A winter night, screaming out of Edinburgh.
The front car was being chased by three others. In the chasing cars were police officers. Sleet was falling through the darkness, blowing horizontally. In the second of the police cars, Inspector John Rebus had his teeth bared. He gripped the doorhandle with one hand, and the front edge of his passenger seat with the other. In the driver’s seat, Chief Inspector Frank Lauderdale seemed to have shed about thirty years. He was a youth again, enjoying the feeling of power which came from driving fast, driving a wee bit crazy. He sat well forward, peering through the windscreen.
‘We’ll get them!’ he yelled for the umpteenth time. ‘We’ll get the bastards!’
Rebus couldn’t unlock his jaw long enough to form a reply. It wasn’t that Lauderdale was a bad driver … Well OK, it wasn’t just that Lauderdale was a bad driver; the weather bothered Rebus too. When they’d taken the second roundabout at the Barnton Interchange, Rebus had felt the car’s back wheels losing all grip on the slick road surface. The tyres weren’t brand new to start with; probably retreads at that. The air temperature was near zero, the sleet lying treacherously in wait. They were out of the city now, leaving traffic lights and junctions behind. A car chase here should be safer. But Rebus didn’t feel safe.
In the car in front were two young, keen uniforms, with a DS and a DC in the car behind. Rebus looked into the wing mirror and saw headlights. He looked out of the passenger-side window and saw nothing. Christ, it was dark out there.
Rebus thought: I don’t want to die in the dark.
A telephone conversation the previous day.
‘Ten grand and we let your daughter go.’
The father licked his lips. ‘Ten? That’s a lot of money.’
‘Not to you.’
‘Wait, let me think.’ The father looked at the pad, where John Rebus had just scribbled something. ‘It’s short notice,’ he told the caller. Rebus was listening on an earpiece, staring at the tape recorder’s silently turning spools.
‘That attitude could get her hurt.’
‘No … please.’
‘Then you’d better get the money.’
‘You’ll bring her with you?’
‘We’re not cheats, mister. She’ll be there if the money is.’
‘Where?’
‘We’ll phone tonight with details. One last thing, no police, understand? Any sign, even a distant siren, and next time you see her’ll be the Co-op funeral parlour.’
‘We’ll get them!’ Lauderdale shouted.
Rebus felt his jaw unlock. ‘All right, we’ll get them. So why not ease off?’
Lauderdale glanced at him and grinned. ‘Lost your bottle, John?’ Then he jerked the wheel and pulled out to overtake a transit van.
The phone caller had sounded young, working-class. In his mouth, ‘understand’ had become unnerstaun. He’d spoken of the Co-op. He’d used the word ‘mister’. Young working class, maybe a bit naive. Rebus just wasn’t sure.
‘Fife Police are waiting the other side of the bridge, right?’ he persisted, shouting above the engine whine. Lauderdale had the poor gearbox pounding away in third.
‘Right,’ Lauderdale agreed.
‘Then what’s our hurry?’
‘Don’t be soft, John. They’re ours.’
Rebus knew what his superior meant. If the front car made it over the Forth Road Bridge, then it was in Fife, and Fife Constabulary were waiting, a roadblock erected. It would be a Fife collar.
Lauderdale was on the radio, talking to the car ahead. His one-handed driving was only a little worse than his two-handed, shaking Rebus from side to side. Lauderdale put the radio down again.
‘What do you reckon?’ he said. ‘Will they come off at Queensferry?’
‘I don’t know,’ Rebus said.
‘Well, those two L-plates in front think we’ll catch them at the toll booths if they decide to go all the way.’
They probably would go all the way, too, driven by fear and adrenaline. The combination tended to put blinkers on your survival mechanism. You ran straight ahead, without thought or deviation. All you knew was flight.
‘You could at least put on your seatbelt,’ Rebus said.
‘I could,’ said Lauderdale. But he didn’t. Boy racers didn’t wear seatbelts.
The final slip-road was coming up. The front car sped past it. There was nowhere to go now but the bridge. The roadlighting high overhead grew thick again as they neared the toll booths. Rebus had a crazy notion of the fugitives stopping to pay their toll, just like everyone else. Winding down the window, fumbling for the coins …
‘They’re slowing.’
