There were times when Rebus could swear he smelled his wife’s perfume on the cold pillow. Impossible: two decades of separation, not even a pillow she’d slept on or pressed her head against. Other perfumes, too-other women. He knew they were an illusion, knew he wasn’t really smelling them. Rather, he was smelling their absence.
“Penny for them,” Siobhan said, switching lanes in a halfhearted attempt to speed their progress through the morning rush hour.
“I was thinking about pillows,” Rebus stated. She’d brought coffee for both of them. He was cradling his.
“Nice gloves, by the way,” she said now, by no means for the first time. “Just the thing this time of year.”
“I can get another driver, you know.”
“But would they provide breakfast?” She floored the accelerator as the amber traffic light ahead turned red. Rebus worked hard to keep his coffee from spilling.
“What’s the music?” he asked, looking at the in-car CD player.
“Fatboy Slim. Thought it might wake you up.”
“Why’s he telling Jimmy Boyle not to leave the States?”
Siobhan smiled. “You might just be mis-hearing that particular lyric. I can put on something more laid-back… what about Tempus?”
“Fugit, why not?” Rebus said.
Lee Herdman had lived in a one-bedroom flat above a bar on South Queensferry’s High Street. The entrance was down a narrow, sunless vennel with an arched stone roof. A police constable stood guard by the main door, checking the names of visitors against a list of residents fixed to his clipboard. It was Brendan Innes.
“What sort of shifts are they making you work?” Rebus asked.
Innes checked his watch. “Another hour, I’ll be out of here.”
“Anything happening?”
“People heading to work.”
“How many flats apart from Herdman’s?”
“Just the two. Schoolteacher and his girlfriend in one, car mechanic in the other.”
“Schoolteacher?” Siobhan hinted.
Innes shook his head. “Nothing to do with Port Edgar. He teaches the local primary. Girlfriend works in a shop.”
Rebus knew that the neighbors would have been interviewed. The notes would be somewhere.
“You spoken to them at all?” he asked.
“Just as they come and go.”
“What do they say?”
Innes shrugged. “The usual: he was quiet enough, seemed a nice enough guy…”
“Quiet enough, rather than just quiet?”
Innes nodded. “Seems Mr. Herdman hosted a few late-nighters for his friends.”
“Enough to rile the neighbors?”
Innes shrugged again. Rebus turned to Siobhan. “We’ve got a list of his acquaintances?”
She nodded. “Probably not comprehensive as yet…”
“You’ll want this,” Innes was saying. He was holding up a Yale key. Siobhan took it from him.
“How messy is it up there?” Rebus asked.
“The search team knew he wasn’t coming back,” Innes answered with a smile, lowering his head as he started adding their names to his list.
The downstairs hall was cramped. No sign of any recent mail. They climbed two flights of stone steps. There were a couple of doors on the first landing, only one on the second. Nothing to identify its occupier-no name or number. Siobhan turned the key and they walked in.
“Plenty of locks,” Rebus commented. Including two bolts on the interior side. “Herdman liked his security.”
Hard to say how messy the place had been before Hogan’s team made their search. Rebus picked his way across a floor strewn with clothes and newspapers, books and bric-a-brac. They were in the eaves of the building, and the rooms seemed claustrophobic. Rebus’s head was barely two feet shy of the ceiling. The windows were small and unwashed. Just the one bedroom: double bed, wardrobe, and chest of drawers. Portable black-and-white TV on the uncarpeted floor, empty half-bottle of Bell’s next to it. Greasy yellow linoleum on the floor of the kitchen, foldaway table giving just enough room to turn. Narrow bathroom, smelling of mildew. Two hall closets, which looked to have been emptied and hastily rearranged by Hogan’s men. Leaving only the living room. Rebus went back in.
“Homey, wouldn’t you say?” Siobhan commented.
“In real estate agent parlance, yes.” Rebus picked up a couple of CDs: Linkin Park and Sepultura. “The man liked his metal,” he said, tossing them down again.
“Liked the SAS, too,” Siobhan added, holding up some books for Rebus to see. They were histories of the regiment, books about conflicts in which it had taken part, stories of survival by ex-members. She nodded to a nearby desk, and Rebus saw what she was pointing out: a scrapbook of news cuttings. These were all about soldiering, too. Whole articles discussing an apparent trend: American military heroes who were murdering their wives. Cuttings about suicides and disappearances. There was even one headed SPACE RUNS OUT IN SAS CEMETERY, which Rebus paid most attention to. He knew men who’d been buried in the plots set aside in St. Martin’s churchyard, not far from the regiment’s original HQ. Now a new cemetery site was being proposed near the current HQ at Credenhill. In the same piece, the deaths of two SAS soldiers were mentioned. They’d died on a “training exercise in Oman,” which could mean anything from a cock-up to assassination during covert operations.
Siobhan was peering into a supermarket shopping bag. Rebus heard the chink of empty bottles.
“He was a good host,” she said.
“Wine or spirits?”
“Tequila and red wine.”
“Judging from the empty bottle in the bedroom, Herdman was a whiskey man.”
“Like I say, a good host.” Siobhan took a sheet of paper from her pocket and unfolded it. “According to this, forensics took away the remains of a number of spliffs, plus some traces of what looked like cocaine. Took his computer, too. They also removed a number of photographs from the inside of the wardrobe.”
“What sort of photos?”
“Guns. Bit of a fetish, if you ask me. I mean… putting them on the wardrobe door.”
“Which makes of gun?”
“Doesn’t say.”
“What type of gun did he use again?”
She checked this. “Brocock. It’s an air gun. The ME 38 Magnum, to be precise.”
“So it’s like a revolver?”
Siobhan nodded. “You can buy one across the counter for just over a hundred quid. Powered by gas cylinder.”
“But Herdman’s had been tweaked?”
“Steel sleeving inside the chamber. Means you can use live ammo,.22. Alternative is to drill the gun out to take.38 calibers.”
“He used.22?” She nodded again. “So someone did the work for him?”
“He might’ve done it himself. Daresay he’d have had the know-how.”
“Do we know how he came by the gun in the first place?”
“As an ex-soldier, I’m guessing he had contacts.”
“Could be.” Rebus was thinking back to the 1960s and ’70s, arms and explosives walking off army bases the length and breadth of the land, mostly at the behest of both sides of the Northern Ireland Troubles… Plenty of soldiers had a “souvenir” tucked away somewhere; some knew places where guns could be bought and sold, no questions asked…
“And by the way,” Siobhan was saying, “it’s guns, plural.”
“He was carrying more than one?”
She shook her head. “But one was found during a search of his boathouse.” She referred to her notes again. “Mac- 10.”
“That’s a serious gun.”
“You know it?”
“Ingram Mac-10… it’s American. Thousand-round-a-minute job. Not something you’d be able to walk into a shop and buy.”
“Lab seems to think it had been deactivated at one time, meaning that’s exactly what you could do.”
“He tweaked it, too?”
“Or bought it tweaked.”
“Thank Christ he didn’t take that one to the school. It would have been carnage.”
The room went quiet as they considered this. They went back to their search.
“This is interesting,” she said, waving one of the books at him. “Story of a soldier who cracked up, tried to kill his girlfriend.” She studied the jacket. “Jumped from a plane and killed himself… True-life, by the look of it.” Something fell from between two pages. A snapshot. Siobhan picked it up, turned it around for Rebus to see. “Tell me it’s not her again.”
But it was. It was Teri Cotter, taken fairly recently. She was outdoors, other bodies edging into the picture. A street scene, maybe in Edinburgh. She looked to be seated on a sidewalk, wearing much the same clothes as when she’d helped Rebus smoke his cigarette. She was sticking her studded tongue out towards the photographer.
“She looks cheery,” Siobhan commented.
Rebus was studying the photo. He turned it over, but the back was blank. “She said she knew the boys who died. Never thought to ask if she knew their killer.”
“And Kate Renshaw’s theory that Herdman might connect to the Cotters?”
Rebus shrugged. “Might be worth looking at Herdman’s bank account for signs of blood money.” He heard a door close downstairs. “Sounds like one of the neighbors is home. Shall we?”
Siobhan nodded and they left the flat, making sure it was locked behind them. On the landing below, Rebus put an ear first to one door and then to the other, finally nodding at the second. Siobhan banged on it with her fist. By the time the door opened, she had her ID out.
Two surnames on the door: the teacher and his girlfriend. It was the girlfriend who answered. She was short and blond, and would have been pretty were it not for a sideways jutting of her jaw, which gave her what Siobhan guessed was a semipermanent scowl.
“I’m DS Clarke, this is DI Rebus,” Siobhan said. “Mind if we ask you a couple of questions?”
The young woman looked from one to the other. “We already told the other lot everything we know.”
“We appreciate that, miss,” Rebus said. He saw her eyes drop to stare at his gloves. “But you do live here, right?”
“Aye.”
“We understand that you got on fine with Mr. Herdman, even though he could be a bit noisy sometimes.”
“Just when he had a party, like. It was never a problem-we raise the roof ourselves now and then.”
“You share his taste for heavy metal?”
She wrinkled her nose. “More of a Robbie woman myself.”
“She means Robbie Williams,” Siobhan informed Rebus.
“I’d have worked it out eventually,” Rebus sniffed.
“Good news was, he only ever played that stuff when he was partying.”
“Did you ever get an invite?”
She shook her head.
“Show Miss…” Rebus was talking to Siobhan but broke off and smiled at the neighbor. “Sorry, I don’t know your name.”
“Hazel Sinclair.”
He added a nod to his smile. “DS Clarke, can you show Miss Sinclair…”
But Siobhan already had the photograph out. She handed it to Hazel Sinclair.
“It’s Miss Teri,” the young woman stated.
“You’ve seen her around, then?”
“Of course. Looks like she’s just stepped out of The Addams Family. I often see her down the High Street.”
“But have you seen her here?”
“Here?” Sinclair thought about it, the effort further distorting her jawline. Then she shook her head. “I always thought he was gay anyway.”
“He had kids,” Siobhan said, taking back the photo.
“Doesn’t mean much, does it? Lot of gays are married. And he was in the army, probably a ton of gays in there.”
Siobhan tried to suppress a smile. Rebus shifted his feet.
“Besides,” Hazel Sinclair was saying, “it was always guys you saw coming up and down the stairs.” She paused for effect. “Young guys.”
“Any of them look as good as Robbie?”
Sinclair shook her head dramatically. “I’d eat breakfast off his backside any day of the week.”
“We’ll try to keep that out of our report,” Rebus said, dignity intact as both women cracked up with laughter.
In the car on the way to Port Edgar marina, Rebus looked at some photos of Lee Herdman. Mostly they were copied from newspapers. Herdman seemed tall and wiry, with a mop of curly graying hair. Wrinkles around his eyes, a face lined with the years. Tanned, too, or more likely, weatherbeaten. Glancing out, Rebus saw that the clouds had gathered overhead, covering the sky like a grubby sheet. The photos had all been taken outdoors: Herdman working on his boat, or heading out into the estuary. In one, he gave a wave to whoever had been left ashore. There was a broad smile on his face, as though this was as good as life could get. Rebus had never seen the point of sailing. He supposed the boats looked pretty enough from a distance, when watched from one of the pubs on the waterfront.
“Have you ever sailed?” he asked Siobhan.
“I’ve been on a few ferries.”
“I meant on a yacht. You know, hoisting the spinnaker and all that.”
She looked at him. “Is that what you do with a spinnaker?”
“Buggered if I know.” Rebus looked up. They were passing beneath the Forth Road Bridge, the marina down a narrow road just past the huge concrete stanchions that seemed to lift the bridge skywards. This was the sort of thing that impressed Rebus: not nature, but ingenuity. He thought sometimes that all man’s greatest achievements had come from a battle with nature. Nature provided the problems, humans found the solutions.
“This is it,” Siobhan said, turning the car through an open gateway. The marina was made up of a series of buildings-some more ramshackle than others-and two long jetties jutting out into the Firth of Forth. At one of these, a few dozen boats had been moored. They passed the marina office and something called the Bosun’s Locker, and parked next to the cafeteria.
“According to the notes, there’s a sailing club, a sailmaker’s, and somewhere that’ll fix your radar,” Siobhan said, getting out. She started around to the passenger side, but Rebus was able to open his own door.
“See?” he said. “I’m not quite at the knacker’s yard yet.” But through the material of the gloves, his fingers stung. He straightened and looked around. The bridge was high overhead, the rush of cars quieter than he’d expected and almost drowned out by the clanging of whatever it was on boats that made that clanging sound. Maybe it was the spinnakers…
“Who owns this place?” he asked.
“Sign at the gate said something about Edinburgh Leisure.”
“Meaning the city council? Which means that technically speaking, you and me own it.”
“Technically speaking,” Siobhan agreed. She was busy studying a hand-drawn plan. “Herdman’s boat shed is on the right, past the toilets.” She pointed. “Down there, I think.”
“Good, you can catch me up,” Rebus told her. Then he nodded towards the cafeteria. “Coffee to go, and not too hot.”
“Not scalding, you mean?” She made for the cafeteria steps. “Sure you can manage on your own?”
Rebus stayed by the car as she disappeared, the door rattling behind her. He took his time lifting cigarettes and lighter from his pocket. Opened the packet and nipped a cigarette out with his teeth, sucking it into his mouth. The lighter was a lot easier than matches, once he’d found a bit of shelter from the wind. He was leaning against the car, relishing the smoke, when Siobhan reappeared.
“Here you go,” she said, handing him a half-filled cup. “Lots of milk.”
He stared at the pale gray surface. “Thanks.”
Together, they headed off, turning a couple of corners and finding no one around, despite the half-dozen cars parked alongside Siobhan’s. “Down here,” she said, leading them ever closer to the bridge. Rebus had noted that one of the long jetties was actually a wooden pontoon, providing tie-ups for visiting boats.
“This must be it,” Siobhan said, tossing her half-empty cup into a nearby bin. Rebus did the same, though he’d taken only a couple of sips of the warmish, milkyish concoction. If there was caffeine in there, he’d failed to find it. Bless the Lord for nicotine.
The shed was just that: a shed, albeit a well-fed example of the species. About twenty feet wide, knocked together from a mixture of wooden slats and corrugated metal. Half its width was a sliding door, which stood closed. Two sets of chains lay on the ground, evidence that police had forced their way in with bolt cutters. A length of blue and white tape had replaced the chains, and someone had fixed an official notice to the door, warning that entry was prohibited under pain of prosecution. A handmade sign above announced that the shed was actually “SKI AND BOAT-prop. L. Herdman.”
“Catchy title,” Rebus mused as Siobhan untied the tape and pushed the door open.
“Does exactly what it says on the tin,” she responded in kind. This was where Herdman ran his business, teaching fledgling sailors and scaring the wits out of his water-skiing clientele. Inside, Rebus could see a dinghy, maybe a twenty-footer. It sat on a trailer whose tires needed some air. There were a couple of powerboats, too, again on trailers, their outboard motors gleaming, as was a new-looking Jet Ski. The place was almost too tidy, as though swept and polished by an obsessive. Against one wall stood a workbench, the tools neatly arrayed on the wall above. A single oily rag gave the clue that mechanical work might actually go on here, lest the unwary visitor suspect they’d stepped into the marina’s exhibit space.
“Where was the gun found?” Rebus asked, walking in.
“Cabinet under the workbench.”
