And on his desk, five lives. Five victims, possibly. Caroline Farmer the youngest. Just sixteen when she’d disappeared. He’d finally got through to her mother this morning. Not an easy call to make.
‘Oh my God, don’t tell me there’s news?’ That sudden blooming of hope, wizened by his response. But he’d found out what he had to. Caroline had never come back. There had been unconfirmed sightings in the early days, when her photo was in all the papers. But nothing since.
‘We moved last year,’ her mother said. ‘It meant emptying her bedroom...’
But for the quarter-century before that, Rebus surmised, Caroline’s room had been waiting for her: same posters on the walls, same early-seventies teenage girl’s clothes neatly folded in the chest of drawers.
‘Back at the time, they seemed to think we’d done something to her,’ the mother continued. ‘I mean, her own family.’
Rebus didn’t like to say: all too often it’s a father or uncle or cousin.
‘Then they started picking on Ronnie.’
‘Caroline’s boyfriend?’ Rebus guessed.
‘Yes. Just a laddie.’
‘They’d split up, hadn’t they?’
‘You know what teenagers are like.’ It was as though she were talking about events from a week or two back. Rebus didn’t doubt that the memories stayed fresh, always ready to torment her waking hours, maybe even the sleeping ones too.
‘But he was ruled out?’
‘They gave up on him, yes. But he wasn’t the same after that, family moved from the area. He wrote to me for a few years...’
‘Mrs Farmer—’
‘It’s Ms Colquhoun now. Joe left me.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I wasn’t.’
‘Did it have...?’ He stopped. ‘Sorry, none of my business.’
‘He never talked much about it,’ was all she said. Rebus wondered if Caroline’s father had been able to let her go, in a way her mother hadn’t.
‘This may seem a strange question, Ms Colquhoun, but did Dunfermline Glen have any significance for Caroline?’
‘I... I’m not sure what you mean.’
‘Me neither. It’s just that something’s come to our attention, and we’re wondering if it might tie in with your daughter’s disappearance.’
‘What is it?’
He didn’t suppose she’d take the coffin in the Glen as good news; resorted instead to the old cliché: ‘I’m not at liberty to disclose that at present.’
There was silence on the line for a few seconds. ‘She liked to walk in the Glen.’
‘By herself?’
‘When she felt like it.’ Her voice caught. ‘Is it something you’ve found?’
‘Not the way you think, Ms Colquhoun.’
‘You’ve dug her up, haven’t you?’
‘Not at all.’
‘What then?’ she shrieked.
‘I’m not at lib—’
She’d put the phone down. He stared at the mouthpiece, then did the same.
In the men’s toilets he splashed water on his face. His eyes were grey and puffy. Last night, he’d left Surgeons’ Hall and driven to Portobello, parking outside Jean’s house. Her lights had been off. He’d got as far as opening the car door, but had stopped. What was he planning to say to her? What was it he wanted? He’d closed the door again as quietly as he could, and just sat there, engine and headlamps off, Hendrix playing quietly: ‘The Burning of the Midnight Lamp’.
Back at his desk, one of the station’s civvy staff had just arrived with a large cardboard document-box. Rebus lifted the top off and peered inside. The box was actually not quite half full. He pulled out the topmost folder and examined the typed labeclass="underline" Paula Jennifer Gearing (née Mathieson); d.o.b. — 10.4.50; d.o.d. — 6.7.77. The Nairn drowning. Rebus sat down, pulled in his chair and started to read. About twenty minutes in, as he was scribbling another note on a lined A4 pad, Ellen Wylie arrived.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ she said, shedding her coat.
‘We must have different ideas of a start-time,’ he said. Remembering what she’d said yesterday, she reddened, but when she glanced in his direction he was smiling.
‘What have you got?’ she asked.
‘Our friends in the north came good.’
‘Paula Gearing?’
Rebus nodded. ‘She was twenty-seven. Married four years to a husband who worked on a North Sea oil platform. Nice bungalow on the outskirts of town. No kids. She had a part-time job in a newsagent’s... probably for company more than financial necessity.’
Wylie came over to his desk. ‘Was foul play ruled out?’
Rebus tapped his notes. ‘Nobody could ever explain it, according to what I’ve read so far. She didn’t seem suicidal. Doesn’t help that they’ve no idea whereabouts on the coast she actually entered the water.’
‘Pathology report?’
‘It’s in here. Can you get on to Donald Devlin, see if he can spare us some time?’
‘Professor Devlin?’
‘He’s the person I bumped into yesterday. He’s agreed to study the autopsies for us.’ He didn’t say anything about the actual circumstances of Devlin’s involvement, how Gates and Curt had turned him down. ‘His number will be on file,’ Rebus said. ‘He’s one of Philippa Balfour’s neighbours.’
‘I know. Have you seen this morning’s paper?’
‘No.’
She fetched it from her bag, opened it to one of the inside pages. A photofit: the man Devlin had seen outside the tenement on the days preceding Philippa’s disappearance.
‘Could be anybody,’ Rebus said.
Wylie nodded agreement. Short dark hair, straight nose, narrowed eyes and a thin line of a mouth. ‘We’re getting desperate, aren’t we?’ she said.
It was Rebus’s turn to nod. Releasing the photofit to the media, especially one as clearly generalised as this, was an act of desperation. ‘Get on to Devlin,’ he said.
‘Yes, sir.’
She took the newspaper with her, sat down at a spare desk and gave her head a little shake, as if clearing the cobwebs. Then she picked up the telephone, preparing to make the first call of another long day.
Rebus went back to his reading, but not for long. A name leaped out at him, the name of one of the police officers involved in the Nairn inquiry.
A detective inspector with the surname Watson.
The Farmer.
‘Sorry to bother you, sir.’
The Farmer smiled, slapped a hand on Rebus’s back. ‘You don’t have to call me “sir” any more, John.’
He gestured for Rebus to precede him down the hall. It was a farmhouse conversion just south of the bypass. The interior walls were painted a pale green and the furniture was fifties and sixties vintage. A wall had been knocked through so that the kitchen was separated from the living room only by a breakfast bar and dining area. The dining table gleamed. The kitchen’s work surfaces were similarly clean, and the hob was spotless, not a dish or dirty pot in sight.
‘Fancy a cuppa?’ the Farmer asked.
‘Some tea would go down.’
The Farmer chuckled. ‘My coffee always scared you off, didn’t it?’
‘You got better at it towards the end.’
‘Sit yourself down. I’ll not be long.’
But Rebus made a circuit of the living room. Glass-fronted cabinets with china and ornaments behind. Framed photos of family. Rebus recognised a couple which until recently had graced the Farmer’s office. The carpet had been vacuumed, the mirror and TV showed no signs of dust. Rebus walked over to the french doors and gazed out at a short expanse of garden which ended with a steep grassy bank.
‘Maid been in today, has she?’ he called.
The Farmer chuckled again, setting a tea-tray out on the worktop. ‘I enjoy a bit of housework,’ he called. ‘Ever since Arlene passed away.’