebus didn’t think he’d find a space, so turned into the lane and parked there. As they walked down to Bev Dodds’s cottage, they passed a couple of locals washing their cars. The men were middle-aged and casually dressed — cords and V-necks — but wore the clothes like a uniform. Rebus would bet that midweek, they were seldom without a suit and tie. He thought of Wee Billy’s memories: mums scrubbing their front steps. And here was the contemporary equivalent. One of the men said ‘hello’ and the other ‘good afternoon’. Rebus nodded and knocked on Bev Dodds’s door.
‘I think you’ll find she’s taking her constitutional,’ one man said.
‘Shouldn’t be long,’ added the other.
Neither had stopped work on his car. Rebus wondered if they were in some sort of race; not that they were rushing, but there seemed an element of competition, their concentration intense.
‘Looking to buy some pottery?’ the first asked, as he got to work on the front grille of his BMW.
‘Actually, I wanted a look at the doll,’ Rebus said, sliding his hands into his pockets.
‘Don’t think that’s likely. She’s signed some sort of exclusive with one of your rivals.’
‘I’m a police officer,’ Rebus stated.
The Rover owner snorted at his neighbour’s mistake. ‘That might make a difference,’ he said, laughing.
‘Odd sort of thing to happen,’ Rebus said conversationally.
‘No shortage of those around here.’
‘How do you mean?’
The BMW driver rinsed out his sponge. ‘We had a spate of thefts a few months back, then someone daubed the door of the church.’
‘Kids from the estate,’ the Rover driver interrupted.
‘Maybe,’ his neighbour conceded. ‘But it’s funny it never happened before. Then the Balfour girl goes missing...’
‘Do either of you know the family?’
‘Seen them around,’ the Rover driver conceded.
‘They held a tea party two months back. Opened the house. It was for some charity, I forget which. They seemed very pleasant, John and Jacqueline.’ The BMW driver glanced at his neighbour as he spoke the names. Rebus saw it as yet another element of the game their lives had become.
‘What about the daughter?’ Rebus asked.
‘Always seemed a bit distant,’ the Rover driver said hurriedly, not about to be left out. ‘Hard to strike up a conversation with her.’
‘She spoke to me,’ his rival announced. ‘We had quite a chin-wag once about her university course.’
The Rover driver glared at him. Rebus could foresee a dueclass="underline" dampened chamoises at twenty paces. ‘What about Ms Dodds?’ he asked. ‘Good neighbour, is she?’
‘Bloody awful pottery,’ was the only comment.
‘This doll thing’s probably been good for business though.’
‘I don’t doubt it,’ the BMW owner said. ‘If she has any sense, she’ll capitalise on it.’
‘Promotion’s the life-blood of any new business,’ his neighbour added. Rebus got the feeling they knew what they were talking about.
‘Small concession might do wonders,’ BMW man mused. ‘Teas, home baking...’ Both men had stopped working, growing thoughtful.
‘I thought that was your car in the lane,’ Bev Dodds said, striding towards the group.
While tea was being made, Jean asked if she could see some of the pottery. An extension at the back of the cottage housed both the kitchen and the spare bedroom, which had become a studio. Jean praised the various bowls and plates, but Rebus could tell she didn’t like them. Then, as Bev Dodds was sliding the various bangles and bracelets up her arms again, Jean praised those, too.