Rebus looked: a neatly severed padlock lay on the concrete floor. The cabinet door was open, showing only a selection of ratchets and wrenches.
“Don’t suppose there’s much left for us to find,” Siobhan stated.
“Probably not.” But Rebus was still interested, curious as to what the space could tell him about Lee Herdman. So far it told him Herdman had been a conscientious worker, tidying up after himself. His flat had indicated a man who wasn’t nearly as fussy in his personal life. But professionally… professionally, Herdman gave a hundred percent. This chimed with his background. In the army, it didn’t matter how messy your personal life might be, you didn’t let it interfere with your work. Rebus had known soldiers whose marriages were collapsing but still kept their kit immaculate, perhaps because, as one RSM had put it, the army’s the best fucking shag you’ll ever have…
“What do you think?” Siobhan asked.
“It’s almost as if he was waiting for a visit from Health and Safety.”
“Looks to me like his boats are worth more than his flat.”
“Agreed.”
“Signs of a split personality…”
“How so?”
“Chaotic home life, quite the opposite at his place of work. Cheap flat and furnishings, expensive boats…”
“Quite the little psychoanalyst,” a voice boomed from behind them. The speaker was a stocky woman of about fifty, hair pulled back so tightly into a bun that it seemed to push her face forwards. She was wearing a black two-piece suit and plain black shoes, olive-colored blouse with a string of pearls at the neck. A black leather backpack was slung over one shoulder. Next to her stood a tall, broad-shouldered man maybe half her age, black hair cropped short, hands pressed together in front of him. He wore a dark suit, white shirt and navy tie.
“You’ll be Detective Inspector Rebus,” the woman said, stepping forwards briskly as if to shake hands, unfazed when Rebus didn’t reciprocate. Her voice had dropped a single decibel. “I’m Whiteread, this is Simms.” Her small, beady eyes fixed on Rebus. “You’ve been to the flat, I take it? DI Hogan said you might…” Her voice drifted off as she moved just as briskly away from Rebus, into the interior of the shed. She circled the dinghy, inspecting it with a buyer’s eye. English accent, Rebus was thinking.
“I’m DS Clarke,” Siobhan piped up. Whiteread stared at her and gave the briefest of smiles.
“Of course you are,” she said.
Simms had walked forwards in the meantime, repeating his name by way of introduction and then turning to Siobhan to go through the exact same procedure, but this time with a handshake. His accent was English, too, voice emotionless, the pleasantries a formality.
“Where was the gun found?” Whiteread asked. Then she noticed the broken padlock and answered her own question with a nod, walking over to the cabinet and squatting down sharply in front of it, her skirt rising to just above the knees.
“Mac- 10,” she stated. “Notorious for jamming.” She stood up again, patted her skirt back down.
“Better than some kit,” Simms responded. Introductions over, he was standing between Rebus and Siobhan, legs slightly apart, back straight, hands again clasped in front of him.
“Care to show some ID?” Rebus asked.
“DI Hogan knows we’re here,” Whiteread replied casually. She was examining the surface of the workbench now. Rebus followed her slowly.
“I asked you for ID,” he said.
“I’m well aware of that,” Whiteread said, her attention shifting to what looked like a small office at the rear of the building. She made off towards it, Rebus at her heels.
“You’re marching,” he warned her. “Dead giveaway.” She said nothing. The office had once sported a large padlock, but it, too, had been broken open, and the door fixed shut afterwards with more police-issue tape. “Plus your partner used the word ‘kit,’” Rebus went on. Whiteread peeled the tape away and looked inside. Desk, chair, a single filing cabinet. No space for anything else, other than what looked like a two-way radio on a shelf. No computers or copiers or fax machines. The desk drawers had been opened, contents examined. Whiteread lifted out a sheaf and started flipping through.
“You’re army,” Rebus stated into the silence. “You might be in mufti, but you’re still army. No women in the SAS as far as I know, so what does that make you?”
She snapped her head towards him. “It makes me someone who can help.”
“Help what?”
“With this sort of thing.” She went back to her work. “To stop it from happening again.”
Rebus stared at her. Siobhan and Simms were standing just outside the door. “Siobhan, call Bobby Hogan for me. I want to know what he knows about these two.”
“He knows we’re here,” Whiteread said, not looking up. “He even told me we might be bumping into you. How else would I know your name?”
Siobhan had the mobile in her hand. “Make the call,” Rebus told her.
Whiteread stuffed the paperwork back into its drawer and pushed it shut. “You never quite made it into the regiment, did you, DI Rebus?” She turned slowly towards him. “Way I hear it, the training broke you.”
“How come you’re not in uniform?” Rebus asked.
“It scares some people,” Whiteread said.
“Is that it? Couldn’t be that you don’t want to add to all the bad publicity?” Rebus was smiling coldly. “Doesn’t look good when one of your own throws a maddie, does it? Last thing you want is to remind everybody that he was one of yours.”
“What’s done is done. If we can stop it from happening again, so much the better.” She paused, standing right in front of him. Half a foot shorter, but every bit his equal. “Why should you have a problem with that?” Now she returned his smile. If his had been cold, hers came straight from the deep freeze. “You fell down, didn’t make the grade. No need to let that get to you, Detective Inspector.”
Rebus heard “Detective” as “Defective.” Either her accent, or she’d been trying for the pun. Siobhan had been connected, but it was taking a few moments for Hogan to come to the phone.
“We should take a look in the boat,” Whiteread said to her partner, squeezing past Rebus.
“There’s a ladder,” Simms said. Rebus tried to place the accent: Lancashire or Yorkshire maybe. Whiteread he wasn’t so sure about. Home Counties, whatever that meant. A kind of generic English as taught in the posher schools. Rebus realized, too, that Simms didn’t appear comfortable in either his suit or this role. Maybe it was a class thing again, or maybe he was new to both.
“First name’s John, by the way,” Rebus told him. “What’s yours?”
Simms looked to Whiteread. “Well, tell the man!” she snapped.
“Gav… Gavin.”
“Gav to your friends, Gavin when on business?” Rebus guessed. Siobhan was handing him the phone. He took it.
“Bobby, what the hell are you doing letting two numpties from Her Majesty’s armed forces crawl all over our case?” He paused to listen, then spoke again. “I used the word advisedly, Bobby, as they’re about to start crawling over Herdman’s boat.” Another pause. “That’s hardly the point, though…” And then: “Okay, okay. We’re on our way.” He pushed the phone back into Siobhan’s hand. Simms was steadying the ladder while Whiteread climbed.
“We’re just away,” Rebus called to her. “And if we don’t see each other again… well, I’ll be crying inside, believe me. The smile will just be for show.”
He waited for the woman to say something, but she was aboard now and seemed to have lost interest in him. Simms was climbing the ladder, giving a backwards glance at the two detectives.
“I’ve half a mind,” Rebus said to Siobhan, “to grab the ladder and run for it.”
“I don’t think that would stop her, do you?”
“Probably right,” he admitted. Then, raising his voice: “One last thing, Whiteread-young Gav was looking up your skirt!”
As Rebus turned to leave, he shrugged at Siobhan, as if to acknowledge that the shot had been cheap.
Cheap, but worthwhile.
“I mean it, Bobby, what the hell’s the matter with you?” Rebus was walking down one of the school’s long corridors towards what looked very much like a floor-to-ceiling safe, the old kind with a wheel and some tumblers. It stood open, as did an interior steel gate. Hogan was staring inside.
“God almighty, man, those bastards have no place here.”
“John,” Hogan said quietly, “I don’t think you’ve met the principal…” He gestured into the vault, where a middle-aged man was standing, surrounded by enough guns to start a revolution. “Dr. Fogg,” Hogan said, by way of introduction.
Fogg stepped over the threshold. He was a short, stocky man with the look of a onetime boxer: one ear seemed puffy, and his nose covered half his face. A nick of scar tissue cut through one of his bushy eyebrows. “Eric Fogg,” he said, shaking Rebus’s hand.
“Sorry about my language back there, sir. I’m DI John Rebus.”
“Working in a school, you hear worse,” Fogg stated, making it sound like something he’d said a hundred times before.
Siobhan had caught up and was about to introduce herself when she saw the contents of the vault.
“Jesus Christ!” she exclaimed.
“My thoughts exactly,” Rebus agreed.
“As I was explaining to DI Hogan,” Fogg began, “most independent schools have something like this on the premises.”
“CCF, is that right, Dr. Fogg?” Hogan added.
Fogg nodded. “The Combined Cadet Force-army, navy and air force cadets. They parade each Friday afternoon.” He paused. “I think a big incentive is that they can eschew school uniforms that day.”
“For something slightly more paramilitary?” Rebus guessed.
“Automatic, semi-automatic and other weapons,” Hogan recited.
“Probably deters the odd housebreaker.”
“Actually,” Fogg said, “I was just telling DI Hogan that if the school’s alarm system is activated, the responding police units are instructed to make for the armory first. It dates back to when the IRA and suchlike were looking for guns.”
“You’re not saying the ammo’s kept here, too?” Siobhan asked.
Fogg shook his head. “There’s no live ammo on the premises.”
“But the guns are real enough? They’re not deactivated?”
“Oh, they’re real enough.” He looked at the contents of the vault with something approaching distaste.
“You’re not a fan?” Rebus guessed.
“I think the practice is… slightly in danger of outliving its useful application.”
“There speaks a diplomat,” Rebus said, forcing a smile from the principal.
“Herdman didn’t get his gun from here?” Siobhan was asking.
Hogan shook his head. “That’s another thing I’m hoping the army investigators might help us with.” He looked at Rebus. “Always supposing you can’t.”
“Give us a break, Bobby. We’ve hardly been here five minutes.”
“Do you do any teaching, sir?” Siobhan asked Fogg, hoping to defuse any argument her two senior officers might be thinking of starting.
Fogg shook his head. “I used to: RME-religious and moral education.”
“Instilling a sense of morality in teenagers? That must’ve been tough.”
“I’ve yet to meet a teenager who started a war.” The voice rang slightly false: another prepared answer to an oft-put point.
“Only because we don’t tend to give them the firepower,” Rebus commented, staring again at the array of arms.
Fogg was relocking the iron gate.
“So nothing’s missing?” Rebus asked.
Hogan shook his head. “But both victims were in the CCF.”
Rebus looked at Fogg, who nodded confirmation. “Anthony was a very keen member… Derek a little less so.”
Anthony Jarvies: the judge’s son. His father, Roland Jarvies, was well known in Scottish courts. Rebus had probably given evidence fifteen or twenty times in cases over which Lord Jarvies had presided with wit and what one lawyer had described as “a gimlet eye.” Rebus wasn’t sure what a gimlet eye was, but he got the idea.
“We were wondering,” Siobhan was saying, “whether anyone’s been looking at Herdman’s bank or credit union.”
Hogan studied her. “His accountant’s been very helpful. Business wasn’t going to the wall or anything.”
“But no sudden deposits?” Rebus asked.
Hogan narrowed his eyes. “Why?”
Rebus glanced in the principal’s direction. He hadn’t meant for Fogg to notice, but he did.
“Would you like me to…?” Fogg said.
“We’re not quite finished, Dr. Fogg, if that’s all right.” Hogan’s eyes met Rebus’s. “I’m sure whatever DI Rebus wants to say will be kept between us.”
“Of course,” Fogg stressed. He had locked the door of the vault and now turned the combination wheel.
“The other kid who was killed,” Rebus started to explain to Hogan. “He was in a car crash last year. The driver was killed. We’re wondering if it’s too far back for revenge to be a motive.”
“Doesn’t explain why Herdman would top himself after.”
“Botched job maybe,” Siobhan said, folding her arms. “Two other kids got hit, Herdman panicked…”
“So when you talk about Herdman’s bank, you’re thinking a big, recent deposit?”
Rebus nodded.
“I’ll get someone to take a look. Only thing we’ve got from his business accounts is a missing computer.”
“Oh?”
Siobhan asked if it could be a tax dodge.
“Could be,” Hogan agreed. “But there’s a receipt. We’ve talked to the shop that sold him the setup-top of the line.”
“Reckon he ditched it?” Rebus asked.
“Why would he do that?”
Rebus shrugged.
“Perhaps to cover something up?” Fogg suggested. When they looked at him, he lowered his eyes. “Not that it’s my place to…”
“Don’t apologize, sir,” Hogan reassured him. “You might have a good point.” Hogan rubbed a hand across his eyes, turned his attention back to Rebus. “Anything else?”
“These army bastards,” Rebus began. Hogan held up the same hand.
“You just have to accept them.”
“Come on, they’re not here to shed any light. If anything, it’ll be the opposite. They want his SAS past forgotten, hence the plainclothes. For Whiteread, read ‘whitewash.’”
“Look, I’m sorry if they’re stepping on your toes -”
“Or trampling us to death,” Rebus interrupted.
“John, this investigation’s bigger than you and me, bigger than anything!” Hogan’s voice had risen, quavering slightly. “Last thing I need is this sort of shit!”
“Language, please, Bobby,” Rebus said, glancing meaningfully towards Fogg.
As Rebus had hoped, Hogan started to remember Rebus’s own recent outburst, and his face cracked into a smile.
“Just get on with it, eh?”
“We’re on your side, Bobby.”
Siobhan took a step forwards. “One thing we’d like to do…”-she ignored Rebus’s gaze, a gaze that said this was the first he’d heard of it-“is interview the survivor.”
Hogan frowned. “James Bell? What for?” His eyes were on Rebus, but it was Siobhan who answered.
“Because he survived, and he’s the only one in the room who did.”
“We’ve talked to him half a dozen times. Kid’s in shock, God knows what else.”
“We’d go easy,” Siobhan insisted quietly.
“You might, but then it’s not you that worries me…” His eyes were still on Rebus.
“It’d be good to hear it from someone who was there,” Rebus said. “How Herdman acted, anything he said. Nobody seems to have seen him that morning: not the neighbors, no one at the marina. We need to fill in some of the blanks.”
Hogan sighed. “First of all, listen to the tapes.” Meaning recordings of the interviews with James Bell. “If you still think you need to see him face-to-face… well, we’ll see.”
“Thank you, sir,” Siobhan said, feeling the moment merited a certain formality.
“I said we’ll see: no promises.” Hogan raised a warning finger.
“And take another look at his finances?” Rebus added. “Just in case.”
Hogan nodded tiredly.
“Ah, there you are!” a voice boomed. Jack Bell was marching down the corridor towards them.
“Oh, Christ,” Hogan muttered. But Bell’s attention was focused on the principal.
“Eric,” he said loudly, “what the hell’s this I’m hearing that you won’t go on the record about the school’s inadequate security?”
“The school had adequate security, Jack,” Fogg said with a sigh, indicating that this was an argument he’d had before.
“Complete rubbish, and you know it. Look, all I’m trying to do is highlight that the lessons of Dunblane have not been learned.” He held up a finger. “Our schools still aren’t safe…” A second finger was raised. “And guns are flooding the streets.” He paused for effect. “And something’s got to be done, you must see that.” His eyes narrowed. “I could have lost my son!”
“A school is not a fortress, Jack,” the principal pleaded, but to no effect.
“Nineteen ninety-seven,” Bell steamrollered on, “aftermath of Dunblane, hand weapons above.22 were banned. Legitimate owners surrendered their weapons, and what did that leave us?” He looked around, but no answer was forthcoming. “The only people hanging on to their guns were the underworld, who seem to find it increasingly easy to get hold of any amount of armaments they desire!”