The road was spreading out, suddenly half a dozen lanes wide. Ahead of them stood the row of toll booths, and beyond that the bridge itself, curving up towards its midpoint as the steel coils held its carriageway in suspension, so that even on a clear, bright day you couldn’t see the far end when you drove on to it.
‘They’re definitely slowing.’
Only yards separated the four cars now, and Rebus could see, for the first time in a while, the back of the car they were chasing. It was a Y-registration Ford Cortina. The overhead lighting allowed him to make out two heads, driver and passenger, both male.
‘Maybe she’s in the boot,’ he said dubiously.
‘Maybe,’ Lauderdale agreed.
‘If she’s not in the car with them, they can’t harm her.’
Lauderdale nodded, not really listening, then reached for the radio again. There was a lot of interference. ‘If they go on to the bridge,’ he said, ‘that’s it, dead end. There’s no way off for them, unless the Fifers fuck up.’
‘So we stay here?’ Rebus suggested. Lauderdale just laughed. ‘Thought not,’ said Rebus.
But now something was happening. The suspects’ car … red tail-lights. Were they braking? No, reversing, and at speed. They hit the front police car with force, sending it shunting into Lauderdale’s.
‘Bastards!’
Then the front car was off again, veering crazily. It headed for one of the closed booths, hitting the barrier, not snapping it off but bending it enough to squeeze through. The sound of metal sparking against metal, and then they were gone. Rebus couldn’t believe it.
‘They’re on the wrong carriageway!’
And so they were, whether by accident or design. Picking up speed, the car was racing north along the southbound lanes, its headlights switched to full beam. The front police car hesitated, then followed. Lauderdale looked ready to do the same thing, but Rebus reached out a hand and tugged with all his might on the steering-wheel, bringing them back into the northbound lane.
‘Stupid bastard!’ Lauderdale spat, slamming the accelerator hard.
It was late night, not much traffic about. Even so, the driver of the front car was taking some risk.
‘They’ll only have this carriageway blocked, won’t they?’ Rebus pointed out. ‘If those lunatics make it to the other side, they could get away.’
Lauderdale didn’t say anything. He was looking across the central reservation, keeping the other two cars in sight. When he reached out for the radio, he all but lost control. The car jolted right, then harder to the left, slamming the metal side-rails. Rebus didn’t want to think about the Firth of Forth, hundreds of feet below. But he thought of it anyway. He’d walked across the bridge a couple of times, using the footpaths either side of the roadways. That had been scary enough, the ever-present wind threatening to gust you over the side. He felt a charge in his toes: a fear of heights.
On the other carriageway, the inevitable was happening, the incredible just about to begin. An articulated lorry, up to speed after a crawl to the top of the rise, saw headlights ahead of it where no headlights should be. The suspects’ car had already squeezed past two oncoming cars, and would have slipped into the outside lane to pass the artic, but the artic’s driver panicked. He pulled into the outside lane and his hands froze, foot still hard on the accelerator. The truck hit metal and started to rise. It went up into the air, hanging over the central reservation, which was itself a network of steel lines. The trailer snagged and the cab snapped forward, breaking free of its container and sailing into the northbound lanes, sliding on sparks and a spray of water, directly into the path of the car in which Lauderdale and Rebus were travelling.
Lauderdale did his best to hit the brakes, but there was nowhere to go. The cab was sliding diagonally, taking up both lanes. Nowhere to go. Rebus had a couple of seconds to take it in. He felt his whole being contract, everything trying to be where his scrotum was. He pulled his knees up, feet and hands against the dashboard, tucking his head against his legs …
Whump.
With his eyes screwed shut, all Rebus had to go on were noises and feeling. Something punched him in the cheekbone, then was gone. There was a shattering of glass, like ice cracking, and the sound of metal being tortured. His gut told him the car was travelling backwards. There were other sounds too, further away. More metal, more glass.
The artic cab had lost a lot of its momentum, and contact with the car stopped it dead. Rebus thought his spine would crack. Whiplash, did they call it? More like brick-lash, slab-lash. The car stopped, and the first thing he realised was that his jaw hurt. He looked over to the driver’s seat, reckoning Lauderdale had landed one on him for some unspecified reason, and saw that his superior wasn’t there any more.
Well, his arse was there, staring Rebus in the face from its unpromising position where the windscreen used to be. Lauderdale’s feet were tucked beneath the steering-wheel. One of his shoes had come off. His legs were draped over the steering-wheel itself. As for the rest of him, that was lying on what was left of the bonnet.
