The Beat Goes On

Seeing Things

To be honest, if you were going to see Christ anywhere in Edinburgh, the Hermitage was perfect.

Or, to give it its full title, the Hermitage of Braid, named after the Braid Burn which trickled through the narrow, bushy wilderness between Blackford Hill and Braid Hills Road. Across this road, the Hermitage became a golf course, its undulations cultivated and well-trodden, but on sunny weekend afternoons, the Hermitage itself was as wild a place as your imagination wished it to be. Children ran in and out of the trees or threw sticks into the burn. Lovers could be seen hand-in-hand as they tackled the tricky descent from Blackford Hill. Dogs ran sniffing to stump and post, watched, perhaps, by punks seated atop an outcrop. Can would be tipped to mouth, the foam savoured. Picnic parties would debate the spot most sheltered from the breeze.

It was sometimes hard to believe that the place was in Edinburgh, that the main entrance to the Hermitage was just off the busy Comiston Road at the southern reach of Morningside. The protesters — such as they were — had held vigil at these gates for a couple of days, singing songs and handing out their ‘No Popery’ pamphlets. Occasionally a megaphone would appear, so that they could deliver their rant. A seller of religious nick-nacks and candles had set up his pitch across the road from the protesters, and at a canny distance along the road from them. The megaphone was most often directed towards him, there being no other visible target.

A rant was occurring as Inspector John Rebus arrived. Would the day of judgement be like this, he wondered, accepting a leaflet. Would the loudest voices belong to the saved? Megaphones will be provided, he thought to himself as he passed through the gates. He studied the leaflet. No Popery, indeed.

‘Why ever not?’ And so asking, he crumpled the paper and tossed it into the nearest wastepaper-bin. The voice followed him as though it had a mission and he was it.

‘There must be NO idolatry! There is but ONE God and it is HE ye should worship! Do not turn YOUR face to graven IMAGES! The Good Book is the ONLY truth ye NEED!’

Rave on...

They were a minority of course, far outweighed by the curious who came to see. But they in their turn looked as though they might be outnumbered very soon by the shrine-builders. Rebus liked to think of himself as a Christian, albeit with too many questions and doubts to ally himself with either side, Catholic or Protestant. He could not escape the fact that he had been born a Protestant; but his mother, a religious woman, had died young, and his father had been indifferent.

Rebus hadn’t even been aware of any difference between Catholic and Protestant until he’d started school. His pre-school-days best friend was a Catholic, a boy called Miles Skelly. Come their first day at school, the boys had been split up, sent to schools on different sides of town. Parted like this daily, they soon grew to have new friends and stopped playing together.

That had been Rebus’s first lesson in ‘the divide’. But he had nothing against Catholics. The Protestant community might call them ‘left-footers’, but Rebus himself kicked a ball with his left foot. He did, however, mistrust the shrine mentality. It made him uneasy: statues which wept or bled or moved. Sudden visions of the Virgin Mary. A face imprinted on a shroud.

A faith should be just that, Rebus reasoned. And if you held belief, what need had you of miracles, especially ones that seemed more the province of the Magic Circle than of the divine? So the closer he came to the spot itself, the shakier became his legs. There was a tangle of undergrowth, and in front of it a stunted tree. Around this tree had been arranged candles, small statues, photographs, written prayers, flowers, all in the last two or three days. It was quite a transformation. A knot of people knelt nearby, but at a respectful distance. Their heads were bowed in prayer. Others sat, arms out behind them, supporting themselves on the grass. They wore beatific smiles, as though they could hear or see something Rebus couldn’t. He listened hard, but heard only whispers of prayer, the distant barking of dogs. He looked, but saw only a tree, though it had to be admitted that the sunlight seemed to catch it in a particularly striking way, picking it out from the undergrowth behind it.

There was a rustling from beyond the tree itself. Rebus moved around the congregation — there was no other word for the gathering — towards the undergrowth, where several police cadets were on their hands and knees, not in worship this time but searching the ground.

‘Anything?’

One of the figures straightened up, pressing his fingers into his spine as he exhaled. Rebus could hear the vertebrae crackling.

‘Nothing, sir, not a blasted thing.’

‘Language, Holmes, language. Remember, this is a holy site.’