“You’re preaching to the wrong audience,” Rebus stated.
Bell stared at him. “Maybe I am,” he agreed, pointing a finger. “Because you lot seem utterly incapable of tackling the problem to any degree whatsoever!”
“Now hang on, sir,” Hogan started to argue.
“Let him rattle on, Bobby,” Rebus interrupted. “The hot air might help keep the school heated.”
“How dare you!” Bell snarled. “What makes you think you can talk to me like that?”
“I suppose I just elected to,” Rebus retorted, stressing the word, reminding the MSP of the precarious nature of his calling.
In the silence that followed, Bell’s mobile phone began to trill. He managed a sneer in Rebus’s direction before turning on his heels, moving a few paces back down the corridor as he answered the call.
“Yes? What?” Glanced at his wristwatch. “Is it radio or TV?” Listened again. “Local radio or national? I’ll only do national…” He kept walking, leaving his audience to relax a little, sharing looks and gestures.
“Right,” the principal was saying, “I suppose I’d best get back to…”
“Mind if I walk you to your office, sir?” Hogan asked. “Couple more things we need to talk about.” He nodded to Rebus and Siobhan. “Back to work,” he said.
“Yes, sir,” Siobhan agreed. Suddenly the corridor was empty, save for Rebus and her. She puffed out her cheeks, then exhaled noisily. “Bell’s a real piece of work.”
Rebus nodded. “He’s ready to exploit this whole thing to the hilt.”
“He wouldn’t be a politician if he didn’t.”
“Natural instincts, eh? Funny how things turn out. His career could have gone down the toilet pan after he was nabbed in Leith.”
“Think he wants a spot of revenge?”
“He’ll drag us down if he can. We have to make sure we’re moving targets.”
“And that was you being a ‘moving target,’ was it? Answering him back like that?”
“Man’s got to have a little fun, Siobhan.” Rebus stared down the empty corridor. “You think Bobby’s going to be okay?”
“He looked knackered, if I’m being honest. By the way… you don’t think he needs to be told?”
“Told what?”
“That the Renshaws are your family.”
Rebus fixed her with his eyes. “Might lead to complications. I don’t think Bobby needs any more of those right now.”
“It’s your decision.”
“That’s right, it is. And we both know I’m never wrong.”
“I’d forgotten that,” Siobhan said.
“Happy to remind you, DS Clarke. Always happy to oblige…”
The South Queensferry police station was a squat box, most of it single-story, sited across the road from an Episcopal church. A notice outside stated that the station was open for public inquiries between nine and five on weekdays, manned by a “civilian assistant.” Another notice explained that there was, contrary to local rumors, a twenty-four-hour police presence in the town. This soulless spot was where the witnesses had been interviewed, all except James Bell.
“Cozy, isn’t it?” Siobhan said, pulling open the front door. There was a short, narrow waiting area, its only inhabitant a constable, who put down his bike magazine and lifted himself from his seat.
“At ease,” Rebus told him while Siobhan showed her ID. “We need to listen to the Bell tapes.”
The officer nodded and unlocked an interior door, leading them into a dispiriting, windowless room. The desk and chairs had seen better days. Last year’s calendar-promoting the merits of a local shop-curled on one wall. There was a tape player on top of a filing cabinet. The uniform lifted it down and plugged it in, placing it on the desk. Then he unlocked the cabinet and found the correct tape, sealed in a clear plastic bag.
“This is the first of six,” he explained. “You’ll need to sign for it.” Siobhan did the necessary.
“Any ashtrays around here?” Rebus asked.
“No, sir. Smoking’s not allowed.”
“That was more information than I needed.”
“Yes, sir.” The constable was trying not to stare at Rebus’s gloves.
“Is there so much as a kettle?”
“No, sir.” The constable paused. “Neighbors sometimes drop off a flask or a bit of cake.”
“Any chance of that happening in the next ten minutes?”
“Unlikely, I’d say.”
“Off you go and do some foraging, then. See what marks you can get for initiative.”
The constable hesitated. “I’m supposed to stay here.”
“We’ll guard the fort, son,” Rebus said, sliding off his jacket and hanging it over the back of a chair.
The constable looked skeptical.
“I’ll take mine white,” Rebus said.
“Me too, no sugar,” Siobhan added.
The constable stood there a moment or two longer, watching them get as comfortable as the room would allow. Then he backed out and closed the door slowly after him.
Rebus and Siobhan looked at each other and shared a complicit smile. Siobhan had brought the notes relevant to James Bell, and Rebus reread them while she took the tape out and slotted it home.
Eighteen… son of the MSP Jack Bell and his wife, Felicity, who worked as an administrator at the Traverse Theatre. The family lived in Barnton. James intended going to university to study politics and economics… a “competent pupil,” according to the school: “James goes his own way, not always outgoing, but can turn on the charm when necessary.” He preferred chess to sports.
“Probably not CCF material,” Rebus mused. A moment later, he was listening to James Bell’s voice.
The interviewing officers identified themselves: DI Hogan, DC Hood. A shrewd move, involving Grant Hood: being press liaison officer on the case, he would need to know the survivor’s story. Some of it might provide morsels that he could offer the journos in return for favors. It was important to have the media on your side; important, too, to maintain as much control over them as possible. They wouldn’t be getting near James Bell yet. They’d have to go through Grant Hood.
Bobby Hogan’s voice identified the date and time-Monday evening-and the scene of the interview-A amp;E at the Royal Infirmary. Bell had been wounded in the left shoulder. A clean shot, ripping through flesh, missing bones, exiting again, the bullet lodged in the wall of the common room.
“Are you up to talking, James?”
“I think so… hurts like buggery.”
“I’m sure it does. For the tape, then, you are James Elliot Bell, is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“Elliot?” Siobhan asked.
“Mother’s maiden name,” Rebus explained, checking the notes again.
Very little background noise: had to be a private room at the hospital. A clearing of the throat from Grant Hood. The squall of a squeaky chair. Hood probably holding the mike, his chair closest to the bed. Turning the mike between Hogan and the boy, not always timing it right, so that a voice was sometimes muffled.
“Can you tell me what happened, Jamie?”
“Please, my name’s James. Could I have some water?”
The sound of the mike being laid down on top of bedclothes, water poured.
“Thank you.” A pause until the cup was replaced on the bedside table. Rebus thought of his own cup falling, Siobhan catching it. Like James Bell, on Monday night he, too, had been in the hospital… “It was mid-morning break. We get twenty minutes. I was in the common room.”
“Was that your usual hangout?”
“Better there than the grounds.”
“It wasn’t a bad day, though: warm enough.”
“I prefer to be inside. Do you think I’ll be able to play the guitar when I get out of here?”
“I don’t know,” Hogan said. “Could you play before you came in?”
“You spoiled the patient’s punch line. Shame on you.”
“Sorry about that, James. So how many of you were in the common room?”
“Three. Tony Jarvies, Derek Renshaw and me.”
“And what were you doing there?”
“There was some music on the hi-fi… I think Jarvies was doing homework, Renshaw was reading the paper.”
“Is that how you talk to one another? Using surnames?”
“Most of the time.”
“The three of you were friends?”
“Not especially.”
“But you often spent time together in the common room?”
“More than a dozen of us use that room.” A pause. “Are you trying to ask me if I think he targeted us deliberately?”
“It’s one thing we’re wondering about.”
“Why?”
“Because it was break time, lots of pupils outdoors…”
“But he walked into the school, into the common room, before he started shooting?”
“You’d make a good detective, James.”
“It’s not high on my list of career options.”
“Did you know the gunman?”
“Yes.”
“You knew him?”
“Lee Herdman, yes. Quite a lot of us knew him. Some of us took waterskiing lessons. And he was an interesting guy.”
“Interesting?”
“His background. The man was a trained killer, after all.”
“He told you that?”
“Yes. He was in Special Forces.”
“Did he know Anthony and Derek?”
“Quite possibly.”
“But he knew you?”
“We’d met socially.”
“Then you’ve maybe been asking yourself the same question we have.”
“You mean, why did he do it?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve heard that people with his sort of background… they don’t always fit into society, do they? Something happens, and it tips them over the edge.”
“Any idea what tipped Lee Herdman over the edge?”
“No.” A long pause followed, the mike muffled against the sheets as the two detectives seemed to confer. Then Hogan’s voice again.
“So can you take us through it, James? You were in the room…”
“I’d just put on a CD. One thing the three of us didn’t share was musical taste. When the door opened, I don’t think I even bothered looking round. Then there was this horrendous explosion, and Jarvies collapsed. I’d been crouching in front of the hi-fi, but I stood up again, turning. I saw this huge-looking gun. I mean, I’m not saying it was particularly large, but it seemed that way, pointing at Renshaw now… There was a figure behind the gun, but I couldn’t really see him…”
“Because of the smoke?”
“No… I don’t remember smoke. The only thing I seemed to be able to focus on was the gun barrel… I was sort of frozen. Then a second explosion, and Renshaw sort of collapsed like a puppet, just crumpled to the floor…”
Rebus found that he’d closed his eyes. It wasn’t the first time he’d pictured the scene.
“Then he turned the gun on me…”
“Did you know who he was by this point?”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“Did you say anything?”
“I don’t know… maybe I opened my mouth to say something… I think I must have started moving, because when the shot came it… well, it didn’t kill me, did it? It was like a hard shove, pushing me back and over.”
“He hadn’t said anything up to this point?”
“Not a word. Mind you, my ears were ringing.”
“Small room like that, I’m not surprised. Is your hearing okay now?”
“There’s still a hissing, but they say that’ll go away.”
“He didn’t say anything?”
“I didn’t hear him say anything. I just lay there, getting ready to play dead. And then there was the fourth shot… and for a split second I thought it was me… finishing me off. But when I heard the body fall, I sort of knew…”
“What did you do?”
“I opened my eyes. I was at floor level, and I could see his body through the legs of the chair. He still had the gun in his hand. I started to get up. My shoulder was feeling numb, and I knew there was blood pouring out, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the gun. I know this’ll sound ridiculous, but I was thinking of those horror films, you know?”
Hood’s voice: “Where you think the bad guy’s dead…”
“And he keeps coming back to life, yes. And then there were people in the doorway… teaching staff, I suppose. They must have got a hell of a shock.”
“What about you, James? You bearing up?”
“To be honest, I’m not sure it’s really hit me yet-pardon the pun. We’re all being offered counseling. I suppose that’ll help.”
“You’ve been through an ordeal.”
“I have, haven’t I? Something to tell the grandkids, I suppose.”
“He’s so calm about it,” Siobhan said. Rebus nodded.
“We really appreciate you talking to us. Would it be okay if we left you a notepad and pen? You see, James, you’re probably going to find yourself going back over it time and again in your mind-and that’s good, it’s how we deal with things like this. But maybe you’ll remember something and want to write it down. Putting it all down is one more way of dealing with it.”
“Yes, I can see that.”
“And we’ll want to talk to you again.”
Hood’s voice: “As will the media. It’s up to you whether you want to say anything to them, but I can talk you through it, if you like.”
“I won’t be talking to anybody for a day or two. And don’t worry, I know all about the media.”
“Well, thanks again for this, James. I think your mum and dad are waiting outside.”
“Look, I’m feeling a bit tired after everything. Do you think you could tell them I’ve nodded off?”
At which point the tape went dead. Siobhan let it run for a few more seconds, then switched off the machine. “End of first interview-want to listen to another?” She nodded towards the filing cabinet. Rebus shook his head.
“Not for now, but I’d still like to talk to him,” he said. “He says he knew Herdman. That makes him relevant.”
“He also says he doesn’t know why Herdman did it.”
“All the same…”
“He sounded so calm.”
“Probably the shock. Hood was right, it takes time to sink in.”
Siobhan was thoughtful. “Why do you think he didn’t want to see his parents?”
“Are you forgetting who his dad is?”
“Yes, but all the same… Something like that happens, doesn’t matter what age you are, you want a hug.”
Rebus looked at her. “Do you?”
“Most people would… most normal people, I mean.” A knock at the door. It opened a fraction and the constable’s head appeared.
“No joy with the drinks,” he said.
“We’re done here anyway. Thanks for trying.”
They left the constable to lock the tape away again and headed out, squinting into the daylight. “James didn’t tell us much, did he?” Siobhan said.
“No,” Rebus admitted. He was replaying the interview in his mind, seeking anything they could use. The only glimmer: James Bell had known Herdman. But so what? Plenty of people in the town had known Lee Herdman.
“Shall we head up the High Street, see if we can find a café?”
“I know where we can get a cuppa,” Rebus said.
“Where?”
“Same place we got one yesterday…”
Allan Renshaw hadn’t shaved since the day before. He was alone in the house, having sent Kate out to see some friends.
“Not good for her being cooped up here with me,” he said as he led them through to the kitchen. The living room hadn’t been touched, photos still waiting to be pored over, sorted or shoved back into their boxes. Rebus noted that some remembrance cards had appeared on the mantelpiece. Renshaw picked up a remote from the arm of the sofa and switched off the TV. A video had been playing, homemade, family holiday. Rebus decided not to comment. Renshaw’s hair stuck up in places, and Rebus wondered if he’d slept in his clothes. Renshaw sat down heavily on one of the kitchen chairs, leaving Siobhan to fill the kettle. Boethius was lying on the countertop, and Siobhan made to stroke him, but the cat leapt onto the floor and padded through to the living room.
Rebus sat down opposite his cousin. “Just wondered how you were,” he said.
“Sorry I left you with Kate the other night.”
“No need to apologize. You sleeping okay?”
“Far too much.” A humorless smile. “A way of shutting it all out, I suppose.”
“How are the funeral arrangements?”
“They won’t let us have his body, not just yet.”
“It’ll be soon, Allan. It’ll all be over soon.”
Renshaw looked up at him with bloodshot eyes. “You promise, John?” He waited till Rebus nodded. “Then how come the phone keeps ringing, reporters wanting to talk to me? They don’t think it’s going to end soon.”
“Yes, they do. That’s why they’re pestering you. They’ll move on somewhere else in a day or so, just you watch. Anyone in particular you want me to chase off?”
“There’s a guy Kate’s talked to. He seems to upset her.”
“What’s his name?”
“It’s written down somewhere…” Renshaw looked around as if the name might be right there under his nose.
“Next to the phone maybe?” Rebus guessed. He got up and walked back into the hall. The phone was on a ledge just inside the front door. Rebus picked it up, hearing only silence. He saw that the line had been disconnected at its wall jack: Kate’s work. There was a pen next to the phone, but no paper. He looked over towards the stairs and saw a pad. Scribbled names and numbers on its top sheet.
Rebus walked back through to the kitchen, placing the notepad on the table.
“Steve Holly,” he announced.
“That’s the name,” Renshaw agreed.
Siobhan, who’d been pouring tea, paused and looked at Rebus. They both knew Steve Holly. He worked for a Glasgow tabloid and had proved his nuisance value in the past.
“I’ll have a word,” Rebus promised, reaching into his pocket for the painkillers.
Siobhan handed around the mugs and sat down. “You okay?” she asked.
“Fine,” Rebus lied.
“What happened to your hands, John?” Renshaw asked. Rebus shook his head.
“Nothing, Allan. How’s the tea?”
