Free The Falls by Ian Rankin Page B

a smile. ‘I think I deserve it,’ she said, to enthusiastic agreement.
    Siobhan already knew two of the guests. Both were fiscals depute, and Siobhan had worked with them on several prosecutions. Harriet Brough was in her late forties, her black hair permed (and maybe even dyed, too), her figure hidden behind layers of tweed and thick cotton. Diana Metcalf was early forties, with short ash-blonde hair and sunken eyes which, rather than masking, she exaggerated with dark eye-shadow. She always wore brightly coloured clothes, which helped to heighten still further her waif-like, undernourished look.
    ‘And this is Siobhan Clarke,’ Gill was telling the last member of the party. ‘A detective constable in my station.’ The way she said ‘my station’, it was as if she’d taken on ownership of the place, which, Siobhan supposed, wasn’t so far from the truth. ‘Siobhan, this is Jean Burchill. Jean works at the museum.’
    ‘Oh? Which one?’
    ‘The Museum of Scotland,’ Burchill answered. ‘Have you ever been?’
    ‘I had a meal in The Tower once,’ Siobhan said.
    ‘Not quite the same thing.’ Burchill’s voice trailed off.
    ‘No, what I meant was …’ Siobhan tried to find a diplomatic way of putting it. ‘I had a meal there just after it opened. The guy I was with … well, bad experience. It put me off going back.’
    ‘Understood,’ Harriet Brough said, as though every mishap in life could be explained by reference to the opposite sex.
    ‘Well,’ Gill said, ‘it’s women only tonight, so we can all relax.’
    ‘Unless we hit a nightclub later,’ Diana Metcalf said, her eyes glinting.
    Gill caught Siobhan’s eye. ‘Did you send that e-mail?’ she asked.
    Jean Burchill tutted. ‘No shop talk, please.’
    The fiscals agreed noisily, but Siobhan nodded anyway, to let Gill know the message had gone out. Whether anyone would be fooled by it was another matter. It was why she’d been late getting here. She’d spent too long going over Philippa’s e-mails, all the ones she’d sent to friends, trying to work out what sort of tone might be convincing, what words to use and how to order them. She’d gone through over a dozen drafts before deciding to keep it simple. But then some of Philippa’s e-mails were like long chatty letters: what if her previous messages to Quizmaster had been the same? How would he or she react to this curt, out-of-character reply? Problem. Need to talk to you. Flipside . And then a telephone number, the number for Siobhan’s own mobile.
    ‘I saw the press conference on TV tonight,’ Diana Metcalf said.
    Jean Burchill groaned. ‘What did I just say?’
    Metcalf turned to her with those big, dark, wary eyes. ‘This isn’t shop, Jean. Everyone’s talking about it.’ Then she turned to Gill. ‘I don’t think it was the boyfriend, do you?’
    Gill just shrugged.
    ‘See?’ Burchill said. ‘Gill doesn’t want to talk about it.’
    ‘More likely the father,’ Harriet Brough said. ‘My brother was at school with him. A very cold fish.’ She spoke with a confidence and authority that revealed her upbringing. She’d probably wanted to be a lawyer from nursery school on, Siobhan guessed. ‘Where was the mother?’ Brough now demanded of Gill.
    ‘Couldn’t face it,’ Gill answered. ‘We did ask her.’
    ‘She couldn’t have made a worse job than those two,’ Brough stated, picking cashews out of the bowl nearest her.
    Gill looked suddenly tired. Siobhan decided on a change of subject and asked Jean Burchill what she did at the museum.
    ‘I’m a senior curator,’ Burchill explained. ‘My main specialism is eighteenth- and nineteenth-century.’
    ‘Her main specialism,’ Harriet Brough interrupted, ‘is death.’
    Burchill smiled. ‘It’s true I put together the exhibits on belief and—’
    ‘What’s truer,’ Brough cut in, her eyes on Siobhan, ‘is that she puts together old coffins and pictures of dead Victorian babies. Gives me the