Detective Constable Brian Holmes managed a wry smile. He’d been smiling a lot this morning. For once he’d been put in charge and it didn’t matter to him that he was in a damp copse, or that he was in charge of a shower of disgruntled cadets, or that he had twigs in his hair. He was in charge. Not even John Rebus could take that away from him.

Except that he could. And did.

‘All right,’ Rebus said, ‘that’s enough. We’ll have to make do with what we’ve got. Or rather, what the lab boys have got.’

The cadets rose mercifully to their feet. One or two brushed white chalky powder from their knees, others scraped at dirt and grass stains. ‘Well done, lads,’ Rebus admitted. ‘Not very exciting, I know, but that’s what police work is all about. So if you’re joining for thrills and spills, think again.’

That should have been my speech, Holmes thought to himself as the cadets grinned at Rebus’s words. They would agree with anything he said, anything he did. He was an Inspector. He was the Inspector Rebus. Holmes felt himself losing height and density, becoming like a patch of low mist or a particularly innocuous shadow. Rebus was in charge now. The cadets had all but forgotten their former leader. They had eyes for only one man, and that man was ordering them to go and drink some tea.

‘What’s up, Brian?’

Holmes, watching the cadets shuffle away, realised Rebus was speaking to him. ‘Sorry?’

‘You look like you’ve found a tanner and lost a shilling.’

Holmes shrugged. ‘I suppose I’m thinking about how I could have had one-and-six. No news yet on the blood?’

‘Just that it’s every bit as messianic as yours and mine.’

‘What a surprise.’

Rebus nodded towards the clearing. ‘Try telling them that. They’ll have an answer for you.’

‘I know. I’ve already been ticked off for desecration. You know they’ve started posting an all-night guard?’

‘What for?’

‘In case the Wee Frees chop down the tree and run away with it.’

They stared at one another, then burst out laughing. Hands quickly went to mouths to stifle the sound. Desecration upon desecration.

‘Come on,’ said Rebus, ‘you look like you could do with a cuppa yourself. My treat.’

‘Now that is a miracle,’ said Holmes, following his superior out of the trees. A tall, muscled man was approaching. He wore denims and a white T-shirt. A large wooden cross swung from his neck, around which was also tied a red kerchief. His beard was as thick and black as his hair.

‘Are you police officers?’

‘Yes,’ Rebus said.

‘Then I think you should know, they’re trying to steal the tree.’

‘Steal it, sir?’

‘Yes, steal it. We’ve got to keep watch twenty-four hours. Last night, one of them had a knife, but there were too many of us, thank God.’

‘And you are?’

‘Steven Byrne.’ He paused. ‘Father Steven Byrne.’

Rebus paused too, digesting this new information. ‘Well, Father, would you recognise this man again? The one with the knife?’

‘Yes, probably.’

‘Well, we could go down to the station and have a look at some photographs.’

Father Byrne seemed to be appraising Rebus. Acknowledging that he was being taken seriously, he nodded slowly. ‘Thank you, I don’t think that’ll be necessary. But I thought you ought to know. Things might turn nasty.’

Rebus bit back a comment about turning the other cheek. ‘Not if we can help it,’ he said instead. ‘If you see the man again, Father, let us know straight away. Don’t try anything on your own.’

Father Byrne looked around him. ‘There aren’t so many telephones around here.’ His eyes were twinkling with humour. An attractive man, thought Rebus. Even a touch charismatic.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘we’ll try to make sure a patrol car comes by and checks on things. How would that be?’

Father Byrne nodded. Rebus made to move away. ‘Bless you,’ he heard the man saying. Rebus kept walking, but for some reason his cheeks had turned deep red. But it was right and proper, after all, wasn’t it? Right that he should be blessed.

‘Blessed are the peacemakers,’ he quoted, as the megaphone came back into range.

The story was a simple one. Three girls had been in the Hermitage one late afternoon. School over, they’d decided to cut through the park, climb Blackford Hill and come down the other side towards their homes. A long way round for a short-cut, as Rebus had put it at the time.