“It’s fine.” But Renshaw made no move to drink. Rebus stared at his cousin, thinking of the tape, of James Bell’s calm narrative.
“Derek didn’t suffer,” Rebus said quietly. “Probably didn’t know anything about it.”
Renshaw nodded.
“If you don’t believe me… well, one day soon you’ll be able to ask James Bell. He’ll tell you.”
Another nod. “I don’t think I know him.”
“James?”
“Derek had a lot of friends, but I don’t think he was one of them.”
“He was friends with Anthony Jarvies, though?” Siobhan asked.
“Oh, aye, Tony was round here a lot. They’d help each other with homework, listen to music…”
“What sort?” Rebus asked.
“Jazz mostly. Miles Davis, Coleman something… I forget the names. Derek said he was going to buy a tenor sax, learn to play it when he went to university.”
“Kate was saying Derek didn’t know the man who shot him. Did you know him, Allan?”
“I’d seen him in the pub. Bit of a… loner’s not the right word. But he wasn’t always in company. Used to disappear for days at a time. Hill walking or something. Or maybe away on that boat of his.”
“Allan… if this is out of order, you’ve every right to say so.”
Renshaw looked at him. “What?”
“I was wondering if I could maybe take a look at Derek’s room…”
Renshaw climbed the stairs in front of Rebus, Siobhan at the rear. He opened the door for them but stood aside to let them enter.
“Haven’t really had a chance to…” he apologized. “Not that the place is…”
The bedroom was small, dark with the curtains closed.
“Mind if I open them?” Rebus asked. Renshaw just shrugged, unwilling to cross the threshold. Rebus pulled the curtains apart. The window looked down onto the back garden, where the dishcloth still hung from the whirligig, the mower still stood on the lawn. There were prints on the walls: moody black-and-white shots of jazz players. Photos torn from magazines showing elegant young women in repose. Bookshelves, a hi-fi, a fourteen-inch combination TV/VCR. A desk with a laptop computer connected to a printer. Barely leaving space for the single bed. Rebus looked at the spines of some of the CDs: Ornette Coleman, Coltrane, John Zorn, Archie Shepp, Thelonious Monk. There was some classical stuff, too. Draped over a chair: a running vest and shorts, a sheathed tennis racket.
“Derek was into sports?” Rebus remarked.
“Did a lot of jogging and cross-country.”
“Who did he play tennis with?”
“Tony… a few others. Didn’t get any of it from me, I’ll tell you that.” Renshaw looked down at himself, as if assessing his girth. Siobhan gave him the smile she felt was expected. She knew, though, that there was nothing natural about anything he said. It was coming from a small part of his brain while the rest still reeled in horror.
“He liked dressing up, too,” Rebus said, holding up a framed photo of Derek with Anthony Jarvies, both in their CCF uniforms and caps. Renshaw stared at it from the safety of the doorway.
“Derek only joined because of Tony,” he said. Rebus remembered Eric Fogg saying much the same thing.
“Did they ever go out sailing together?” Siobhan asked.
“Might have done. Kate tried waterskiing…” Renshaw’s voice died. His eyes widened slightly. “That bastard Herdman took her out in his boat… her and some friends. If I ever see him…”
“He’s dead, Allan,” Rebus said, reaching out to touch his cousin’s arm. Football… down in the park in Bowhill… young Allan grazing his knee on the pavement, Rebus rubbing a dock leaf over the broken skin…
I had a family, but I let them get away… His wife estranged, daughter in England, brother God knew where.
“See when they bury him,” Renshaw was saying, “I’ve a good mind to dig him up and kill him again.”
Rebus squeezed the arm, watching the man’s eyes brim with fresh tears. “Let’s go down,” he said, guiding Renshaw back to the top of the stairs. There was just enough room for them to stand side by side in the passageway. Two grown men, hanging on.
“Allan,” Rebus said, “any chance we could borrow Derek’s laptop?”
“His laptop?” Rebus stayed silent. “What’s the point of…? I don’t know, John.”
“Just for a day or two. I’ll bring it back.”
Renshaw seemed to be having difficulty making sense of the request. “I suppose… if you think…”
“Thanks, Allan.” Rebus turned his head, nodding to Siobhan, who retreated back up the staircase.
Rebus took Renshaw into the living room, seating him on the sofa. Renshaw immediately picked up a handful of photographs.
“I need to get these sorted,” he said.
“What about work? How long are you off for?”
“They said I could go back after the funeral. It’s a quiet time of year.”
“Maybe I’ll come and see you,” Rebus said. “It’s time I traded my junk heap in.”
“I’ll look after you,” Renshaw promised, looking up at Rebus. “You see if I don’t.”
Siobhan appeared in the doorway, laptop tucked beneath her arm, trailing cables.
“We better be going,” Rebus said to Renshaw. “I’ll look in again, Allan.”
“You’ll always be welcome, John.” Renshaw made the effort to stand up, reaching out a hand. Then he pulled Rebus to him in a sudden embrace, slapping his hands against Rebus’s back. Rebus returned the gesture, wondering if he looked as awkward as he felt. But Siobhan had averted her eyes, studying the tips of her shoes as if to assess their need for a polish. When they walked out to the car, Rebus realized he was sweating, his shirt sticking to him.
“Was it hot in there?”
“Not especially,” Siobhan said. “You still running a temperature?”
“Looks like it.” He mopped his brow with the back of one glove.
“Why the laptop?”
“No reason really.” Rebus met her look. “Maybe to see if there’s anything about the car crash. How Derek felt, whether anyone blamed him.”
“Apart from the parents, you mean?”
Rebus nodded. “Maybe… I don’t know.” He sighed.
“What?”
“Maybe I just want to go through it to get a sense of the lad.” He was thinking of Allan, perhaps even now switching the TV back on and settling down with the video remote, bringing his son back to life in color and sound and movement. But only a facsimile, contained by the tight confines of the box.
Siobhan nodded and bent down to slide the laptop onto the backseat of the car. “I can understand that,” she said.
But Rebus wasn’t so sure that she could.
“You keep up with your family?” he asked her.
“A phone call every other weekend.” He knew both her parents were alive, lived down south. Rebus’s mother had died young; he’d been in his mid-thirties when his father had joined her.
“Did you ever want a sister or brother?” he asked.
“Sometimes, I suppose.” She paused. “Something happened to you, didn’t it?”
“How do you mean?”
“I don’t know exactly.” She thought about it. “I think at some point you decided that a family was a liability, because it could make you weak.”
“As you’ve already surmised, I was never one for hugs and kisses.”
“Maybe so, but you hugged your cousin back there…”
He got into the passenger seat and closed his door. The painkillers were coating his brain in bubble wrap. “Just drive,” he said.
She put the key in the ignition. “Where?”
Rebus remembered something. “Get your mobile out and call the Portakabin.” She pushed the numbers and relinquished the phone to his outstretched hand. When it was answered, Rebus asked to speak to Grant Hood.
“Grant, it’s John Rebus. Listen, I need a number for Steve Holly.”
“Any particular reason?”
“He’s been hassling one of the families. I thought I’d have a quiet word.”
Hood cleared his throat. Rebus remembered the same sound from the tape, and wondered if it was becoming a regular thing with Hood. When the number came, Rebus repeated it so Siobhan could note it down.
“Hold on a minute, John. Boss wants a word.” Meaning Bobby Hogan.
“Bobby?” Rebus said. “News on that bank account?”
“What?”
“The bank account… any big deposits? Jog your memory at all?”
“Never mind that.” There was urgency in Hogan’s voice.
“What is it?” Rebus prompted.
“Seems Lord Jarvies put away one of Herdman’s old pals.”
“Oh, aye? When was this?”
“Just last year. Guy by the name of Robert Niles-ring any bells?”
Rebus furrowed his brow. “Robert Niles?” he repeated. Siobhan nodded, made a slashing motion across her neck.
“The guy who cut his wife’s throat?”
“That’s the one,” Hogan said. “Found fit to plead. Guilty verdict, and life from Lord Jarvies. I got a call, seems Herdman’s been a regular visitor to Niles ever since.”
“What was it… nine, ten months back?”
“They put him in Barlinnie, but he flipped, went for another prisoner, then started cutting at himself.”
“So where’s he now?”
“Carbrae Special Hospital.”
Rebus was thoughtful. “You think Herdman was after the judge’s son?”
“It’s a possibility. Revenge and all that…”
Yes, revenge. That word now hung over both the dead boys…
“I’m going to see him,” Hogan was saying.
“Niles? Is he fit to see anyone?”
“Seems like. Want to tag along?”
“Bobby, I’m flattered. Why me?”
“Because Niles is ex-SAS, John. Served alongside Herdman. If anyone knows the inside of Lee Herdman’s head, it’s him.”
“A killer locked up in a psycho ward? My, aren’t we lucky.”
“The offer’s there, John.”
“When?”
“I was thinking first thing tomorrow. It’s a couple of hours by car.”
“Count me in.”
“Good man. Who knows, you might get stuff out of Niles… empathy and all that.”
“You think so?”
“Way I see it, one look at your hands, and he’ll take you for a fellow sufferer.”
Hogan was chuckling as Rebus handed the phone to Siobhan. She ended the call.
“I got most of that,” she said. Her phone chirruped immediately. It was Gill Templer.
“How come Rebus never answers his phone?” Templer bellowed.
“I think he has it switched off,” Siobhan said, eyes on Rebus. “He can’t push the buttons.”
“Funny, I’ve always taken him for an expert at pushing buttons.” Siobhan smiled: Especially yours, she thought.
“Do you want him?” she asked.
“I want the pair of you back here,” Templer said. “Pronto, with no excuses.”
“What’s happened?”
“You’ve got trouble, that’s what. The worst kind…” Templer let her words hang in the air. Siobhan saw what she must mean.
“The papers?”
“Bingo. Someone’s on to the story, only they’ve added some bells and whistles that I’d like John to explain to me.”
“What sort of bells and whistles?”
“He was spotted leaving the pub with Martin Fairstone, walking home with him, in fact. Spotted leaving, too, a good while later, and just before the house went up in flames. The paper in question is getting ready to lead with it.”
“We’re on our way.”
“I’ll be waiting.” The phone went dead. Siobhan started the car.
“We’ve to go back to St. Leonard’s,” she informed Rebus, going on to explain why.
“Which paper is it?” was all Rebus said at the end of a lengthy silence.
“I didn’t ask.”
“Call her again.”
Siobhan looked at him but made the call.
“Give me the phone,” Rebus ordered. “Don’t want you going off the road.”
He took the phone and held it to his ear, asked to be put through to the chief super’s office.
“It’s John,” he said when Templer answered. “Who’s got the story?”
“Reporter by the name of Steve Holly. And the sod’s like a terrier at a lamppost convention.”
I knew it would look bad,” Rebus explained to Templer. “That’s why I didn’t say anything.” They were in Templer’s office at St. Leonard’s. She was seated, Rebus standing. She held a sharpened pencil in one hand, manipulating it, studying its tip, maybe weighing it as a weapon. “You lied to me.”
“I just left out a few details, Gill…”
“A few details?”
“None of them relevant.”
“You went back to his house!”
“We had a drink together.”
“Just you and a known criminal who’d been threatening your closest colleague? Who’d made an allegation of assault against you?”
“I had a word with him. We didn’t argue or anything.” Rebus began to fold his arms, but this served to increase the blood pressure in his hands, so he unfolded them again. “Ask the neighbors, see if they heard raised voices. I’ll tell you right now, they didn’t. We were drinking whiskey in the living room.”
“Not the kitchen?”
Rebus shook his head. “I wasn’t in the kitchen all night.”
“What time did you leave?”
“No idea. Gone midnight, easy.”
“Not long before the fire, then?”
“Long enough.”
She stared at him.
“The man had had a skinful, Gill. We’ve all seen it: they get the munchies, turn on the chip pan, and fall asleep. It’s either that or the lit cigarette down the side of the sofa.”
Templer tested the pencil’s sharpness against her finger.
“How much trouble am I in?” Rebus asked, the silence getting to him.
“Depends on Steve Holly. He makes a song and dance, we have to be seen to be doing something about it.”
“Like putting me on suspension?”
“It had crossed my mind.”
“I don’t suppose I could blame you.”
“That’s awfully magnanimous, John. Why did you go to his house?”
“He asked me. I think he liked playing games. That’s all Siobhan was to him. Then I came along. He sat there feeding me drinks, spouting on about his adventures… I think it gave him a buzz.”
“And what did you think you were going to get out of it?”
“I don’t know exactly… I thought it might distract him from Siobhan.”
“She asked you for help?”
“No.”
“No, I’ll bet she didn’t. Siobhan can fight her own battles.”
Rebus nodded.
“So it’s a coincidence?”
“Fairstone was a disaster waiting to happen. It’s a blessing he didn’t take anyone else with him.”
“A blessing?”
“I won’t be losing too much sleep, Gill.”
“No, I suppose that would be too much to ask.”
Rebus straightened his back, held on to the silence, embracing it. Templer flinched. She’d drawn a bead of blood from her finger with the pencil tip.
“Final warning, John,” she said, dropping her hand, unwilling to deal with the injury-that sudden fallibility-in front of him.
“Yes, Gill.”
“Final means final with me.”
“I understand. Want me to fetch a Band-Aid?” His hand reached for the doorknob.
“I want you to leave.”
“If you’re sure there’s nothing -”
“Out!”
Rebus closed the door after him, feeling the muscles in his legs starting to work again. Siobhan was standing not ten feet away, one questioning eyebrow raised. Rebus gave her an awkward thumbs-up, and she shook her head slowly: I don’t know how you get away with it.
He wasn’t sure he knew either.
“Let me buy you a drink,” he said. “Cafeteria coffee all right?”
“That’s pushing the boat out.”
“I’m on a final warning. It’s hardly the winning goal at Hampden.”
“More of a throw-in at Easter Road?”
She managed a smile from him. He felt an aching in his jaw, the feeling of sustained tension that a simple smile could displace.
Downstairs, however, it was chaos. People milled around, the interview rooms all seemed to be full. Rebus recognized faces from Leith CID, meaning Hogan’s team. He grabbed an elbow.
“What’s going on?”
The face glowered at him, then softened as he was recognized. The detective constable’s name was Pettifer. He’d been only half a year in CID; already he was toughening up nicely.
“Leith’s jam-packed,” Pettifer explained. “Thought we’d use St. Leonard’s for the overflow.”
Rebus looked around. Pinched faces, ill-fitting clothes, bad haircuts… the cream of Edinburgh’s lower depths. Informers, junkies, touts, scammers, housebreakers, muscle, alkies. The station was filling with their mingled scents, their slurred, expletive-strewn protestations. They’d fight anyone, anytime. Where were their lawyers? Nothing to drink? Needing a pish. What was the game? What about human rights? No dignity in this fascist state…
Detectives and uniforms tried for a semblance of order, taking names, details, pointing to a room or a bench where a statement could be taken, everything denied, a muttered complaint made. The younger men had a swagger, not yet ground down by the constant attentions of the law. They smoked, despite the warning signs. Rebus bummed a cigarette from one of them. He wore a checked baseball cap, its rim pointing skywards. Rebus reckoned one gust of Edinburgh wind would have the thing sailing from its owner’s head like a Frisbee.