‘Frank!’ Rebus cried. ‘Frank!’ He knew better than to pull Lauderdale back into the car; knew better than to touch him at all. He tried opening his door, but it wasn’t a door any more. So he undid his seatbelt and squeezed out through the windscreen. His hand touched metal, and he felt a sizzling sensation. Cursing and drawing his hand away, he saw he’d placed it on a section of uncovered engine-block.
Cars were pulling to a stop behind him. The DS and DC were running forwards.
‘Frank,’ Rebus said quietly. He looked at Lauderdale’s face, bloody but still alive. Yes, he was sure Lauderdale was alive. There was just something … He wasn’t moving, you couldn’t even be sure he was breathing. But there was something, some unseen energy which hadn’t departed. Not yet at any rate.
‘You all right?’ someone asked.
‘Help him,’ Rebus ordered. ‘Get an ambulance. And check the lorry-cab, see how the driver is.’
Then he looked across to the other carriageway, and what he saw froze him. He couldn’t be sure at first, not totally. So he climbed up on to the metal spars separating the two carriageways. And then he was sure.
The suspects’ car had left the carriageway. Left it altogether. They’d somehow vaulted the crash-barrier, slid across the pedestrian walkway, and had enough velocity left to send them through the final set of railings, the ones separating the walkway from that drop to the Firth of Forth. A wind was whipping around Rebus, blowing the sleet into his eyes. He narrowed them and looked again. The Cortina was still there, hanging out into space, its front wheels through the rails but its back wheels and boot still on the walkway. He thought of what might be in the boot.
‘Oh my God,’ he said. Then he started to clamber over the thick metal tines.
‘What are you doing?’ someone yelled. ‘Come back!’
But Rebus kept moving, only barely aware of the drop beneath him, the amounts of space between each metal bar and its neighbour. More space than metal. The cold metal felt good against his stinging palm. He passed the back of the lorry. It had come to rest on its side, half on the roadway, half resting on the central gap. There was a sign on its side: Byars Haulage. Jesus, it was cold. That wind, that damned eternal wind. Yet he could feel he was sweating. I should be wearing a coat, he thought. I’ll catch my death.
Then he was on the carriageway, where a line of cars had come to an untidy stop. There was a proper gap between carriageway and walkway; a short distance, but all of it fresh air. Where the Cortina had made contact it had buckled the rails. Rebus stepped on to them, then made the short leap on to the walkway.
The two teenagers had stumbled from their car.
They’d had to climb over their seats and into the back in order to get out. The front doors led only to a fall. They were looking to left and right, seized by fright. There were sirens to the north. Fife Police were on their way.
Rebus held up his hands. The two uniformed officers were behind him. The youths weren’t looking at Rebus; all they could see were uniforms. They understood simple things. They understood what uniforms meant. They looked around again, looking for an escape that wasn’t there, then one of them — fair-haired, tall, slightly older-looking — gripped the younger one’s hand and started leading him backwards.
‘Don’t do anything daft, sons,’ said one of the uniforms. But they were just words. Nobody was listening. The two teenagers were against the rails now, only ten feet or so from the crashed car. Rebus walked slowly forwards, pointing with his finger, making it clear to them that he was going to the car. The impact had caused the boot to spring open an inch. Rebus carefully lifted it and looked in.
There was nobody inside.
As he closed the boot, the car rocked on its fulcrum then came to rest again. He looked towards the older of the boys.
‘It’s freezing out here,’ he said. ‘Let’s get you into a car.’
Then things happened in slow motion. The fair-haired boy shook his head, almost smiling, and placed his arms around his friend in what looked like nothing less than an embrace. Then he leaned back against the rail and just kept leaning, taking his friend with him. There was no resistance. Their cheap trainers held against the road surface for a second, then slipped, legs flicking up and over as they fell into the darkness.
Maybe it was suicide, maybe flight, Rebus thought later. Whatever it was meant to be, it was death for sure. When you hit water from that height, it was like hitting concrete. A fall like that, through the dark, and they didn’t scream, didn’t utter a sound, and couldn’t see the water rising to meet them.
Only they didn’t hit water.
A Royal Navy frigate had just left Rosyth Dockyard and was gliding out towards the sea, and that’s what they hit, embedding themselves in the metal deck.