They were sensible girls, from good Catholic homes. They were fifteen and all had future plans that included university and a career as well as marriage. They didn’t seem inclined to fantasy or exaggeration. They stuck to the same story throughout. They’d been about thirty yards or so from the tree when they’d seen a man. One second he wasn’t there, the next he was. Dressed in white and with a glow all around him. Long wavy dark hair and a beard. A very pale face, they were definite about that. He leaned with one hand against the tree, the other to his side. His right side — again, all three concurred on this. Then he took the hand away, and they saw that there was blood on his side. A dark red patch. They gasped. They looked to each other for confirmation that they’d seen what they had seen. When they looked again, the figure had vanished.

They ran to their separate homes, but over dinner the story came out in each of the three households. Disbelieved, perhaps, for a moment. But then why would the girls lie? The parents got together and went to the Hermitage. They were shown the place, the tree. There was no sign of anyone. But then one of the mothers shrieked before crossing herself.

‘Look at that!’ she cried. ‘Just look at it!’

It was a smeared red mark, still wet on the bark of the tree. Blood.

The parents went to the police and the police made an initial search of the area, but in the meantime, the neighbour of one of the families telephoned a friend who was a stringer on a Sunday newspaper. The paper ran the story of the ‘Hermitage Vision’ and the thing began to grow. The blood, it was said, hadn’t dried. And this was true, though as Rebus knew it could well have something to do with the reaction of blood and bark. Footprints were found, but so many and so varied that it was impossible to say when they’d been made or by whom. The parents, for example, had searched the area thoroughly, destroying a lot of potential evidence. There were no bloodstains on the ground. No patients with side wounds had been treated in any of the city’s hospitals or by any doctor.

The description of the figure was vague: tallish, thinnish, the long hair and beard of course — but was the hair brown or black? The girls couldn’t be sure. Dressed in white — ‘like a gown’, one of them remembered later. But by then the story had become public property; how far would that distort her memories of the evening? And as for the glow. Well, Rebus had seen how the sun hit that particular spot. Imagine a lowish sun, creeping towards evening. That would explain the glow — to a rational man.

But then the zealous — of both sides — appeared. The believers and the doubters, carrying candles or toting megaphones. It was a quiet time for news: the media loved it. The girls photographed well. When they appeared on TV, the trickle of visitors to the site became a flood. Coach-loads headed north from Wales and England. Organised parties were arriving from Ireland. A Parisian magazine had picked up on the mystery; so, it was rumoured, had a Bible-thumping cable channel from the USA.

Rebus wanted to raise his hands and turn back the tide. Instead of which that tide rolled straight over him. Superintendent Watson wanted answers.

‘I don’t like all this hocus-pocus,’ he said, with Presbyterian assuredness and an Aberdonian lilt. ‘I want something tangible. I want an explanation, one I can believe. Understood?’

Understood. Rebus understood it; so did Chief Inspector Lauderdale. Chief Inspector Lauderdale understood that he wanted Rebus to do something about it. Rebus understood that hands were being washed; that his alone were to work on the case. If in doubt, delegate. That was where Brian Holmes and his cadets entered the picture. Having found no new clues — no clues period — Rebus decided to back off. Media interest was already dying. Some local historian would now and again come up with a ‘fact’ or a ‘theory’ and these would revive the story for a while — the hermit who’d lived in the Hermitage, executed for witchcraft in 1714 and said still to haunt the place, that sort of thing, but it couldn’t last. It was like poking at embers without feeding them. A momentary glow, no more. When the media interest died, so would that of the fringe lunatics. There had already been copycat ‘visions’ in Cornwall, Caerphilly and East Croydon. The Doubting Thomases were appearing. What’s more, the blood had gone, washed away in an overnight deluge which also extinguished the candles around the tree.

A recurrence of the ‘vision’ was needed if the thing were not to die. Rebus prayed each night for a quick and merciful release. It didn’t come. Instead there was a 4 a.m. phone call.

‘This better be worth it.’

‘It is.’

‘Go on then.’

‘How soon can you get to the Hermitage?’

Rebus sat up in bed. ‘Talk to me.’

‘They’ve found a body. Well, that’s putting it a bit strongly. Let’s say they’ve found a trunk.’

A trunk it was, and not the sort you stuck travel labels on either.

‘Dear God in heaven,’ Rebus whispered, staring at the thing. ‘Who found it?’

Holmes didn’t look too good himself. ‘One of the tree people,’ he said. ‘Wandered over here looking for a place to do his number twos. Had a torch with him. Found this. I think you could say he’s in a state of shock. Apparently, so are his trousers.’