“No’ done nothing, like,” the youth said, twitching one shoulder. “Just helping out, so they says. Dinne want nothing to do with shooters, chief, that’s the gospel. Pass it along, eh?” He winked a snake’s cold eye. “One good turn and all that.” Meaning the rumpled cigarette. Rebus nodded, moved off again.
“Bobby’s looking for whoever might have supplied the guns,” Rebus told Siobhan. “Rounding up the usual desperadoes.”
“Thought I recognized some faces.”
“Aye, and not from judging any bonny baby contests.” Rebus studied the men-they were all men. Easy to see them as mere debris; work hard enough and you might find a smear of sympathy somewhere in your soul. These were men on whom the Fates had decided not to shine, men who’d been brought up to respect greed and fear, men whose whole lives had been tainted from the word go.
Rebus believed this. He saw families where the children ran wild and would grow up indifferent to anything but the rules of survival in what they saw as a jungle. Neglect was almost in their genes. Cruelty made people cruel. With some of these young men, Rebus had known their fathers and grandfathers, too, criminality in their blood, aging the one and only disincentive to their recidivism. These were basic facts. But there was a problem. By the time Rebus and his like had reason to confront these men, the damage was already done, and in many cases appeared irreversible. So there could be little room for sympathy. Instead, it came down to attrition.
And then there were men like Peacock Johnson. Peacock wasn’t his real name, of course. It was because of the shirts he wore, shirts that could curdle any hangover an onlooker might be harboring. Johnson was lowlife masquerading as high. He made money, and spent it, too. The shirts were often custom-made by a tailor in one of the narrow lanes of the New Town. Johnson sometimes affected a homburg and had grown a thin, black mustache, probably thinking he looked like Kid Creole. His dental work was good-which by itself would have marked him out from his fellow denizens-and he used his smile prodigally. He was a piece of work.
Rebus knew he was in his late thirties but could pass for either ten years older or a decade younger, depending on his mood and outfit. He went everywhere with a runt of a guy named Evil Bob. Bob sported what was almost a uniform: baseball cap, tracksuit top, baggy black jeans and oversized sneakers. Gold rings on his fingers, ID bracelets on both wrists, chains around his neck. He had an oval, spotty face with a mouth that hung open almost permanently, giving him a look of constant bewilderment. Some people said that Evil Bob was Peacock’s brother. If so, Rebus guessed some cruel genetic experiment had taken place. The tall, nearly elegant Johnson and his brutish sidekick.
As for the “evil” in Evil Bob, as far as anyone knew, it was just a name.
As Rebus watched, the two men were being separated. Bob was to follow a CID officer upstairs to where a space was newly available. Johnson was about to accompany DC Pettifer into Interview Room 1. Rebus glanced towards Siobhan, then pushed his way through the scrum.
“Mind if I sit in on this one?” he asked Pettifer. The young man looked flustered. Rebus tried for a reassuring smile.
“Mr. Rebus…” Johnson was holding out his hand. “What a pleasant surprise.”
Rebus ignored him. He didn’t want a pro like Johnson to know just how new Pettifer was to the game. At the same time, he had to persuade the detective constable that no dirty trick was being played, that Rebus wasn’t going to be there as invigilator. All he had was his smile, so he tried it again.
“Fine,” Pettifer said at last. The three men entered the interview room, Rebus holding his index finger up in Siobhan’s direction, hoping she’d know he wanted her to wait for him.
IR1 was small and stuffy and held the body odors of what seemed like its last half a dozen guests. There were windows high up on one wall, but they wouldn’t open. On the small table sat a dual-tape deck. There was a panic button at shoulder height behind it. A video camera was trained on the room from a bracket above the door.
But there’d be no recording today. These interviews were informal, goodwill a priority. Pettifer carried nothing into the room but a couple of sheets of blank paper and a cheap pen. He would have studied the file on Johnson but wasn’t about to brandish it.
“Take a seat, please,” Pettifer said. Johnson brushed the chair’s surface with a bright red handkerchief before lowering himself onto it with showy deliberation.
Pettifer sat down opposite, then realized there was no chair for Rebus. He made to stand up again, but Rebus shook his head.
“I’ll just stand here, if that’s okay,” he said. He was leaning against the wall opposite, legs crossed at the ankles, hands resting in his jacket pockets. He’d found a spot where he was in Pettifer’s line of vision but where Johnson would have to turn to see him.
“You’re sort of like a guest star, Mr. Rebus?” Johnson obliged with a grin.
“VIP treatment for you, Peacock.”
“The Peacock always travels first-class, Mr. Rebus.” Johnson sounded satisfied, resting against the back of the chair, arms folded. His hair was jet-black, slicked back from the brow, curling where it met the nape of his neck. He’d been known to keep a cocktail stick in his mouth, working it like a lollipop. Not today, though. Today he was chewing a piece of gum.
“Mr. Johnson,” Pettifer began, “I assume you know why you’re here?”
“You’re asking all us cats about the shooter. I told the other cop, told anyone who’d listen, the Peacock doesn’t do that sort of thing. Shooting kids, man, that’s pure evil.” He shook his head slowly. “I’d help you if I could, but you’ve got me here under false pretexts.”
“You’ve been in a spot of trouble before over firearms, Mr. Johnson. We just wondered if you might be the sort of man who’d have his ear to the ground. Could be you’ve heard something. Maybe a rumor, someone new in the marketplace…”
Pettifer sounded confident. It could be 90 percent front; inside he could be shivering like the last leaf on autumn’s tree, but he sounded okay, and that was what mattered. Rebus liked what he saw.
“The Peacock isn’t what you’d call a snitch, Your Honor. But in this case, it’s a definite. If I hear something, I come straight to you. No worries on that bulletin board. And for the record, I deal in replica weapons-collectors’ market, respectable gentlemen of industry and suchlike. When the powers above make such trade illegal, you can be sure the Peacock will cease operations.”
“You’ve never sold illegal firearms to anyone?”
“Never.”
“And don’t happen to know of anyone who might?”
“As I said in a previous answer, the Peacock is not a snitch.”
“What about reactivating these collectors’ guns of yours: know anyone who’d be able to do that?”
“Not a scooby, m’lud.”
Pettifer nodded and looked down at the sheets of paper, which were just as blankly white as they’d been when he’d placed them on the table. During the lull, Johnson turned his head to check on Rebus.
“What’s it like back in cattle class, Mr. Rebus?”
“I like it. The people tend to be that bit cleaner in their habits.”
“Now, now…” Another grin, this time accompanied by a wagging finger. “I won’t have uppity public servants soiling my VIP suite.”
“You’re going to love it in Barlinnie, Peacock,” Rebus said. “Put it another way: the guys in there are going to love you to absolute bits. Dressing up always tends to go down well in the Bar-L.”
“Mr. Rebus…” Johnson lowered his head and produced a sigh. “Vendettas are ugly things. Ask the Italians.”
Pettifer shifted in his chair, its legs scraping the floor. “Maybe if we could get back to the question of where you think Lee Herdman could have scored those guns…?”
“They’re mostly made in China these days, aren’t they?” Johnson said.
“I mean,” Pettifer went on, an edge creeping into his voice, “how would someone go about getting hold of them?”
Johnson gave an exaggerated shrug. “By the grip and the trigger?” He laughed at his own joke, laughed alone into the room’s silence. Then he shifted in his seat, tried for a solemn face. “Most gun sellers are Glasgow-based. They’re the cats you should be talking to.”
“Our colleagues in the west are doing just that,” Pettifer said. “But meantime, you can’t think of anyone in particular we should be asking?”
Johnson shrugged. “Search me.”
“You should do that, DC Pettifer,” Rebus said, making for the door. “You should definitely take him up on that…”
Outside, the situation was no calmer and there was no sign of Siobhan. Rebus guessed she’d retreated to the cafeteria, but instead of looking for her, he headed upstairs, glancing in on a couple of rooms before finding Evil Bob, who was being interviewed by a shirt-sleeved DS named George Silvers. Around St. Leonard’s, Silvers was known as “Hi-Ho.” He was a time-server, awaiting the oncoming pension with all the anticipation of a hitchhiker at a truck stop. He didn’t so much as nod when Rebus entered the room. There were a dozen questions on his list, and he wanted them asked and answered so that the specimen in front of him could be deposited back on the street. Bob watched as Rebus pulled a chair between the two men and sat down, his right knee only inches from Bob’s left. Bob squirmed.
“I’ve just been in with Peacock,” Rebus said, ignoring that he was interrupting one of Silvers’s questions. “He should change his name to canary.”
Bob stared at him dully. “Why’s that, then?”
“Why do you think?”
“Dunno.”
“What do canaries do?”
“Fly around… live in trees.”
“They live in your grannie’s fucking birdcage, you moron. And they sing.”
Bob thought about this; Rebus could almost hear the cogs grinding. With a lot of lowlifes, it was an act. Many of them were clever enough, wise not just in the ways of the street. But either Bob was Robert De Niro in full method mode, or else he was no actor at all.
“What sort of stuff?” he asked. Then he saw Rebus’s look. “I mean, what sort of stuff do they sing?”
Not De Niro, then…
“Bob,” Rebus said, elbows on knees, leaning close to the squat young man, “you hang around with Johnson, you’re going to spend half your life behind bars.”
“So?”
“Doesn’t that bother you?”
Stupid question, Rebus realized as the words came out. The arch look from Silvers told him as much. Prison would be just another sleepwalking session for Bob. It would have no effect on him whatsoever.
“Peacock and me, we’re partners.”
“Oh, aye, and I’m sure he’s splitting it right down the middle. Come on, Bob…” Rebus smiled conspiratorially. “He’s ripping you off. Big grin on his face, blinding you with dental work. But he’s framing you. And when things start going wrong, guess who’ll be taking the fall? That’s why he keeps you around. You’re the guy in the panto who gets the custard pie in his face every performance. The pair of you buy and sell guns, for Christ’s sake! Think we’re not on to you?”
“Replicas,” Bob stated, as if remembering a lesson and repeating it rote. “For collectors to hang on their walls.”
“Oh, aye, everybody wants a bunch of fake Glock 17s and Walther PPKs above the fireplace…” Rebus straightened up. He didn’t know if it was possible to get through to Bob. There had to be something, a weakness to be exploited. But the guy was like so much wet dough. You could knead him, twist him all out of shape… you’d only ever end up with a spongy mass. He decided on one last try.
“One of these days, Bob, a kid’s going to draw one of your replicas and someone’ll take him down, thinking the gun’s real. It’s only a matter of time.” Rebus was aware that he was allowing some emotion to creep into his voice. Silvers was studying him, beginning to wonder what he was up to. Rebus looked at him, then shrugged, started to push up from the chair.
“Think about it, Bob, just do that for me.” Rebus tried for eye contact, but the young man was staring at the ceiling lights, as if at a fireworks display.
“I’ve never been to a panto…” he was starting to tell Silvers as Rebus left.
Siobhan, dumped by Rebus, had gone upstairs to CID. The main office was busy, detectives seated at borrowed desks, facing their interviewees. At her own desk, the computer monitor had been pushed to one side, her in-tray relegated to the floor. Detective Constable Davie Hynds was taking notes as a young man, pupils reduced to pinpoints, droned on.
“What’s wrong with your own desk?” Siobhan asked.
“DS Wylie pulled rank on me.” Hynds nodded towards where Detective Sergeant Ellen Wylie sat at his desk, preparing for her next interview. She looked up at the mention of her name and smiled. Siobhan smiled back. Wylie was based at the West End station. Same rank as Siobhan, but more years on her clock. Siobhan knew they might become rivals in the promotion stakes. She decided to squeeze her in-tray into one of the desk drawers, didn’t like the idea of this invasion. Each police station was a fiefdom of sorts. No telling what the raiders could take away with them…
When she picked up the in-tray, she saw the corner of a white envelope poking out from beneath a series of stapled reports. She eased it out, then placed the in-tray in the desk’s single deep drawer, closing and locking it. Hynds was looking at her.
“Nothing you need, is there?” Siobhan asked him. He shook his head, wondering if an explanation was on its way. But all Siobhan did was walk away, heading back downstairs to the drink machine. It was more peaceful down here. A couple of the visiting detectives were on a break, smoking and sharing some joke in the car park. She didn’t see Rebus there, so she stayed by the machine, opening the ice-cold can. The sugar hit her teeth and then her stomach. She found the can’s list of contents, reminding herself that the panic attack books said to lay off caffeine. She was trying to find room in her affections for decaf coffee, and she knew there were caffeine-free soft drinks out there somewhere. Salt: that was another one to avoid. High blood pressure and all that. Alcohol was all right in moderation. She wondered if a bottle of wine in the evening after work could be classed as “moderate,” doubted it somehow. Thing was, if she drank half a bottle, the rest tasted foul the next day. Memo to self: explore possibility of buying half-bottles of wine only.
She remembered the envelope, lifted it from her pocket. Handwritten, more of a scrawl really. She put her can down on top of the machine, already getting a bad feeling as she peeled the envelope open. Just a single sheet of paper, she was sure of that. No razor blades, no glass… Plenty of nutters out there keen to share their thoughts with her. She unfolded the letter. Big scrawled capitals.
LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING YOU AGAIN IN HELL-MARTY.
The name was underlined. Her heart was racing. She didn’t doubt who Marty was: Martin Fairstone. But Fairstone was a tub of cinders and bone on a shelf in someone’s lab. She studied the envelope. Address and post-code perfect. Somebody’s idea of a joke? But who could it be? Who knew about her and Fairstone? Rebus and Templer… anyone else? She thought back a few months. Someone had left messages on her screen saver, had to be CID, one of her so-called colleagues. But the messages had stopped. Davie Hynds and George Silvers: they worked beside her. Grant Hood, too, most of the time. Others came and went. But she hadn’t told any of them about Fairstone. Hold on… when Fairstone had made his complaint, had any of it become a matter of record? She didn’t think so. But cop shops were hives of gossip, hard to keep any secrets.
She realized she was staring through the glass outer doors, and the two detectives in the car park were staring back at her, wondering what it was about them that she was finding so mesmeric. She tried for a smile and a shake of the head, as if to say she’d been in a “dwam.”
For lack of anything else to do, she took out her mobile, intending to check for messages. But started to make a call instead, punching in the number from memory.
“Ray Duff speaking.”
“Ray? You busy?”
Siobhan knew what the initial answer would be: an intake of breath preceding an elongated sigh. Duff was a scientist, working for the forensics lab at Howdenhall.
“You mean apart from checking that all the Port Edgar bullets came from the same gun, then examining blood spatter configurations and powder residues, ballistic angles, all that?”
“At least we keep you in a job. How’s the MG?”
“Running like a dream.” The last time the two had spoken, Duff had just finished rebuilding a ’73 special. “That offer of a spin some weekend still stands.”
“Maybe come the better weather.”
“There’s a top, you know.”
“Not the same, though, is it? Look, Ray, I know you’re up to your eyes in work from the school, but I was wondering if I could ask a wee favor…”
“Siobhan, you know I’m going to say no. Everyone wants this done and dusted.”
“I know. I’m working Port Edgar, too.”
“You and every other cop in the city.” Another sigh. “Just out of curiosity, what is it exactly?”
“Between you and me?”
“Of course.”
Siobhan looked around. The detectives outside had lost interest in her. Three constables sat together at a table in the cafeteria, eating sandwiches and drinking tea, maybe twenty feet away from her. She turned her back to them, so she was facing the machine.
