Set in Darkness Read Free Page A

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 comenorth 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 cobwebs.