‘I can’t say I blame them.’ A generator hummed in the background, providing juice for the three tall halogen lamps which lit the clearing. Some uniformed officers were cordoning off the area with strips of orange tape. ‘So nobody’s touched it?’

‘Nobody’s been near it.’

Rebus nodded, satisfied. ‘Better keep it that way till forensics get here. Where the hell’s the pathologist?’

Holmes nodded over Rebus’s shoulder. ‘Speak of the devil,’ he said.

Rebus turned. Two men in sombre Crombie-style coats were walking briskly towards the scene. One carried a black surgeon’s bag, the other had his hands firmly in his pockets, protection from the chill air. The halogen had fooled a few of the local birds, who were chirping their hearts out. But morning wasn’t far away.

Chief Inspector Lauderdale nodded curtly towards Rebus, reckoning this greeting enough under the circumstances. The pathologist, Dr Curt, was, however (and despite his name), as voluble as ever.

‘Top of the morning to you, Inspector.’ Rebus, knowing Dr Curt of old, waited for the inevitable joke. The doctor obliged, gesturing towards the body. ‘Not often I get a trunk call these days.’

Rebus, as was expected of him, groaned. The doctor beamed. Rebus knew what came next: the corny newspaper headlines. Again, Dr Curt obliged. ‘Corpse in the coppice baffles cops,’ he mused brightly, donning overshoes and coveralls before making for the corpse itself.

Chief Inspector Lauderdale looked stunned. He shuffled closer to Rebus. ‘Is he always like this?’

‘Always.’

The doctor had crouched down to inspect the body. He asked for the position of the lamps to be changed, then started his examination. But there was time for a last twist of the head towards Rebus.

‘I’m afraid we’re too late,’ Dr Curt called out. ‘Poor chap’s dead.’

Chuckling to himself, he set to work, bringing a tape-recorder out of his case and mumbling into it from time to time.

Lauderdale watched for a minute. It was about fifty-nine seconds too long. He turned to Rebus again. ‘What can you tell me?’

‘About Dr Curt? Or about the deceased?’

‘About the deceased.’

Rebus pushed his fingers through his hair, scratching at the scalp. He was mentally listing the bad puns still available to Dr Curt — he got legless, he’s out of ’arm’s way, lost his head, hadn’t paid his bills so got cut off, was for the chop anyway, had no bleeding right, worked as a hack, take a butcher’s at him...

‘Inspector?’

Rebus started. ‘What?’

Lauderdale stared at him hard.

‘Oh,’ Rebus said, remembering. ‘Well, he’s naked of course. And they haven’t severed every limb, so we know for sure that it is a he. Nothing else yet, sir. Come first light, we’ll search the area for the missing appendages. One thing I’m pretty sure of, he wasn’t butchered here.’

‘Oh?’

‘No blood, sir. Not that I can see.’

‘Gentlemen!’ It was Curt, calling to them, waving his arm for them to join him. They, too, had to slip on the elastic shoes, like ill-fitting polythene bags, and the coveralls. The forensics people would want to cover every inch of the ground around the victim’s body. It didn’t do to leave erroneous ‘clues’ like fibres from your jacket or a dropped coin.

‘What is it, Doctor?’

‘First, let me tell you that he’s male, aged anywhere between thirty-five and fifty. Either dissolute thirty-five or a fairly well-preserved fifty. Stocky, too, unless the legs are in ridiculous proportion to the trunk. I can give a better guesstimate once we’ve had him on the slab.’ His smile seemed directed at Lauderdale especially. ‘Been dead a day or more. He was brought here in this condition, of course.’

‘Of course,’ said Lauderdale. ‘No blood.’

The doctor nodded, still smiling. ‘But there’s something else. Look here.’ He pointed to what was left of the right shoulder. ‘Do you see this damage?’ He circled the shoulder with his finger. They had to bend closer to see what he was talking about. The shoulder had been attacked with a knife, like someone had tried to peel it. It all looked clumsy and amateurish compared to the other neat examples.

‘A tattoo,’ Rebus said. ‘Got to be.’

