Out in the Forth, the faint bulbs from pocket torches illuminate toy boats resting on black crêpe paper. In this universe, the jagged spires of the Old Town would be angled matchsticks, Princes Street Gardens a Fuzzy-Felt board. Cardboard boxes for the tenements, doors and windows painstakingly detailed with coloured pens. Drinking straws could become guttering and downpipes, and with a fine blade — maybe a scalpel — those doors could be made to open. But peering inside... peering inside would destroy the effect.
Peering inside would change everything.
He shoves his hands in his pockets. The wind is stropping his ears. He can pretend it is a child’s breath, but the reality chides him.
I am the last cold wind you’ll feel.
He takes a step forward, peers over the edge and into darkness. Arthur’s Seat crouches behind him, humped and silent as though offended by his presence, coiled to pounce. He tells himself it is papier-mâché. He smooths his hands over strips of newsprint, not reading the stories, then realises he is stroking the air and withdraws his hands, laughing guiltily. Somewhere behind him, he hears a voice.
In the past, he’d climbed up here in daylight. Years back, it would have been with a lover maybe, climbing hand in hand, seeing the city spread out like a promise. Then later, with his wife and child, stopping at the summit to take photos, making sure no one went too close to the edge. Father and husband, he would tuck his chin into his collar, seeing Edinburgh in shades of grey, but getting it into perspective, having risen above it with his family. Digesting the whole city with a slow sweep of his head, he would feel that all problems were containable.
But now, in darkness, he knows better.
He knows that life is a trap, that the jaws eventually spring shut on anyone foolish enough to think they could cheat their way to a victory. A police car blares in the distance, but it’s not coming for him. A black coach is waiting for him at the foot of Salisbury Crags. Its headless driver is becoming impatient. The horses tremble and whinny. Their flanks will lather on the ride home.
‘Salisbury Crag’ has become rhyming slang in the city. It means skag, heroin. ‘Morningside Speed’ is cocaine. A snort of coke just now would do him the world of good, but wouldn’t be enough. Arthur’s Seat could be made of the stuff: in the scheme of things, it wouldn’t matter a damn.
There is a figure behind him in the darkness, drawing nearer. He half-turns to confront it, then quickly looks away, suddenly fearful of meeting the face. He begins to say something.
‘I know you’ll find it hard to believe, but I’ve...’
He never finishes the sentence. Because now he’s sailing out across the city, jacket flying up over his head, smothering a final, heartfelt cry. As his stomach surges and voids, he wonders if there really is a coachman waiting for him.
And feels his heart burst open with the knowledge that he’ll never see his daughter again, in this world or any other.
Part One
Lost
We commit all sorts of injustices at every step without the slightest evil intention. Every minute we are the cause of someone’s unhappiness...
1
John Rebus was pretending to stare at the meerkats when he saw the man, and knew he wasn’t the one.
For the best part of an hour, Rebus had been trying to blink away a hangover, which was about as much exercise as he could sustain. He’d planted himself on benches and against walls, wiping his brow even though Edinburgh’s early spring was a blood relative of midwinter. His shirt was damp against his back, uncomfortably tight every time he rose to his feet. The capybara had looked at him almost with pity, and there had seemed a glint of recognition and empathy behind the long-lashed eye of the hunched white rhino, standing so still it might have been a feature in a shopping mall, yet somehow dignified in its very isolation.
Rebus felt isolated, and about as dignified as a chimpanzee. He hadn’t been to the zoo in years; thought probably the last time had been when he’d brought his daughter to see Palango the gorilla. Sammy had been so young, he’d carried her on his shoulders without feeling the strain.
Today, he carried nothing with him but a concealed radio and set of handcuffs. He wondered how conspicuous he looked, walking such a narrow ambit while shunning the attractions further up and down the slope, stopping now and then at the kiosk to buy a can of Irn-Bru. The penguin parade had come and gone and seen him not leaving his perch. Oddly, it was when the visitors moved on, seeking excitement, that the first of the meerkats appeared, rising on its hind legs, body narrow and wavering, scouting the territory. Two more had appeared from their burrow, circling, noses to the ground. They paid little attention to the silent figure seated on the low wall of their enclosure; passed him time and again as they explored the same orbit of hard-packed earth, jumping back only when he lifted a handkerchief to his face. He was feeling the poison fizz in his veins: not the booze, but an early-morning double espresso from one of the converted police boxes near The Meadows. He’d been on his way to work, on his way to learning that today was zoo patrol. The mirror in the cop-shop toilet had lacked any sense of diplomacy.
Greenslade: ‘Sunkissed You’re Not’. Segue to Jefferson Airplane: ‘If You Feel Like China Breaking’.
But it could always be worse, Rebus had reminded himself, applying his thoughts instead to the day’s central question: who was poisoning the zoo animals of Edinburgh? The fact of the matter was, some individual was to blame. Somebody cruel and calculating and so far missed by surveillance cameras and keepers alike. Police had a vague description, and spot-checks were being made of visitors’ bags and coat pockets, but what everyone really wanted — except perhaps the media — was to have someone in custody, preferably with the tainted tidbits locked away as evidence.
Meantime, as senior staff had indicated, the irony was that the poisoner had actually been good for business. There’d been no copycat offences yet, but Rebus wondered how long that would last...
The next announcement concerned feeding the sea-lions. Rebus had sauntered past their pool earlier, thinking it not overly large for a family of three. The meerkat den was surrounded by children now, and the meerkats themselves had disappeared, leaving Rebus strangely pleased to have been accorded their company.
He moved away, but not too far, and proceeded to untie and tie a shoelace, which was his way of marking the quarter-hours. Zoos and the like had never held any fascination for him. As a child, his roll-call of pets had seen more than its fair share of those listed ‘Missing in Action’ or ‘Killed in the Line of Duty’. His tortoise had absconded, despite having its owner’s name painted on its shell; several budgies had failed to reach maturity; and ill-health had plagued his only goldfish (won at the fair in Kirkcaldy). Living as he did in a tenement flat, he’d never been tempted in adulthood by the thought of a cat or dog. He’d tried horse-riding exactly once, rubbing his inside legs raw in the process and vowing afterwards that the closest he’d come in future to the noble beast would be on a betting slip.
But he’d liked the meerkats for a mixture of reasons: the resonance of their name; the low comedy of their rituals; their instinct for self-preservation. Kids were dangling over the wall now, legs kicking in the air. Rebus imagined a role reversal — cages filled with children, peered at by passing animals as they capered and squealed, loving the attention. Except the animals wouldn’t share a human’s curiosity. They would be unmoved by any display of agility or tenderness, would fail to comprehend that some game was being played, or that someone had skinned a knee. Animals would not build zoos, would have no need of them. Rebus was wondering why humans needed them.