“I just got this letter. Anonymous.”
“Threatening?”
“Sort of.”
“You should show it to someone.”
“I was thinking of showing it to you, see if you can take anything from it.”
“I meant show it to your boss. Gill Templer, isn’t it?”
“I’m not exactly her star pupil right now. Besides, she’s snowed under.”
“And I’m not?”
“Just a quick recon, Ray. It could be something, or nothing.”
“But on the q.t., am I right?”
“Right.”
“Which is wrong. Someone’s threatening you, you need to report it, Shiv.”
That nickname again: Shiv. More and more people seemed to be using it. She decided this wasn’t the time to tell Ray how much she disliked it.
“Thing is, Ray, it’s from a dead man.”
There was a pause on the line. “Okay,” Duff drawled at last. “You’ve got my attention.”
“Housing project in Gracemount, chip-pan fire…”
“Ah, yes, Mr. Martin Fairstone. I’ve been trying to get some work done on him, too.”
“Come up with anything?”
“Bit early to tell… Port Edgar came straight in at number one. Fairstone dropped a few places.”
She had to smile at the analogy. Ray liked his charts. Their conversations usually contained top threes and fives. And right on cue:
“By the way, Shiv-top three Scottish rock and pop acts?”
“Ray…”
“Humor me. No thinking allowed, just off the top of your head.”
“Rod Stewart? Big Country? Travis?”
“No room for Lulu? Annie Lennox?”
“I’m not much good at this, Ray.”
“Rod’s an interesting choice, though.”
“Blame DI Rebus. He loaned me the early albums…” She attempted a sigh of her own. “So are you going to help me or not?”
“How soon can you get it to me?”
“Within the hour.”
“I suppose I could stay late. Wouldn’t that make a change?”
“Have I ever mentioned your good looks, wit and charm?”
“Only every time I agree to do you a favor.”
“You’re an angel, Ray. Call me ASAP.”
“Come for a drive sometime,” Duff was telling her as she ended the call. She carried the letter through the cafeteria, into the booking area beyond.
“Got an evidence bag, by any chance?” she asked the custody sergeant. He opened a couple of drawers. “I could get one from upstairs,” he said, admitting defeat.
“What about one of the possessions envelopes?”
The custody sergeant stooped again and produced a legal-sized manila envelope from below the counter.
“That’ll do,” Siobhan said, dropping her own envelope in. She wrote Ray Duff’s name on the front, adding her own name as reference and the word URGENT, then walked back through the cafeteria and out into the car park. The smokers had gone back inside, meaning she wouldn’t have to apologize for her earlier fit of the stares. Two uniforms were getting into a patrol car.
“Hey, guys!” she called. Getting closer, she recognized the passenger as PC John Mason, his station nickname the utterly obvious Perry. The driver was Toni Jackson.
“Hiya, Siobhan,” Jackson said. “Missed you Friday night.”
Siobhan shrugged an apology. Toni and some of the other female uniforms liked to let off steam once a week. Siobhan was the only detective allowed into their fold.
“I’m assuming I missed a good night?” she asked.
“A great night. My liver’s still recovering.”
Mason looked interested. “So what did you get up to?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” his partner responded with a wink. Then, to Siobhan: “You wanting us to play postman?” She nodded towards the envelope.
“Could you? It’s for forensics at Howdenhall. Delivered into this guy’s hands if at all possible.” Siobhan tapped Duff’s name.
“We’ve a couple of calls to make… it’s not much of a detour.”
“I promised it’d be there inside an hour.”
“Way Toni drives, that won’t be a problem,” Mason offered.
Jackson ignored this. “Rumor has it you’ve been relegated to chauffeur, Siobhan.”
Siobhan twitched her mouth. “Only for a few days.”
“How did he manage to hurt his hands?”
Siobhan stared at Jackson. “I don’t know, Toni. What do the bush drums say?”
“They say all sorts of things… Everything from fistfights to fat fryers.”
“Not that the two are mutually exclusive.”
“Nothing’s mutually exclusive where DI Rebus is concerned.” Jackson smiled wryly, holding her hand out for the envelope. “You’re on a yellow card, Siobhan.”
“I’ll be there Friday, if you want me.”
“Promise?”
“Cross my CID heart.”
“In other words, it depends.”
“It always does, Toni, you know that.”
Jackson was looking over Siobhan’s shoulder. “Speak of the devil,” she said, getting back behind the steering wheel. Siobhan turned around. Rebus was watching from the doorway. She didn’t know how long he’d been there. Long enough to see the envelope change hands? The engine caught, and she stepped away from the car, watching it depart. Rebus had opened his cigarette packet and was pulling one out with his teeth.
“Funny how the human animal can adapt,” Siobhan said, walking towards him.
“I’m thinking of extending my repertoire,” Rebus told her. “Might try playing the piano with my nose.” He got the lighter to work on the third attempt, started puffing.
“Thanks for leaving me out in the cold, by the way.”
“It’s not cold out here.”
“I meant -”
“I know what you mean.” He looked at her. “I just wanted to hear what Johnson had to say for himself.”
“Johnson?”
“Peacock Johnson.” He saw her eyes narrow. “He calls himself that.”
“Why?”
“You saw the way he dresses.”
“I meant why did you want to see him?”
“I’m interested in him.”
“Any particular reason?”
Rebus just shrugged.
“Who is he anyway?” Siobhan asked. “Should I know him?”
“He’s small-time, but those can be the most dangerous. Sells replica guns to anyone who wants them… might even deal in a few examples of the real thing. Fences stolen goods, dispenses soft drugs, just the odd bit of hash…”
“Where does he operate?”
Rebus looked like he was thinking. “Out Burdiehouse way.”
She knew him too well to be conned. “Burdiehouse?”
“That direction…” The cigarette flexing in his mouth.
“Maybe I could go look in the files.” She held his gaze, waited until he blinked.
“Southhouse, Burdiehouse… somewhere out there.” Smoke spilled down his nostrils, reminding her of a cornered bull.
“In other words, next door to Gracemount?”
He shrugged. “It’s just geography.”
“It’s where Fairstone lived… his patch. What are the chances of two scumbags like that not knowing each other?”
“Maybe they did.”
“John…”
“What was in the envelope?”
Her turn to try for the poker face. “Don’t change the subject.”
“Subject’s closed. What was in the envelope?”
“Nothing for you to worry your pretty little head about, DI Rebus.”
“Now you’ve got me worried.”
“It was nothing, honest.”
Rebus waited, then nodded slowly. “Because you can take care of yourself, right?”
“That’s right.”
He tipped his head, let the remains of the cigarette fall to the ground. Crushed it under the toe of his shoe. “You know I won’t need you tomorrow?”
She nodded. “I’ll try to while away the hours.”
He tried to think of a comeback, gave up eventually. “Come on, then, let’s skedaddle before Gill Templer can find another excuse for a bollocking.” He started walking towards her car.
“Good,” Siobhan said. “And while I’m driving, you can be telling me all about Mr. Peacock Johnson.” She paused. “By the way: top three Scottish rock and pop acts?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Come on, off the top of your head.”
Rebus thought for a moment. “Nazareth, Alex Harvey, Deacon Blue.”
“Not Rod Stewart?”
“He’s not Scottish.”
“You’re still allowed him if you want.”
“Then I’ll get to him eventually, probably right after Ian Stewart. But first I need to go through John Martyn, Jack Bruce, Ian Anderson… not forgetting Donovan and the Incredible String Band… Lulu and Maggie Bell…”
Siobhan rolled her eyes. “Is it too late for me to say I wish I’d never asked?”
“Far too late,” Rebus said, getting into the passenger side. “Frankie Miller’s another… Simple Minds in their heyday… I always had a soft spot for Pallas…”
Siobhan stood by the driver’s-side door, gripping the handle but making no further effort. From inside, she could hear the catalogue continuing, Rebus’s voice rising, making sure she didn’t miss a single name.
“Not the sort of place where I’d normally drink,” Dr. Curt muttered. He was tall and thin, often described behind his back as “funereal.” Late fifties, with a long, slack face and baggy eyes. He reminded Rebus of a bloodhound.
A funereal bloodhound.
Which was apt in its way, considering that he was one of Edinburgh’s most highly respected pathologists. Under his guidance, corpses could tell their stories, sometimes revealing secrets: suicides who turned out to be murder victims, bones that turned out not to be human. Curt’s skill and intuition had helped Rebus solve dozens of cases down through the years, so it would have been churlish to turn the man down when he called and asked Rebus to join him for a drink, adding, as a postscript: “Somewhere quiet, mind. Somewhere we can talk without tongues wagging all around us.”
Which was why Rebus had suggested his regular haunt, the Oxford Bar, tucked away in an alley behind George Street and a long way from both Curt’s office and St. Leonard’s.
They were seated in the back room, at the table at the far end. No one else about. Midweek and mid-evening, the main bar boasting only a couple of suits who were about to go home, and one regular who’d just come in. Rebus brought the drinks to the table: a pint for him, gin and tonic for the pathologist.
“Slainte,” Curt said, raising his glass.
“Cheers, Doc.” Rebus still couldn’t lift his beer with just the one hand.
“It’s like you’re holding a chalice,” Curt commented. Then: “Do you want to talk about how it happened?”
“No.”
“The rumors are flying.”
“They can be stacking up frequent flier miles for all I care. What’s intriguing me is your phone call. Do you want to talk about that?”
Rebus had arrived home, soaked in a tepid bath, and phoned out for a curry. Jackie Leven on the hi-fi, singing about the romantic hard men of Fife-how could Rebus have forgotten to put him on the list? And then Curt’s phone call.
“Can we talk? Maybe in person? Tonight…?”
No hint as to why, just an arrangement to be in the Oxford Bar at half past seven.
Curt savored his drink. “How’s life been treating you, John?”
Rebus stared at him. With some men, men of a certain age and class, there had to be this preamble. He offered a cigarette, which the pathologist accepted.
“Take one out for me, too,” Rebus asked. Curt did so, and both men smoked in silence for a moment.
“I’ve been hunky-dory, Doc. How about yourself? Often get this urge to phone cops up of an evening and arrange assignations in dingy back rooms?”
“I believe the ‘dingy back room’ was your choice rather than mine.”
Rebus acknowledged as much with a slight bow of the head.
Curt smiled. “You’re not a man of great patience, John…”
Rebus shrugged. “Actually, I can sit here all night, but I’ll be a lot more relaxed once I know what this is about.”
“It’s about what’s left of a man called Martin Fairstone.”
“Oh, yes?” Rebus moved a little in his chair, crossing one leg over the other.
“You know him, of course?” When Curt sucked on the cigarette, his whole face seemed to collapse inward. He’d become a smoker only in the past five years, as if keen to test his own mortality.
“I knew him,” Rebus said.
“Ah, yes… past tense, unfortunately.”
“Not too unfortunate. I can’t see him being missed.”
“Be that as it may, Professor Gates and myself… well, we think there are gray areas.”
“Ash and bone, you mean?”
Curt shook his head slowly, refusing to see the joke.
“Forensics will tell us more…” His voice drifted off. “DCS Templer has been persistent. I think Gates will talk to her tomorrow.”
“And what’s this got to do with me?”
“She thinks you may have been involved in some way in this man’s murder.”
The final word lay in the smoky air between them. Rebus didn’t need to repeat it aloud; Curt heard the unspoken question.
“We think maybe murder,” he said, nodding slowly. “Some evidence that he was tied to the chair. I have photos…” He reached into a briefcase that was on the floor next to him.
“Doc,” Rebus was saying, “you probably shouldn’t be showing me these.”
“I know, and I wouldn’t if I thought there was the slightest chance that you were involved.” He looked up. “But I know you, John.”
Rebus was looking towards the briefcase. “People have been wrong about me before.”
“Maybe.”
The manila file was on the table between them, resting on damp coasters. Rebus picked it up, opened it. There were a couple of dozen photographs of the kitchen, wisps of smoke still evident in the background. Martin Fairstone was barely recognizable as human. More like a blackened, blistered store mannequin. He was lying facedown. A chair lay behind him, reduced to a couple of stumps and part of the seat. What got Rebus was the oven. For some reason, its surface had been left mostly untouched. He could see the chip pan sitting on one of its rings. Christ, clean it up and it might still be useable… Hard to think that a chip pan could survive where a human couldn’t.
“What you’ll see from this is the way the chair has fallen. It’s tipped forwards, taking the victim with it. It’s almost like he fell on his knees, pitched that way, and then later slid into a completely prone position. And you see how his arms are positioned? Flat by his sides?”
Rebus saw, but wasn’t sure what he was supposed to take from any of it.
“We think we found the remains of some rope… a plastic clothesline. The covering has melted, but the nylon was pretty resilient.”
“You often get a clothesline in a kitchen,” Rebus said, playing devil’s advocate now because suddenly he knew where this was leading.
“Agreed. But Professor Gates… well, he’s got the forensics people looking at it…”
“Because he thinks Fairstone was tied to the chair?”
Curt just nodded. “The other photos, in some of them… the close-ups… you can see the bits of rope.”
Rebus saw.
“And there’s this train of events, you see. A man is unconscious, tied to a chair. He wakes up, fire is raging around him, the fumes already deep in his lungs. He’s trying to wrestle himself free, the chair tips, and he starts to suffocate. It’s the smoke that’s killing him… he’s dead before the flames can break his bonds…”
“It’s a theory,” Rebus said.
“Yes, it is,” the pathologist said quietly.
Rebus sorted through the pictures again. “So suddenly it’s murder?”
“Or culpable homicide. I suppose a lawyer could argue that tying him up wasn’t what killed him… that it was meant merely as a warning, say.”
Rebus looked at him. “You’ve been giving this some thought.”
Curt lifted his glass again. “Professor Gates will talk to Gill Templer tomorrow. He’ll show her these photos. Forensics will have their say… People are whispering that you were there.”
“Has a reporter been in touch by any chance?” Rebus watched Curt nod. “Name of Steve Holly?” Another nod. Rebus cursed out loud, just as Harry the barman came in to clear the empty glasses. Harry was whistling, a sure sign that he had a woman on the go. Probably wanted to brag about it, but Rebus’s outburst had him beating a retreat.
“How are you going to…?” Curt couldn’t find the right words.
“Fight it?” Rebus suggested. Then he smiled sourly. “I can’t fight something like this, Doc. I was there, whole world knows it, or will soon.” He made to gnaw at a fingernail, then remembered he couldn’t. He felt like punching the table, but couldn’t do that either.
“It’s all circumstantial,” Curt was saying. “Well, almost…” He reached across the table and found one particular photograph, a close-up of the skull, its mouth gaping. Rebus felt the beer churning in his stomach. Curt was pointing to the neck.
“Might look like skin to you, but there’s something… there’s been something hanging around the throat. The deceased didn’t wear a cravat or anything?”
The idea was so ridiculous that Rebus burst out laughing. “This was a housing project in Gracemount, Doc, not a gentlemen’s club in the New Town.” Rebus started to pick his drink up but found he didn’t want it. He was still shaking his head at the notion of Martin Fairstone in a cravat. Why not a smoking jacket, too? A butler to roll him his cigarettes…
“The thing is,” Dr. Curt was saying, “if he wasn’t wearing something around his throat, a neckerchief or something, then what this begins to look like is a gag of some sort. Maybe a handkerchief stuffed into his mouth, knotted behind the head. Only he was able to slip it off… maybe too late by then to call out. It slid down around his neck, you see.”