‘Quite right, Inspector. They’ve tried removing it. After they dumped the trunk here. They must have spotted that there was still part of the tattoo left, enough to help us identify the victim. So...’ He moved his finger from the shoulder stump to the ground beneath it. Rebus could just make out the shreds of skin.

‘We can piece it back together,’ Rebus stated.

‘Of course we can!’ The doctor stood up. ‘They must think we’re stupid. They go to all this trouble, then leave something like that.’ He shook his head slowly. Rebus held his breath, waiting. The doctor’s face brightened. ‘It’s years since I last did a jigsaw,’ he said, opening his bag, placing his things back in it, and closing it with a loud snap. ‘An open and shut case,’ he said, moving back towards the cordon.

After he’d gone, off to his slab to await delivery of the body, Lauderdale lingered to see that everything was running smoothly. It was, as Rebus assured him. Lauderdale then bid him goodnight. Rebus didn’t think anyone had ever ‘bid’ him goodnight before; wasn’t sure anyone had ever bid anyone goodnight, outside of books and plays. It was especially strange to be bid goodnight at dawn. He could swear there was a cock crowing in the distance, but who in Morningside would keep chickens?

He looked for Holmes and found him over beside the tree-dwellers. Overnight, a guard-duty worked in shifts, two or three people at a time for two hours at a stretch. Holmes was chatting, seeming casual. He shifted his weight from foot to foot, as though cramp or cold were seeping through his socks.

Hadn’t a leg to stand on: that was another one Dr Curt could have used.

‘You seem very cheerful this morning, Inspector. But then each morning is a cause for celebration in itself.’ Intent on Holmes, Rebus hadn’t noticed the other figure who, like him, was making his way towards the tree. Dressed in jeans, tartan shirt and lumber jacket, but with the same wooden cross. It was Father Byrne. Sky-blue eyes, piercing eyes, the pupils like tiny points of ink. The smile spreading from the lips and mouth towards the eyes and cheeks. The man’s very beard seemed to take part in the process.

‘I don’t know about cheerful, Father Byrne—’

‘Please, call me Steven.’

‘Well, as I was saying, I don’t know about cheerful. You know there was a murder last night?’

Now the eyes opened wide. ‘A murder? Here?’

‘Well, not strictly speaking, no. But the body was dumped here. We’ll need to talk to anyone who was here yesterday. They may have seen something.’

Holmes waved a notebook. ‘I’ve already collected some names and addresses.’

‘Good lad. Have there been any more threats, Father?’

‘Threats?’

‘You remember, the man with the knife.’

‘No, not that I know of.’

‘Well, I really would like you to come down to the station and see if you can pick him out from some photographs.’

‘Now?’

‘Sometime today.’ Rebus paused. ‘At your convenience.’

Father Byrne caught the meaning of the pause. ‘Well, of course. If you think it will help. I’ll come this morning. But you don’t think...? Surely not.’

Rebus shrugged. ‘Probably just a coincidence, Father. But you have to admit, it is quite a coincidence. Someone comes down here with a knife. Some days later, a body appears not three hundred yards away. Yes, coincidence.’ That pause again. ‘Wouldn’t you say?’

But Father Byrne didn’t seem to have an answer for that.

No, it was no coincidence, Rebus was sure of that. Fine, if you were going to dump a body the Hermitage was as good a spot as any. But not in a clearing, where it would be stumbled upon sooner rather than later. And not so close to the famous tree, where, as everyone knew, people were to be found round-the-clock, making dumping a body nearby a risky procedure. Too risky. There had to be a reason. There had to be some meaning. Some message.

Yes, some message.

And wasn’t three hundred yards a long way to go for number twos? Well, that one was cleared up quickly. The man admitted that he hadn’t gone off alone. He’d gone with his girlfriend. After finding the body, the man had sent her home. Partly because she was in shock; partly to avoid any ‘slur on her character’. Father Byrne passed this news on to Rebus when he came to the station to look through the mug-shots — without success.

A new sort of tourist now visited the Hermitage, to view a new kind of ‘shrine’. They wanted to see the spot where the trunk had been discovered. Locals still brought their dogs, and lovers still followed the route of the burn; but they wore fixed looks on their faces, as though unwilling to accept that the Hermitage, their Hermitage, had become something else, something they never believed it could be.

