Set In Darkness

and found evidence of a formal sunken garden. It was probably filled in to make the parade ground.'

            In what light was left, Rebus looked at Queensberry House. Its grey harled walls looked unloved. There was grass growing from its gutters. It was huge, yet he couldn't remember having seen it before, though he'd driven past it probably several hundred times in his life.

            'My wife used to work here,' another of the group said, 'when it was a hospital.' The informant was Detective Sergeant Joseph Dickie, who was based at Gayfield Square. He'd successfully contrived to miss two out of the first four meetings of the PPLC - the Policing of Parliament Liaison Committee. By some arcane law of bureaucratic semantics, the PPLC was actually a subcommittee, one of many which had been set up to advise on security matters pertaining to the Scottish Parliament. There were eight members of the PPLC, including one Scottish Office official and a shadowy figure who claimed to be from Scotland Yard, though when Rebus had phoned the Met in London, he'd been unable to trace him. Rebus's bet was that the man - Alec Carmoodie - was MI5. Carmoodie wasn't here today, and neither was Peter Brent, the sharp-faced and sharper- suited Scottish Office representative. Brent, for his sins, sat on several of the subcommittees, and had begged off today's tour with the compelling excuse that he'd been through it twice before when accompanying visiting dignitaries.

            Making up the party today were the three final members of the PPLC. DS Ellen Wylie was from C Division HO in Torphichen Place. It didn't seem to bother her that she was the only woman on the team. She treated it like any other task, raising good points at the meetings and asking questions to which no one seemed to have any answers. DC Grant Hood was from Rebus's own station, St Leonard's. Two of them, because St Leonard's was the closest station to the Holyrood site, and the parliament would be part of their beat. Though Rebus worked in the same office as Hood, he didn't know him well. They'd not often shared the same shift. But Rebus did know the last member of the PPLC, DI Bobby Hogan from D Division in Leith. At the first meeting, Hogan had pulled Rebus to one side.

            'What the hell are we doing here?'

            'I'm serving time,' Rebus had answered. 'What about you?'

            Hogan was scoping out the room. 'Christ, man, look at them. We're Old Testament by comparison.'

            Smiling now at the memory, Rebus caught Hogan's eye and winked. Hogan shook his head almost imperceptibly. Rebus knew what he was thinking: waste of time. Almost everything was a waste of time for Bobby Hogan.

            'If you'll follow me,' Gilfillan was saying, 'we can take a look indoors.'

            Which, to Rebus's mind, really was a waste of time. The committee having been set up, things had to be found for them to do. So here they were wandering through the dank interior of Queensberry House, their way lit irregularly by unsafe-looking strip lights and the torch carried by Gilfillan. As they climbed the stairwell - nobody wanted to use the lift - Rebus found himself paired with Joe Dickie, who asked a question he'd asked before.

            'Put in your exes yet?' By which he meant the claim for expenses.

            'No,' Rebus admitted.

            'Sooner you do, sooner they'll cough up.'

            Dickie seemed to spend half his time at their meetings totting up figures on his pad of paper. Rebus had never seen the man write down anything as mundane as a phrase or sentence. Dickie was late thirties, big- framed with a head like an artillery shell stood on end. His black hair was cropped close to the skull and his eyes were as small and rounded as a china doll's. Rebus had tried the comparison out on Bobby Hogan, who'd commented that any doll resembling Joe Dickie would 'give a bairn nightmares'.

            'I'm a grown-up,' Hogan had continued, 'and he still scares me.'

            Climbing the stairs, Rebus smiled again. Yes, he was glad to have Bobby Hogan around.

            'When people think of archaeology,' Gilfillan was saying, 'they almost always see it in terms of digging down, but one of our most exciting finds here was in the attic. A new roof was built over the original one, and there are traces of what looks like a tower. We'd have to climb a ladder to get to it, but if anyone's interested...?'

            'Thank you,' a voice said. Derek Linford: Rebus knew its nasal quality only too well by now.

            'Creep,' another voice close to Rebus whispered. It was Bobby Hogan, bringing up the rear. A head turned: Ellen Wylie. She'd heard, and now gave what looked like the hint of a smile. Rebus looked to Hogan, who shrugged, letting him know he thought Wylie was all right.

            'How will Queensberry House be linked to the parliament building? Will there be covered walkways?' The questions came from Linford again. He was out in front with Gilfillan. The pair of them had rounded a corner of the stairs, so that Rebus had to strain to hear Gilfillan's hesitant reply.

            'I don't know.'

            His tone said it all: he was an archaeologist, not an architect. He was here to investigate the site's past rather than its future. He wasn't sure himself why he was giving this tour, except that it had been asked of him. Hogan screwed up his face, letting everyone in the vicinity know his own feelings.

            'When will the building be ready?' Grant Hood asked. An easy one: they'd all been briefed. Rebus saw what Hood was doing - trying to console Gilfillan by putting a question he could answer.

            'Construction begins in the summer,' Gilfillan obliged. 'Everything should be up and running here by the autumn of 2001.' They were coming out on to a landing. Around them stood open doorways, through which could be glimpsed the old hospital wards. Walls had been gouged at, flooring removed: checks on the fabric of the building. Rebus stared out of a window. Most of the workers looked to be packing up: dangerously dark now to be scrabbling over roofs. There was a summer house down there. It was due to be demolished, too. And a tree, drooping forlornly, surrounded by rubble. It had been planted by the Queen. No way it could be moved or felled until she'd given her permission. According to Gilfillan, permission had now been granted; the tree would go. Maybe formal gardens would be recreated down there, or maybe it would be a staff car park. Nobody knew .2001 seemed a ways off. Until this site was ready, the parliament would sit in the Church of Scotland Assembly Hall near the top of The Mound. The committee had already been on two tours of the Assembly Hall and its immediate vicinity. Office buildings were being turned over to the parliament, so that the MSPs could have somewhere to work. Bobby Hogan had asked at one meeting why they couldn't just wait for the Holyrood site to be ready before, in his words, 'setting up shop'. Peter Brent, the civil servant, had stared at him aghast.

            'Because Scotland needs a parliament now.'

            'Funny, we've done without for three hundred years.

            Brent had been about to object, but Rebus had butted in. 'Bobby, at least they're not trying to rush the job.'

            Hogan had smiled, knowing he was talking about the newly opened Museum of Scotland. The Queen had come north for the official opening of the unfinished building. They'd had to hide the scaffolding and paint tins till she'd gone.

            Gilfillan was standing beside a retractable ladder, pointing upwards towards a hatch in the ceiling.

            'The original roof is just up there,' he said. Derek Linford already had both feet on the ladder's bottom rung. 'You don't need to go all the way,' Gilfillan continued as Linford climbed. 'If I shine the torch up But Linford had disappeared into the roof space.

            'Lock the hatch and let's make a run for it,' Bobby Hogan said, smiling so they'd assume he was joking.

            Ellen Wylie hunched her shoulders. 'There's a real... atmosphere in here, isn't there?'

            'My wife saw a ghost,' Joe Dickie said. 'Lots of people who worked here did. A woman, she was crying. Used to sit on the end of one of the beds.'

            'Maybe she was a patient who died here,' Grant Hood offered.

            Gilfillan turned towards them. 'I've heard that story, too. She was the mother of one of the servants. Her son was working here the night the Act of Union was signed. Poor chap got himself murdered.'

            Linford called down that he thought he could see where the steps to the tower had been, but nobody was listening.

            'Murdered?' Ellen Wylie said.

            Gilfillan nodded. His torch threw weird shadows across the walls, illuminating the slow movements of