And again, Rebus saw.
He saw himself trying to talk his way out of it.
Saw himself failing.
Siobhan had this idea. The panic attacks often came when she was asleep. Maybe it had to do with her bedroom. So she decided to try sleeping on the sofa: perfect arrangement really. Duvet thrown over her, TV in the corner, coffee and a box of Pringles. Three times during the evening, she’d found herself standing by the window, looking out on to her street. If the shadows seemed to have movement to them, she’d watch the same spot for a few minutes until reassured. When Rebus had called to tell her about his meeting with Dr. Curt, she’d asked him a question.
Had the body been properly ID’d?
He’d asked what she’d meant.
“Charred remains… the ID will come down to DNA, right? Has anyone done that yet?”
“Siobhan…”
“Just for the sake of argument.”
“He’s dead, Siobhan. You can start to forget about him.”
Biting her bottom lip, less reason than ever now to bother him with the letter. His plate was already heaped.
He’d rung off. Reason for calling her: if the shit hit the fan the next day, he wouldn’t be around for it, and Templer might go looking for a surrogate.
Siobhan decided to make more coffee-instant decaf. It left a sour taste in her mouth. She stopped by the window, a quick glance out before she headed for the kitchen. Her doctor had asked her to write down a list of her “menus’ for a typical week, then had circled everything he thought might be contributing to her attacks. She tried not to think about the Pringles… problem was, she liked them. Liked wine, too, and fizzy drinks, and takeout. As she’d reasoned with her doctor, she didn’t smoke, exercised regularly. She had to let off steam sometime…
“Booze and fast food are how you let off steam?”
“They’re how I wind down at day’s end.”
“Maybe you should try not getting wound up in the first place.”
“You’re going to tell me you’ve never smoked or had a drink?”
But of course he wasn’t going to say that. Doctors had higher stress levels than cops. One thing she had done-her own initiative-was try getting into ambient music. Lemon Jelly, Oldsolar, Boards of Canada. Some hadn’t worked-Aphex Twin and Autechre; not enough meat on their bones.
Meat on their bones…
She was thinking of Martin Fairstone. The way he smelled: male chemicals. His discolored teeth. Standing by her car, chewing his way into her shopping, casual in his aggression, secure in it. Rebus was right: he had to be dead. The note was a sick joke. Problem was, she couldn’t seem to find a candidate. There had to be someone out there, someone she was failing to remember…
Bringing her coffee in from the kitchen, she wandered over to the window again. There were lights on in the tenement across the way. A while back, someone had spied on her from there… a cop called Linford. He was still on the force, working at HQ. At one time, she’d thought about moving, but she liked this place, liked her flat, the street, the area. Corner shops, young families and professional singles… most of the “families” were younger than her, she realized. She was always being asked: when you going to find a fellah? Toni Jackson seemed to ask every time the Friday Club met. She would point out eligible men in the bars and clubs, not taking no for an answer, leading them over to the table where Siobhan sat with her head in her hands.
Maybe a boyfriend was the answer, keep away the prowlers. But then, a dog would do just as well. Thing about a dog was…
Thing about a dog was, she didn’t want one. Didn’t want a boyfriend either. She’d had to stop seeing Eric Bain for a while, when he’d started talking about taking their friendship “to the next stage.” She missed him: he would arrive late in the evening, sharing pizza and gossip, listening to music, maybe playing a computer game on his laptop. Soon she’d try inviting him around again, see how it went. Soon, but not yet.
Martin Fairstone was dead. Everyone knew it. She wondered who would know if he wasn’t. The girlfriend maybe. Close friends or family; he had to be staying with someone, making money to keep himself together. Maybe this Peacock Johnson would know. Rebus said the guy was a magnet for local info. She didn’t feel sleepy, could be a drive would do her good. Ambient on the car hi-fi. She picked up her phone, called the Leith cop shop, knowing the Port Edgar case was financed to the hilt, meaning there’d be bodies on the night shift, keen to top up their bank accounts. She got through to one, asked for some details.
“Peacock Johnson… I don’t know his first name, not sure anybody else does. He was interviewed earlier today at St. Leonard’s.”
“What is it you need, DS Clarke?”
“For the moment, just his address,” Siobhan said.
Rebus had taken a taxi-easier than driving. Even then, opening the passenger door had required a hard squeeze of his thumb on the latch, and his thumb was still burning. His pockets bulged with change. Small change was hard for him to deal with. He was using notes for every possible transaction, filling his pockets with the residual coins.
His conversation with Dr. Curt was still echoing in the back of his mind. A murder inquiry was all he needed right now, especially with himself as prime suspect. Siobhan had asked him about Peacock Johnson, but he’d managed to keep his answers vague. Johnson: the reason he was standing here, ringing the doorbell. The reason he’d gone back to Fairstone’s house that night, too…
The door was opened to him, bathing him in light.
“Ah, it’s you, John. Good man, come in.”
A mid-terraced house, newly built, off Alnwickhill Road. Andy Callis lived there on his own, his wife dead a year, cancer snatching her too young. A framed wedding photo hung in the hall. Callis a good twenty pounds lighter, Mary radiant, haloed by light, flowers in her hair. Rebus had been at the graveside, Callis placing a posy on the coffin. Rebus had accepted the role of pallbearer, one of six, including Andy himself, keeping his eyes on the posy as the coffin was lowered into the earth.
A year back. Andy seeming to be getting over it, but then this…
“How are you doing, Andy?” Rebus asked. The electric heater was on in the living room. Leather chair and matching footstool facing the TV. The room tidy, fresh-smelling. The garden outside well-tended, its borders free of weeds. Another picture above the mantelpiece: Mary’s portrait, done in a studio. Same smile as in the wedding photo, but a few lines around the eyes, the face fuller. A woman growing into maturity.
“I’m fine, John.” Callis settled into his chair, moving like an old man. He was early forties, hair not yet gray. The chair creaked as it adjusted itself to him.
“Help yourself to a drink, you know where it is.”
“I might have a nip.”
“Not driving?”
“Taxi brought me.” Rebus went to the liquor cabinet, raised a bottle, watched Callis shake his head. “Still on those tablets?”
“Not supposed to mix them with drink.”
“Me too.” Rebus poured himself a double.
“Is it cold in here?” Callis was asking. Rebus shook his head. “What’s with the gloves, then?”
“I hurt my hands. That’s why I’m on tablets.” He lifted the glass. “And other nonprescribed painkillers.” He brought his drink over to the sofa, made himself comfortable. The TV was playing silently, some sort of game show. “What’s on?”
“Christ knows.”
“So I’m not interrupting?”
“You’re fine.” Callis paused, keeping his eyes on the screen. “Unless you’ve come here to try pushing me again.”
Rebus shook his head. “I’m past that, Andy. Though I’m bound to admit, we’re stretched to the limit.”
“That school thing?” From the corner of his eye, he watched Rebus nod. “Terrible thing to happen.”
“I’m supposed to be working out why he did it.”
“What’s the point? Give people… the opportunity, it’s going to happen.”
Rebus reflected on the pause after “people.” Callis had been about to say “guns” but had swallowed the word. And he’d called it “that school thing”… “thing” rather than “shooting.”
Not out of the woods yet, then.
“You still seeing the shrink?” Rebus asked.
Callis snorted. “Fat lot of good.”
She wasn’t really a shrink, of course. It wasn’t lying on the sofa and talking about your mother. But Rebus and Callis had turned it into this joke. Joking made it easier to talk about.
“Apparently there are worse cases than me,” Callis said. “Guys who can’t so much as pick up a pen or a bottle of sauce. Everything they see reminds them…” His voice faded.
Rebus finished the sentence in his head: of guns. Everything reminded them of guns.
“Bloody odd when you think about it,” Callis went on. “I mean, we’re supposed to be scared of them, isn’t that the whole point? But then someone like me reacts, and suddenly it’s a problem.”
“It’s a problem when it affects the rest of your life, Andy. Having any trouble pouring sauce onto your chips?”
Callis patted his stomach. “Not so you’d notice.”
Rebus smiled, leaned back against the sofa, whiskey glass resting on the arm. He wondered if Andy knew about the tic in his left eye or the slight catch in his voice. It had been nearly three months since he’d taken sick leave from the force. Up until then, he’d been a patrol officer, but with specialist training in firearms. Lothian and Borders had only a handful of such men. They couldn’t just be replaced. Edinburgh had only the one Armed Response Vehicle.
“What does your doctor say?”
“John, doesn’t matter what he says. The force isn’t going to let me back in without a battery of tests.”
“You’re scared you might fail?”
Callis stared at him. “I’m scared I might pass.”
They sat in silence after that, watching the TV. It looked to Rebus like one of those survival programs: strangers cooped up together, whittled down each week.
“So tell me what’s been happening,” Callis said.
“Well…” Rebus considered his options. “Not much really.”
“Apart from the school thing?”
“Apart from that, yes. The guys keep asking for you.”
Callis nodded. “The odd face pops round now and then.”
Rebus leaned forward, elbows on knees. “You’re not coming back, then?”
A tired smile from Callis. “You know I’m not. They’ll call it stress or something. Put on disability…”
“How many years is it, Andy?”
“Since I joined?” Callis’s lips puckered in thought. “Fifteen… fifteen and a half.”
“One incident in all that time, and you’re ready to call it a day? Not even really an ‘incident’…”
“John, look at me, will you? Notice anything? The way the hands tremble?” He raised a hand for Rebus to see. “And this vein that seems to keep pulsing in my eyelid…” Raised the same hand to his eye for effect. “It’s not me that’s calling time, it’s my body. All these warning signs, you saying I just ignore them? Know how many calls we had last year? Not far short of three hundred. We drew weapons three times more often than in the previous year.”
“World’s toughening up all right.”
“Maybe so, but I’m not.”
“No reason you should.” Rebus was thoughtful. “So let’s say you don’t go back on gun duty. Plenty of desks need filling.”
Callis was shaking his head. “That’s not for me, John. The paperwork always got me down.”
“You could go back on the beat…?”
Callis was staring into space, not really listening. “The thing that gets me is, I sit here with the shakes, and those little bastards are still out there, carrying guns and getting away with it. What sort of system is that, John?” He turned to stare at Rebus. “What the hell use are we if we can’t stop that from happening?”
“Sitting here and getting maudlin’s not going to change things,” Rebus said quietly. There was as much anger as defeat in his friend’s eyes. Slowly, Callis lifted both feet from the stool and eased himself upright. “I’m going to put the kettle on. Can I get you anything?”
On the television, several contestants were arguing over some task. Rebus checked his watch. “I’m fine, Andy. I should really be going.”
“It’s nice of you to keep dropping in, John, but you shouldn’t feel you have to.”
“It’s only a pretext for raiding your liquor cabinet, Andy. Soon as that’s empty, you won’t see me for dust.”
Callis tried smiling. “Phone for a cab, if you like.”
“I’ve got my mobile.” And he could use it, too-albeit by pushing each key with a pen.
“Sure I can’t get you something else?”
Rebus shook his head. “Busy day tomorrow.”
“Me too,” Andy Callis said.
Rebus obliged him with a nod. Their conversation always finished this way: Busy tomorrow, John? Always busy, Andy. Aye, me too… He thought of things he could say-about the shooting, about Peacock Johnson. He didn’t think they would do any good. In time, they’d be able to talk-talk properly rather than the games of Ping-Pong that so often passed for conversation between them. But not yet.
“I’ll see myself out,” Rebus called to the kitchen.
“Stay till the taxi gets here.”
“I need a breath of air, Andy.”
“What you mean is, you need a ciggie.”
“Instincts like that, I can’t believe they never made you a detective.” Rebus opened the front door.
“Never wanted to be one,” came Andy Callis’s closing words.
In the cab, Rebus decided on a detour, telling the driver to head towards Gracemount, then directing him to Martin Fairstone’s house. The windows had been boarded up, door padlocked against vandals. It would only take a couple of junkies to turn the place into a crack den. There were no scorch marks on the exterior walls. The kitchen was to the back of the property. That was where the damage would be. The fire crew had dragged some fittings and furnishings out onto the overgrown lawn: chairs, a table, a broken-down upright Hoover. Left there, not even worth looting. Rebus told the driver they could go. Some teenagers had gathered at a bus stop. Rebus didn’t think they were waiting for a bus. The shelter was their gang hut. Two of them stood on top of it, three others lurked in its shadows. The driver came to a stop.
“What’s up?” Rebus asked.
“I think they’ve got rocks. We drive past, they’ll pelt us.”
Rebus looked. The boys on top of the shelter were standing stock-still. He couldn’t see anything in their hands.
“Give me a second,” Rebus said, getting out.
The driver turned. “You off your rocker, pal?”
“No, but I’ll be mad as hell if you drive off without me,” Rebus warned. Then, leaving the cab door open, he walked towards the bus stop. Three bodies stepped out of the shelter. They wore hooded tops, the hoods pulled tight around their faces to ward off the night chill. Hands tucked into pockets. Thin, wiry specimens in baggy denims and sneakers.
Rebus ignored them, kept his eye on the two atop the shelter. “Collecting rocks, eh?” he called. “It was birds’ eggs with me.”
“Fuck are you talking about?”
Rebus lowered his eyes, meeting the hard stare of the leader. Had to be the leader: flanked either side by his lieutenants.
“I know you,” Rebus said.
The youth looked at him. “So?”
“So maybe you remember me.”
“I ken you all right.” The youth made a snorting noise, in imitation of a pig.
“Then you’ll know how much damage I can do you.”
One of the boys on top of the shelter let out a laugh. “There’s five of us, ya wanker.”
“Good for you, you’ve learned to count to five.” A car’s headlights appeared, and Rebus could hear his taxi’s engine start to whine. He glanced back, but the driver was only moving it closer to the curb. The approaching car slowed but then sped up, unwilling to get involved. “And I take your point,” Rebus continued. “Five against one, you’d probably kick the shit out of me. But that’s not what I meant. What I meant was what happens after. Because the one thing you can be sure of is that I’d see you charged, sentenced and stuck in jail. Young offenders? Fine: you’d get a spell in some cushy institution. But before that, they’d have you locked up in Saughton. Adult wing. And that, believe me, would be an absolute pain in the arse.” Rebus paused. “Your arses, to be precise.”
“This is our fucking ground,” one of the others spat. “Not yours.”
Rebus gestured back towards the taxi. “Which is why I’m leaving… with your permission.” His eyes were back on the leader again. His name was Rab Fisher. He was fifteen, and Rebus had heard his gang called the Lost Boys. Plenty of arrests under their belts, no actual prosecutions. Mums and dads at home who would say they’d done their best-“battered the life out of him” first few times he was caught, according to Fisher’s dad. But what can you do?
Rebus had a few answers. Too late for them, though. Easier just to accept the Lost Boys as another statistic.
“Do I have your permission, Rab?”
Fisher was still staring, relishing this moment of power. The world waited on his say-so. “I could do with some gloves,” he said at last.
“Not these ones,” Rebus told him.
“They look comfy.”
Rebus shook his head slowly, started sliding one glove off, trying not to flinch. He held up a blistered hand. “Yours if you want, Rab, but this has been inside it…”
“That’s fucking gross,” one of the lieutenants stated.