Rebus, meantime, played with a jigsaw. The tattoo was coming together, though it was a slow business. Errors were made. And one error, once made, led to more pieces being placed incorrectly, until the whole thing had to be broken up and started again. Blue was the predominant colour, along with some patches of red. The dark, inked lines tended to be straight. It looked like a professional job. Tattoo parlours were visited, but the description given was too vague as yet. Rebus showed yet another configuration of the pieces to Brian Holmes: it was the fifth such photograph in a week. The lab had provided their own dotted outline of how they thought the design might continue. Holmes nodded.

‘It’s a Kandinsky,’ he said. ‘Or one of his followers. Solid bars of colour. Yes, definitely a Kandinsky.’

Rebus was amazed. ‘You mean Kandinsky did this tattoo?’

Holmes looked up from the photograph, grinned sheepishly. ‘Sorry, I was making a joke. Or trying to. Kandinsky was a painter.’

‘Oh,’ Rebus sounded disappointed. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘yes, of course he was. Right.’

Feeling guilty at having raised his superior’s hopes, Holmes concentrated all the harder on the photo. ‘Could be a swastika,’ he offered. ‘Those lines...’

‘Yes.’ Rebus turned the photograph towards him, then slapped a hand against it. ‘No!’ Holmes flinched. ‘No, Brian, not a swastika... a Union Jack! It’s a bloody Union Jack!’

Once the lab had the design in front of them, it was a straightforward job of following it in their reconstruction. Not just a Union Jack, though, as they found. A Union Jack with the letters UFF slurred across it, and a machine gun half-hidden behind the letters.

‘Ulster Freedom Fighters,’ Rebus murmured. ‘Right, let’s get back to those tattoo parlours.’

A CID officer in Musselburgh came up with the break. A tattooist there thought he recognised the design as the work of Tam Finlayson, but Finlayson had retired from the business some years ago, and tracing him was hard work. Rebus even feared for a moment that the man might be dead and buried. He wasn’t. He was living with his daughter and son-in-law in Brighton.

A Brighton detective visited the address and telephoned Edinburgh with details. Shown the photograph, Finlayson had flinched, then had taken, as the daughter put it, ‘one of his turns’. Pills were administered and finally Finlayson was in a state to talk. But he was scared, there was no doubt of that. Reassured, though, by the information that the tattoo belonged to a corpse, the tattooist owned up. Yes, it was his work. He’d done it maybe fifteen years before. And the customer? A young man called Philips. Rab Philips. Not a terrorist, just a tearaway looking for a cause.

‘Rab Philips?’ Rebus stared at his telephone. ‘The Rab Philips?’ Who else? A dim, small-time villain who’d spent enough time in prison, that university of life, to become a clever small-time villain. And who had grown, matured, if you like, into a big-game player. Well, not quite Premier League, but not Sunday kickabout either. He’d certainly been keeping himself to himself these past couple of years. No gossip on the street about him; no dirt; no news at all really.

Well, there was news now. Pubs and clubs were visited, drinks bought, occasionally an arm twisted and the information began to trickle in. Philips’s home was searched, his wife questioned. Her story was that he’d told her he was going to London for a few days on a business trip. Rebus nodded calmly and handed her a photograph.

‘Is that Rab’s tattoo?’

She went pale. Then she went into hysterics.

Meanwhile, Philips’s cronies and ‘associates’ had been rounded up and questioned. One or two were released and picked up again, released and picked up. The message was clear: CID thought they knew more than they were telling and unless they told what they knew, this process would go on indefinitely. They were nervous, of course, and who could blame them? They couldn’t know who would now take over their ex-boss’s terrain. There were people out there with grudges and knives. The longer they hung about in police stations, the more of a liability they would appear.

They told what they knew, or as much as CID needed to know. That was fine by Rebus. Rab Philips, they said, had started shifting drugs. Nothing serious, mostly cannabis, but in hefty quantities. Edinburgh CID had done much to clear up the hard drug problem in the city, mainly by clearing out the dealers. New dealers would always appear, but they were small-fry. Rab Philips, though, had been so quiet for so long that he was not a suspect. And besides, the drugs were merely passing through Edinburgh; they weren’t staying there. Boats would land them on the Fife coast or further north. They would be brought to Edinburgh and from there transferred south. To England. Which meant, in effect, to London. Rebus probed for an Ulster connection, but nobody had anything to tell him.

