The Falls by Ian Rankin Page A

lifting it out of its box, but his fingers were too clumsy, the space between doll and coffin sides too tight. So he turned the container upside down and the doll slid into his palm. His first thought was to compare the cloth wraparound to the various materials on show in the parlour, but there were no obvious matches.
    ‘The cloth’s quite new and clean,’ she was whispering. He nodded. The coffin hadn’t been outdoors long. It hadn’t had time to stain or suffer damp.
    ‘I’ve seen some strange things, Bev …’ Rebus said, his voice trailing off. ‘Nothing else at the scene? Nothing unusual?’
    She shook her head slowly. ‘I walk up that way every week. This,’ touching the coffin, ‘was the only thing out of place.’
    ‘Footprints … ?’ Rebus started, but he broke off. It was asking too much of her. But she was ready with an answer.
    ‘None that I could see.’ She tore her eyes away from the coffin and towards him again. ‘I did look, because I knew it couldn’t just have appeared out of thin air.’
    ‘Is there anyone in the village who’s keen on woodwork? Maybe a joiner … ?’
    ‘Nearest joiner is Haddington. Offhand, I don’t know anyone who’s … I mean, who in their right mind would do something like this? ’
    Rebus smiled. ‘I bet you’ve thought about it though.’
    She smiled back. ‘I’ve thought of little else, Inspector. I mean, in general maybe I’d shrug something like this off, but with what’s happened to the Balfour girl …’
    ‘We don’t know anything’s happened,’ Rebus felt bound to say.
    ‘Surely it’s connected though?’
    ‘Doesn’t mean it’s not a crank.’ He kept his eyes on hers as he spoke. ‘In my experience, every village has its resident oddball.’
    ‘Are you saying that I—’ She broke off at the sound of a car drawing up outside. ‘Oh,’ she said, getting to her feet, ‘that’ll be the reporter.’
    Rebus followed her to the window. A young man was emerging from the driver’s side of a red Ford Focus. In the passenger seat, a photographer was fixing a lens on to his camera. The driver stretched and rolled his shoulders, as though at the end of a long journey.
    ‘They were here before,’ Bev was explaining. ‘When the Balfour girl first went missing. Left me a card, and when this happened …’ Rebus was following her into the narrow hall as she made for the front door.
    ‘That wasn’t the cleverest move, Ms Dodds.’ Rebus was trying to keep his anger in check.
    Hand on the doorhandle, she half turned towards him. ‘At least they didn’t accuse me of being a crank, Inspector.’
    He wanted to say, but they will , but the damage was already done.
    The reporter’s name was Steve Holly, and he worked for the Edinburgh office of a Glasgow tabloid. He was young, early twenties, which was good: maybe he’d take a telling. If they’d sent one of the old pros out, Rebus wouldn’t even have bothered trying.
    Holly was short and a bit overweight, his hair gelled into a jagged line, reminding Rebus of the single strand of barbed wire you got at the top of a farmer’s fence. He had a notebook and pen in one hand, and shook Rebus’s with the other.
    ‘Don’t think we’ve met,’ he said, in a way that made Rebus suspect his name was not unknown to the reporter. ‘This is Tony, my glamorous assistant.’ The photographer snorted. He was hefting a camera bag over one shoulder. ‘What we thought, Bev, is if we take you to the waterfall, have you picking the coffin up off the ground.’
    ‘Yes, of course.’
    ‘Saves the hassle of setting up an interior shot,’ Holly went on. ‘Not that Tony would mind. But stick him in a room and he comes over all creative and arty.’
    ‘Oh?’ She looked appraisingly at the photographer. Rebus repressed a smile: the words ‘creative’ and ‘arty’ had different connotations for the reporter and Bev. But Holly was quick to pick up on it, too. ‘I could send him back later, if you