‘Keep going. You might start making sense soon.’
He smiled again, but kept his eyes on the words in front of him. ‘Let’s say it’s an anagram. “Ready to give up... that’s a surer”. If you give up — meaning render or use — the letters in “that’s a surer”, you’ll get a word or words meaning a “thing”.’
‘What sort of thing?’ Siobhan could feel a headache coming on.
‘That’s what we have to find out.’
‘If it’s an anagram.’
‘If it’s an anagram,’ Grant conceded.
‘And what’s any of it got to do with Hellbank, whatever Hellbank is?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘If it is an anagram, isn’t that too easy?’
‘Only if you know how crosswords work. Otherwise you’d read it literally, and it wouldn’t mean anything at all.’
‘Well, you’ve just explained it and it still sounds like gobbledygook to me.’
‘Then aren’t you lucky I’m here? Come on.’ He tore off a fresh sheet of paper and handed it to her. ‘See if you can unscramble “that’s a surer”.’
‘To make a word that means a thing?’
‘Word or words,’ Grant corrected her. ‘You’ve got eleven letters to play with.’
‘Isn’t there some computer program we could use?’
‘Probably. But that would be cheating, wouldn’t it?’
‘Right now, cheating sounds fine to me.’
But Grant wasn’t listening. He was already at work.
‘I was only up here yesterday,’ Rebus said. Bill Pryde had left his clipboard back at Gayfield Square. He was breathing heavily as they climbed. Uniformed officers were standing around. They held rolls of striped tape and were waiting to be told whether a cordon was necessary or practical. There was a line of parked cars on the roadway below: journalists, photographers, at least one TV crew. Word had gone around fast, and the circus had come to town.
‘Anything to tell us, DI Rebus?’ he’d been asked by Steve Holly as he got out of his own car.
‘Just that you’re annoying me.’
Now Pryde was explaining that a walker had found the body. ‘In some gorse bushes. No real attempt to hide it.’
Rebus kept quiet. Two bodies never found... the other two found in water. Now this: a hillside. It broke the pattern.
‘Is it her?’ he asked.
‘From the Versace T-shirt, I’d have to say yes.’
Rebus stopped, looked around. A wilderness in the middle of Edinburgh. Arthur’s Seat itself was an extinct volcano, surrounded by a bird sanctuary and three lochs. ‘You’d have a hard job dragging a body up here,’ he said.
Pryde nodded. ‘Probably killed on the spot.’
‘Lured up here?’
‘Or maybe just out walking.’
Rebus shook his head. ‘I don’t figure her for the walking type.’ They’d started moving again, getting close now. A cluster of stooped forms on the hillside, white overalls and hoods: all too easy to contaminate a crime scene. Rebus recognised Professor Gates, red-faced from the exertion of the climb. Gill Templer was next to him, not talking, just listening and looking. The scene-of-crime officers were doing a rudimentary ground search — later on, when the body had been shifted, they’d bring in some of the uniforms and start a fingertip search. It wouldn’t be easy: the grass was long and thick. A police photographer was adjusting his lens.
‘Better not go any further than this,’ Pryde said. Then he called for someone to fetch two more sets of overalls. As Rebus started pulling his on over his shoes, the thin material crackled and flapped in the strong breeze.
‘Any sign of Siobhan Clarke?’ he asked.
‘Tried contacting her and Grant Hood,’ Pryde said. ‘So far, no luck.’
‘Really?’ Rebus had to hold back a smile.
‘Something I should know about?’ Pryde asked.
Rebus shook his head. ‘Grim place to die, isn’t it?’
‘Aren’t they all?’ Pryde zipped up his one-piece and started forwards towards the corpse.
‘Throttled,’ Gill Templer informed them.
‘Best guess at this stage,’ Gates corrected her. ‘Morning, John.’
Rebus nodded a greeting back. ‘Dr Curt not with you?’
‘Phoned in sick. He’s been sick a lot lately.’ Gates was just making conversation while his examination continued. The body lay awkwardly, legs and arms all jutting angles. The gorse bushes next to it must have hidden it well enough, Rebus guessed. Combined with the long grass, you’d need to be closer than eight feet before you’d be able to make out what it was. The clothing helped with the camouflage: light green combat trousers, khaki T-shirt, grey jacket. The clothes Flip had been wearing the day she’d gone missing.
‘Parents informed?’ he asked.
Gill nodded. ‘They know a body’s been found.’
Rebus walked around her to get a better view. The face was turned away from him. There were leaves in the hair, and a slug’s shimmering trail. Her skin was mauve-coloured. Gates had probably moved the body slightly. What Rebus was seeing was lividity, the blood sinking in death, colouring the body parts nearest the ground. He’d seen dozens of corpses over the years; they never got any less sad, or made him any less depressed. Animation was the key to every living thing, its absence difficult to accept. He’d seen grieving relatives reach out to bodies on mortuary slabs and shake them, as if this would bring them back. Philippa Balfour wasn’t coming back.
‘The fingers have been gnawed at,’ Gates stated, more for his tape recorder than his audience. ‘Local wildlife most probably.’
Weasels or foxes, Rebus guessed. Facts of nature you didn’t find in the TV documentaries.
‘Bit of a bugger, that,’ Gates went on. Rebus knew what he meant: if Philippa had fought her attacker, her fingertips might have told them a lot — bits of skin or blood beneath the nails.
‘What a waste,’ Pryde suddenly said. Rebus got the feeling he didn’t mean Philippa’s death as such, but the effort they’d expended during the days since her disappearance — the checks on airports, ferries, trains... working on the assumption that she was maybe — just maybe — still alive. And throughout, she’d been lying here, each day robbing them of possible evidence, possible clues.
‘Lucky she was found so soon,’ Gates commented, perhaps to comfort Pryde. True enough, another woman’s body had been found a few months back in a different part of the park, hardly any distance at all from a popular path. Yet the body had lain there for over a month. It had turned out to be a ‘domestic’, that handy euphemism when victims were killed by their loved ones.
Down below, Rebus recognised one of the grey mortuary vans arriving. The body would be bagged and taken away to the Western General, where Gates would conduct his autopsy.
‘Drag marks on her heels,’ Gates was reciting into his tape machine. ‘Not too severe. Lividity consistent with body’s position, so she was either still alive or only just dead when she was dragged here.’
Gill Templer looked around. ‘How far do we need to widen the search?’
‘Fifty, a hundred yards maybe,’ Gates told her. She glanced in Rebus’s direction, and he saw that she wasn’t hopeful. Unlikely they’d be able to pinpoint exactly where she was dragged from, unless she’d dropped something.
‘Nothing in the pockets?’ Rebus asked.
Gates shook his head. ‘Jewellery on the hands, and quite an expensive watch.’
‘Cartier,’ Gill added.
‘At least we can rule out robbery,’ Rebus muttered, causing Gates to smile.
‘No signs of the clothing having been disturbed,’ the pathologist commented, ‘so you can probably rule out a sexual motive while you’re at it.’