‘So who are the drugs going to in London?’

Again, nobody knew. Or nobody was saying. Rebus sat at his desk, another jigsaw to work on now, but this time in his head — a jigsaw of facts and possibilities. Yes, he should have known from the start. Dismemberment equals gangland. A betrayal, a double-cross. And the penalty for same. Rebus reached for his telephone again and this time put in a call to London.

‘Inspector George Flight, please.’

Trust Flight to make it all seem so easy. Rebus gave him the description and an hour later Flight came back with a name. Rebus added some details and Flight went visiting. This time, the phone call came to Rebus’s flat. It was late evening and he was lying half-asleep in his chair, the telephone waiting on his lap.

Flight was in good humour. ‘I’m glad you told me about the wound,’ he said. ‘I asked him a few questions, noticed he was a bit stiff. As he stood up to show me out, I slapped him on his right side. I made it seem sort of playful. You know, not malicious like.’ He chuckled. ‘You should have seen him, John. Doubled over like a bloody pen-knife. It started bleeding again, of course. The silly sod hadn’t had it seen to. I wouldn’t wonder if it’s gone septic or something.’

‘When did he get back from Edinburgh?’

‘Couple of days ago. Think we can nail him?’

‘Maybe. We could do with some evidence though. But I think I can do something about that.’

As Rebus explained to Brian Holmes, it had been more than a ‘hunch’. A hunch was, as Dr Curt himself might put it, a stab in the dark. Rebus had a little more light to work by. He told the story as they drove through early-morning Edinburgh towards the Hermitage. The three girls had seen a man appearing from the trees. A wounded man. It seemed clear now that he’d been stabbed in some skirmish nearer to, or by the side of, Braid Hills Road. A switch of drugs from one car to another. An attempted double-cross. He’d been wounded and had fled down the hill into the Hermitage itself, coming into the clearing at the same time as the girls, making himself scarce when he saw them.

Because, of course, he had something to hide: his wound. He had patched himself up, but had stuck around Edinburgh, looking for revenge. Rab Philips had been grabbed, dismembered and his body dumped in the Hermitage as a message to Philips’s gang. The message was: you don’t mess with London.

Then the wounded villain had finally headed back south. But he was the antithesis of Philips; he wore flashy clothes. ‘Probably a white coat,’ Rebus had told George Flight. ‘White trousers. He’s got long hair and a beard.’

Flight had bettered the description. ‘It’s a white trench-coat,’ he’d said. ‘And yellow trousers, would you believe. A real old ex-hippy this one.’ His name was Shaun McLafferty. ‘Everyone on the street knows Shaun,’ Flight went on. ‘I didn’t know he’d started pushing dope though. Mind you, he’d try anything, that one.’

McLafferty. ‘He wouldn’t,’ Rebus asked, ‘be Irish by any chance?’

‘London Irish,’ said Flight. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if the IRA was creaming ten per cent off his profits. Maybe more. After all, he either pays up or they take over. It happens.’

Maybe it was as simple as that then. An argument over ‘the divide’. An IRA supporter finding himself doing business with a UFF tattoo. The kind of mix old Molotov himself would have appreciated.

‘So,’ Brian Holmes said, having digested all this, ‘Inspector Flight paid a visit to McLafferty?’

Rebus nodded. ‘And he was wounded in his right side. Stab wound, according to George.’

‘So why,’ Holmes said, ‘are we here?’

They had parked the car just outside the gates and were now walking into the Hermitage.

‘Because,’ Rebus said, ‘we still lack evidence.’

‘What evidence?’

But Rebus wasn’t saying; perhaps because he didn’t know the answer himself. They were approaching the tree. There was no sign of the once ubiquitous guard, but a familiar figure was kneeling before the tree.

‘Morning, Father.’

Father Byrne looked up. ‘Good morning, Inspector. You too, Constable.’

Rebus looked around him. ‘All alone?’

Byrne nodded. ‘Enthusiasm seems to have waned, Inspector. No more megaphones, or coach parties, or cameras.’

‘You sound relieved.’

‘Believe me, I am.’ Father Byrne held out his arms. ‘I much prefer it like this, don’t you?’

Rebus was obliged to nod his agreement. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘we think we can explain what the girls saw.’

