‘Not exactly Niagara, are you?’ Rebus crouched down at the foot of the waterfall. He couldn’t be sure exactly where the doll had been lying, but he looked around anyway. It was a scenic spot, probably popular with the locals. A couple of beer cans and some chocolate wrappers had found their way here. He stood up and surveyed the land. Scenic and isolated: no habitations in sight. He doubted anyone had seen whoever placed the doll here, always supposing it hadn’t been washed down from above. Not that there was much above. The burn could be traced in its meandering route down the hillside. He doubted there was anything up there except wilderness. His map didn’t even show the burn, and there’d be no dwellings up there, just hills where you could walk for days without seeing another human soul. He wondered where the Balfours’ house was, then found himself shaking his head. What did it matter? It wasn’t dolls he was chasing out here, coffin or no coffin … it was wild geese.

He crouched down again, rested a hand in the water, palm up. It was cold and clear. He scooped some up, watched it trickle through his fingers.

‘I wouldn’t drink any,’ a voice called. He looked up into the light, saw a woman emerging from the line of trees. She wore a long muslin dress over her thin frame. With the sun behind her, the outline of her figure was discernible beneath the cloth. As she came forward, she ran a hand behind her head to pull back long curly blonde hair, taking it out of her eyes. ‘The farmers,’ she explained. ‘All the chemicals they use run off the soil and into the streams. Organo-phosphates and who knows what.’ She seemed to tremble at the thought.

‘I never touch the stuff,’ Rebus said, drying his hand on his sleeve as he stood up. ‘Are you Ms Dodds?’

‘Everybody calls me Bev.’ She stuck out a skeletal hand which itself was at the end of a tapering arm. Like chicken bones, Rebus thought, making sure not to squeeze too hard.

‘DI Rebus,’ he said. ‘How did you know I was here?’

‘I saw your car. I was watching from my window. When you drove up the lane, I just knew instinctively.’ She bounced on her toes, pleased to have been proved right. She reminded Rebus of a teenager, but her face told a different story: laughter lines around the eyes; the skin of the cheekbones sagging. She had to be in her early fifties, albeit with the zest of someone far younger.

‘You walked?’

‘Oh yes,’ she said, looking down at her open-toed sandals. ‘I was surprised you didn’t come to me first.’

‘I just wanted a look around. Where exactly was it you found this doll?’

She pointed towards the fall of water. ‘Right at the foot, sitting on the bank. It was completely dry.’