“Which is why you wouldn’t want to wear them.” Rebus slipped the glove back on, turned and headed back to the cab. He got in and shut the door after him.
“Drive past them,” he ordered. The cab moved forwards again. Rebus kept his eyes front, though he knew five separate stares were on him. As the cab sped up, there was a thud on the roof, and a half-brick bounced across the road.
“Just a shot across our bow,” Rebus said.
“Easy for you to say, chief. It’s not your fucking cab.”
Back on the main road, they paused at a red light. A car had stopped across the road, its interior light on as the driver pored over a street map.
“Poor sod,” the cabbie commented. “Wouldn’t like to get lost around here.”
“Do a U-turn,” Rebus ordered.
“What?”
“Do a U-turn and pull over in front of it.”
“What for?”
“Because I’m asking,” Rebus snapped.
The driver’s body language told Rebus he’d had easier fares. As the lights turned green, he signaled for a right turn, and executed the maneuver, pulling up to the curb. Rebus already had the money ready. “Keep the change,” he said, getting out.
“I’ve earned it, pal.”
Rebus walked back to the parked car, opened the passenger door, and slid inside. “Nice night for a drive,” he told Siobhan Clarke.
“Isn’t it?” The street map had disappeared, probably beneath her seat. She was watching the cabbie getting out, examining the roof of his vehicle. “So what brings you to this part of the world?”
“I was visiting a friend,” Rebus told her. “What’s your excuse?”
“Do I need one?”
The cabbie was shaking his head, casting a baleful look in Rebus’s direction before getting back into the driver’s seat and heading off, executing another U-turn so he could make for the safety of town.
“Which street is it you’re looking for?” Rebus asked. She looked at him and he smiled. “I saw you studying the A to Z. Let me guess: Fairstone’s house?”
It took her a moment to answer. “How did you know?”
He shrugged. “Call it a man’s intuition.”
She raised an eyebrow. “I’m impressed. I’m also guessing that’s where you’ve just come from?”
“I was visiting a friend.”
“Does this friend have a name?”
“Andy Callis.”
“I don’t think I know him.”
“Andy was one of the woolly suits. He’s on sick leave.”
“You say ‘was’… makes me think he’s not coming back from sick leave.”
“Now it’s my turn to be impressed.” Rebus shifted in the seat. “Andy’s lost it… mentally, I mean.”
“Lost it for good?”
Rebus shrugged. “I keep thinking… Ach, never mind.”
“Where does he live?”
“Alnwickhill.” Rebus had answered without thinking. He glared at Siobhan, knowing it had been no innocent question. She was smiling back at him.
“That’s near Howdenhall, isn’t it?” She reached under her seat, produced the street map. “Bit of a distance from here…”
“All right, so I took a detour on the way back.”
“To look at Fairstone’s house?”
“Yes.”
She seemed satisfied, closed the map.
“I’m in the frame for this, Siobhan,” Rebus said. “That gives me a reason to be nosy. What’s yours?”
“Well, I just thought…” She was struggling, tables effectively turned.
“Thought what?” He held up a gloved hand. “Never mind. It’s painful watching you trying to come up with a story. Here’s what I think…”
“What?”
“I think you weren’t looking for Fairstone’s house.”
“Oh?”
Rebus shook his head. “You were going to do some sniffing. See if you could conduct a little private investigation, maybe track down friends, people who’d known him… Maybe someone like Peacock Johnson. How am I doing?”
“Why would I do that?”
“I get the feeling you’re not convinced Fairstone’s dead.”
“Male intuition again?”
“You hinted as much when I phoned you.”
She gnawed her bottom lip.
“Want to talk about it?” he offered quietly.
She looked down into her lap. “I got a message.”
“What sort of message?”
“It was signed ‘Marty,’ waiting for me at St. Leonard’s.”
Rebus was thoughtful. “Then I know just the thing to do.”
“What?”
“Head back into town and I’ll show you…”
What he had to show her was the High Street, and Gordon’s Trattoria, where they stayed open late, serving strong coffee and pasta. Rebus and Siobhan slid into an empty booth, either side of the tight-fitting table, ordering double espressos.
“Make mine decaf,” Siobhan remembered to say.
“What’s with the unleaded?” Rebus asked.
“I’m trying to cut down.”
He accepted this. “Anything to eat, or is that verboten, too?”
“I’m not hungry.”
Rebus decided that he was and ordered a seafood pizza, warning Siobhan that she’d have to help him out with it. The back half of Gordon’s was the restaurant, only one voluble table left sitting, polishing off digestifs. Where Rebus and Siobhan sat, near the front door, it was all booths and snacks.
“So tell me again what the message said.”
She sighed and repeated it for him.
“And the postmark was local?”
“Yes.”
“First- or second-class stamp?”
“What does it matter?”
Rebus shrugged. “Fairstone struck me as definitely second-class.” He watched her. She looked tired and wired at the same time, a potentially fatal conjunction. Unbidden, the image of Andy Callis came to his mind.
“Maybe Ray Duff will shed some light,” Siobhan was saying.
“If anyone can, it’s Ray.”
The coffee arrived. Siobhan lifted hers to her lips. “They’re going to string you up tomorrow, aren’t they?”
“Maybe,” he said. “Whatever happens, I think you should keep well clear. That means not talking to Fairstone’s friends. If the Complaints catch you, they’ll smell a plot.”
“You definitely think it was Fairstone who died in that fire?”
“No reason not to.”
“Apart from the message.”
“It wasn’t his style, Siobhan. He wouldn’t have posted a letter, he’d have come straight to you, same as all the other times.”
She considered this. “I know,” she said at last.
There was a lull in the conversation, both of them sipping the strong, bitter coffee. “Sure you’re all right?” Rebus eventually asked.
“Fine.”
“Sure?”
“Do you want it in writing?”
“I want you to mean it.”
Her eyes had darkened, but she didn’t say anything. The pizza arrived, and Rebus cut it into slices, cajoling her into taking one. There was silence again as they ate. The drunken table was leaving, laughing noisily all the way into the street. Closing the door, their waiter raised his eyes to heaven, giving thanks that the restaurant was quiet again.
“Everything okay over here?”
“Fine,” Rebus said, eyes on Siobhan.
“Fine,” she repeated, holding his gaze.
Siobhan said she’d give him a lift home. Getting into the car, Rebus glanced at his watch: eleven o’clock.
“Can we get the news headlines?” he asked. “See if Port Edgar’s still the main story.”
She nodded, switched on the radio.
“… where a candlelit vigil is being held tonight. Our reporter, Janice Graham, is at the scene…”
“Tonight, in South Queensferry, the residents are making their voices heard. Hymns will be sung, and the local Church of Scotland minister will be joined by the school chaplain. Candles may be a problem, however, as there’s a stiff breeze blowing from the Firth of Forth. For all of that, a sizable crowd is already beginning to gather, with local MSP Jack Bell in attendance. Mr. Bell, whose son was wounded in the tragedy, is hoping to gather support for his gun legislation campaign. Here’s what he said earlier…”
Stopped at a red light, Rebus and Siobhan shared a look. Then she nodded, no words needed between them. When the light changed to green, she drove across the intersection, pulled over to the side of the road, and waited for traffic to clear before doing a U-turn.
The vigil was being held outside the school gates. A few flickering candles were managing to stay lit, but most people knew better and had brought flashlights. Siobhan double-parked next to a news van. The crews were out in force: TV cameras, microphones, flashbulbs. But they were outnumbered ten to one by singers and the merely curious.
“Got to be four hundred people here,” Siobhan said.
Rebus nodded. The road was completely blocked by bodies. A few uniformed constables were standing on the periphery, hands behind their backs in what was probably meant as a gesture of respect. Rebus saw that Jack Bell had been pulled to one side so that he could share his views with half a dozen journalists, who were busily nodding and scribbling, filling sheet after sheet of their notebooks as he talked.
“Nice touch,” Siobhan said. Rebus saw what she meant: Bell was wearing a black armband.
“Subtle, definitely,” he agreed.
At that moment, Bell looked up and noticed them, eyes staying on them as he continued his oration. Rebus started winding his way through the crowd, standing on tiptoe to view the scene immediately in front of the gates. The church minister was tall, young, and in good voice. Next to him stood a much smaller woman of similar age. Rebus guessed that this was the chaplain of Port Edgar Academy. A hand tugged at his arm, and he looked to his immediate left, where Kate Renshaw was standing, well-wrapped against the cold, a pink woolen scarf muffling her mouth. He smiled and nodded. A couple of men nearby, their singing enthusiastic but off-key, looked to have come directly from one of South Queensferry’s hostelries. Rebus could smell beer and cigarettes in the air. One man jabbed his friend in the ribs, nodding towards a roving TV camera. They straightened up and sang all the louder.
Rebus didn’t know if they were local or not. Sightseers possibly. Hoping to catch a glimpse of themselves on the box over tomorrow morning’s breakfast…
The hymn finished, and the chaplain started saying a few words, her voice faint, hardly carrying as a strong wind started gusting in from the coast. Rebus looked at Kate again and gestured towards the back of the crowd. She followed him to where Siobhan was standing on the periphery. A cameraman had climbed up onto the school’s perimeter wall to get an overview of the crowd and was being told to come down again by one of the uniforms.
“Hi there, Kate,” Siobhan said. Kate pulled her scarf down.
“Hello,” she said.
“Your dad not here?” Rebus asked. Kate shook her head.
“He’ll hardly set foot outside the house.” She folded her arms around herself, bounced on her toes, feeling the chill.
“Good turnout,” Rebus said, eyes on the crowd.
Kate nodded. “I’m amazed how many of them know who I am. They keep saying how sorry they are about Derek.”
“Something like this, it can bring people together,” Siobhan said.
“If it didn’t… well, what would that say about us?” Someone else had caught her attention. “Sorry, I’ve got to…” She started walking over towards the huddle of journalists. It was Bell, Bell who had gestured for her to join him. He put an arm around her shoulder as more flashguns lit the hedgerow behind them. Wreaths and bunches of flowers had been left there, with fluttering messages and snapshots of the victims.
“… and it’s thanks to the support of people like her that I think we stand a chance. More than a chance, in fact, because something like this can-and should-never be tolerated in what we like to call a civilized society. We never want to see it happen again, and that’s why we’re taking this stand…”
When Bell paused to show the journalists the clipboard he was holding, the questions started. He kept a protective arm on Kate’s shoulders as she answered them. Protective, Rebus wondered, or proprietary?
“Well,” Kate was saying, “the petition’s a good idea…”
“An excellent idea,” Bell corrected her.
“… but it’s only the start. What’s really needed is action, action from the authorities to stop guns getting into the wrong hands.” At the word “authorities,” she glanced towards Rebus and Siobhan.
“If I can just give you some figures,” Bell interrupted again, brandishing the clipboard, “gun crime is on the increase-we all know that. But the statistics don’t begin to tell the story. Depending on who you listen to, you’ll hear that gun crime is rising at ten percent a year, or twenty percent, or even forty percent. Any rise whatsoever is not only bad news, not only a shameful blot on the records of police and intelligence-gathering resources, but, more important -”
“Kate, if I could just ask you,” one of the journalists butted in, “how do you think you can get the government to listen to the victims?”
“I’m not sure I can. Maybe it’s time to ignore the government altogether and appeal directly to the people who’re actually doing the shooting, the people selling these guns, bringing them into the country…”
Bell pitched his voice even louder. “As far back as 1996, the Home Office reckoned that two thousand guns per week-per week-were coming into the UK illegally… many of them through the Channel Tunnel. Since the Dunblane ban came into force, handgun crimes have increased forty percent…”
“Kate, if we could ask you for your opinion of…”
Rebus had turned away, walking back to Siobhan’s car. When she caught up with him, he was lighting a cigarette, or trying to. The wind meant his lighter kept sputtering.
“Going to help me?” he asked.
“No.”
“Cheers.”
But she relented, holding her coat open so that he could shelter himself long enough to get the cigarette lit. He nodded his thanks.
“Seen enough?” she asked.
“Reckon we’re every bit as bad as the ghouls?”
She considered this, then shook her head. “We’re interested parties.”
“That’s one way of putting it.”
The crowd was beginning to disperse. Many were lingering to study the hedgerow’s makeshift shrine, but others started passing the spot where Rebus and Siobhan stood. The faces were solemn, resolute, tear-stained. One woman was hugging both her preteen children to her, the kids bemused, perhaps wondering what they’d done to bring on their mother’s sobs. An elderly man, leaning heavily on a walker, seemed determined to walk the route home without any other help, shaking his head at the many who offered.
A group of teenagers had come dressed in their Port Edgar uniforms. Rebus didn’t doubt they’d been captured by a few dozen cameras since their arrival. The girls’ mascara had run. The boys looked awkward, as if regretting coming. Rebus looked for Miss Teri but didn’t see her.
“Isn’t that your friend?” Siobhan said, gesturing with her head. Rebus studied the crowd again, saw immediately who she meant.
Peacock Johnson, part of the procession heading back into town. And beside him, a full foot shorter, Evil Bob. Bob had removed his baseball cap for the duration, showing the balding crown of his head. Now, he was fixing the cap back into place. Johnson had dressed down for the occasion: a gray shimmering shirt, silk maybe, beneath a full-length black raincoat. There was a black string tie around his neck, fixed with a silver clasp. He, too, had removed his headgear-a gray trilby-which he held in both hands, running his fingers around its rim.
Johnson seemed to sense that he was being stared at. When his eyes met Rebus’s, Rebus crooked a finger at him. Johnson said something to his lieutenant, the pair of them threading their way through the throng.
“Mr. Rebus, paying your respects like the true gentleman you doubtless perceive yourself to be.”
“That’s my excuse… what’s yours?”
“The selfsame, Mr. Rebus, the selfsame.” He made a little bow at the waist in Siobhan’s direction.
“Lady friend or colleague?” he asked Rebus.
“The latter,” Siobhan answered.
“No requirement for the two to be, as they say, mutually exclusive.” He grinned at her while sliding his hat back on.
“See that guy over there?” Rebus said, nodding towards where Jack Bell was finishing his interview. “If I told him who you are and what you do, he’d have a field day.”
“Mr. Bell, you mean? First thing we did when we got here was sign his petition, isn’t that right, wee man?” Looking down at his companion. Bob didn’t seem to understand but nodded anyway. “Clear conscience, you see,” Johnson continued.
“Doesn’t begin to explain what you’re doing here… unless that conscience of yours is guilty rather than clear.”
“A low blow, if you don’t mind me saying.” Johnson winced for effect. “Say good night to the nice detectives,” he said, patting Evil Bob’s shoulder.
“Good night, nice detectives.” A wet smile appearing on the overfed face. Peacock Johnson had joined the crowd again, head bowed as if in Christian contemplation. Bob fell in a couple of paces behind his master, for all the world like a pet being taken for a walk.
“What do we make of that?” Siobhan asked.
Rebus shook his head slowly.
“Maybe your comment about guilt isn’t wide of the mark.”
“Be nice to nail the bastard for something.”
She gave him a questioning look, but his attention had turned to Jack Bell, who was whispering something in Kate’s ear. Kate nodded, and the MSP gave her a hug.
“Reckon she’s got a future in politics?” Siobhan mused.
“I hope to Christ that’s the attraction,” Rebus muttered, showing his cigarette stub little mercy as he ground it under his heel.