Father Byrne merely shrugged.

‘No more guard-duties?’ Rebus asked.

‘The men stopped bothering us.’

Rebus nodded thoughtfully. His eyes were on the tree. ‘It wasn’t you they were after, Father. It was the tree. But not for the reason you think. Brian, give me a hand, will you?’

A literal hand. Rebus wanted Holmes to form a stirrup from his hands, so that Rebus could place a foot on them and be hoisted up into the tree. Holmes steadied himself against the tree and complied, not without a silent groan. It was feasible that Rebus weighed a good three and a half stones more than him. Still, ours is not to reason why... and heave!

Rebus scrabbled with his hands, finding knot-holes, moss, but nothing else, nothing hidden. He peered upwards, seeking any fissure in the bark, any cranny. Nothing.

‘All right, Brian.’

Gratefully, Holmes lowered Rebus groundwards. ‘Anything?’

Rebus shook his head. He was gnawing his bottom lip.

‘Are you going to tell me what we’re looking for?’

‘McLafferty had something else to hide from the girls, something on top of the fact that he’d been stabbed. Let’s think.’ McLafferty had come through the copse, the undergrowth, had rested for a second against the tree, fled back through the copse.

‘Chalk!’ Rebus thumped the tree with his fist.

‘Pardon?’

‘Chalk! That morning I came to check on you. When the cadets got up, their knees had white, powdery chalk on them.’

‘Yes?’

‘Well look!’ Rebus led Holmes into the copse. ‘There’s no white rock here. No bits of chalky stone. That wasn’t bloody chalk.’ He fell to his knees and began to burrow furiously, raking his hands through the earth.

The girls’ parents had messed up the ground, making the white powder inconspicuous. Enough to mark a trouser-knee, but hardly noticeable otherwise. Certainly, nothing a cadet would bother with. And besides, they’d been looking for something on the ground, not below it.

‘Ah!’ He paused, probed a spot with his fingers, then began to dig around it. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘just the one packet and it’s burst. That’s what it was. Must have burst when McLafferty was burying it. Better call for forensics, Brian. His blood and his prints will be all over it.’

‘Right, sir.’ Stunned, Brian Holmes sprinted from the clearing, then stopped and turned back. ‘Keys,’ he explained. Rebus fished his car-keys from his pocket and tossed them to him. Father Byrne, who had been a spectator throughout, came a little closer.

‘Heroin, Father. Either that or cocaine. Bigger profits than cannabis, you see. It all comes down to money in the end. They were doing a deal. McLafferty got himself stabbed. He was holding a packet when it happened. Got away somehow, ran down here before he had time to think. He knew he’d better get rid of the stuff, so he buried it. The men who were bothering you, McLafferty’s men, it was this they were after. Then they got Rab Philips instead and went home satisfied. If it wasn’t for your all-night vigil, they’d’ve had this stuff too.’

Rebus paused, aware that he couldn’t be making much sense to the priest. Father Byrne seemed to read his mind and smiled.

‘For a minute there, Inspector,’ he said, ‘I thought you were speaking in tongues.’

Rebus grinned, too, feeling breathless. With McLafferty’s prints on the bag, they would have the evidence they needed. ‘Sorry you didn’t get your miracle,’ he said.

Father Byrne’s smile broadened. ‘Miracles happen every day, Inspector. I don’t need to have them invented for me.’

They turned to watch as Holmes came wandering back towards them. But his eyes were concentrating on an area to the left of them. ‘They’re on their way,’ he said, handing Rebus’s keys back to him.

‘Fine.’

‘Who was that by the way?

‘Who?’

‘The other man.’ Holmes looked from Rebus to Byrne back to Rebus again. ‘The other man,’ he repeated. ‘The one who was standing here with you. When I was coming back, he was...’ He was pointing now, back towards the gate, then over towards the left of the tree. But his voice died away.

‘No, never mind,’ he said. ‘I thought... I just, no never mind. I must be—’

‘Seeing things?’ Father Byrne suggested, his fingers just touching the wooden cross around his neck.

‘That’s right, yes. Yes, seeing things.’

Ghosts, thought Rebus. Spirits of the wood. Rab Philips maybe, or the Hermitage Witch. My God, those two would have a lot to talk about, wouldn’t they?