Which, as everyone said back at the station, saved the police frogmen from a thankless sub-zero dip.
They took Rebus to the Royal Infirmary.
He travelled in the back of a police car. Frank Lauderdale was being brought by ambulance. Nobody knew yet how bad his injuries were. The frigate had been contacted by radio from Rosyth, but the crew had already found the bodies. Some had heard them hitting the deck. The frigate was returning to base. It would take a while to hammer the deck back into shape.
‘I feel like I’ve been hit with a hammer myself,’ Rebus told the nurse at the infirmary. He knew her; she’d treated him for burns a while back, rubbed lotion on and changed the dressings. She smiled as she left the little booth where he lay on an examining table. When she’d gone, Rebus took another account of himself. His jaw hurt where Lauderdale’s fist had connected prior to flying through the windscreen. The pain seemed to be burrowing deep, like it was getting into the nerves of his teeth. Otherwise he didn’t feel too bad; just shaken. He lifted his hands and held them in front of him. Yes, he could always blame the trembling on the crash, even if he knew he trembled a lot these days, smash or no smash. His palm was blistering nicely. Before putting on a dressing, the nurse had asked how he got the burn.
‘Put my hand on a hot engine,’ he’d explained.
‘Figures.’
Rebus looked and saw what she meant: part of the engine’s serial number had been branded on his flesh.
The doctor finally put in an appearance. It was a busy night. Rebus knew the doctor. His name was George Klasser and he was Polish or something, or at least his parents were. Rebus had always assumed Klasser was a bit too senior to do the night shift, yet here he was.
‘Bitter outside, isn’t it?’ Dr Klasser said.
‘Is that supposed to be funny?’
‘Just making conversation, John. How do you feel?’
‘I think I’m getting toothache.’
‘Anything else?’ Dr Klasser was fussing with the tools of his trade: penlight and stethoscope, a clipboard and non-working Biro. Eventually he was ready to examine the patient. Rebus didn’t put up much of a fight. He was thinking of drinking: the creamy, almost gas-free head on a pint of eighty-bob. The warming aroma from a glass of malt.
‘How’s my chief inspector?’ Rebus asked when the nurse returned.
‘They’re taking X-rays,’ she told him.
‘Car chases at your age,’ Dr Klasser muttered. ‘I blame television.’
Rebus took a good look at him, and realised he hadn’t ever really looked at the man before, not properly. Klasser was in his early forties, steel-haired with a tanned and prematurely ageing face. If you only had head and shoulders to go on, you’d guess he was taller than was actually the case. He looked quite distinguished, which was why Rebus had pegged him for a senior consultant, something like that.
‘I thought only lackeys and L-plates worked nights,’ Rebus commented, while Klasser shone a light in his eyes.
Klasser put down the light and started to squeeze Rebus’s back, prodding it like he was plumping up a cushion.
‘Any pain there?’
‘No.’
‘What about there?’
‘No more than usual.’
‘Hmm … In answer to your question, John, I notice you’re working nights. Does that make you lackey or L-PLATE?’
‘That hurts.’
Dr Klasser smiled.
‘So,’ Rebus said, easing his shirt back on, ‘what’ve I got?’
Klasser found a pen that worked and scribbled something on his clipboard. ‘By my estimate, the way you’re going, you’ve got a year, maybe two.’
The two men stared at one another. Rebus knew precisely what the doctor was talking about.
‘I’m serious, John. You smoke, you drink like a fish, and you don’t exercise. Since Patience stopped feeding you, your diet’s gone to hell. Starch and carbohydrate, saturated fat …’
Rebus tried to stop listening. He knew his drinking was a problem these days precisely because he’d learned self-control. As a result, few people noticed that he had a problem. He was well dressed at work, alert when the occasion demanded, and even visited the gym some lunchtimes. He ate lazily, and maybe too much, and yes, he was back on the cigs. But then nobody was perfect.
‘An uncanny prognosis, Doctor.’ He finished buttoning his shirt, started tucking it into his waistband, then thought better of it. He felt more comfortable with the shirt outside his trousers. He knew he’d feel even more comfortable with his trouser button undone. ‘And you can tell that just by prodding my back?’
Dr Klasser smiled again. He was folding up his stethoscope. ‘You can’t hide that sort of thing from a doctor, John.’
Rebus eased into his jacket. ‘So,’ he said, ‘see you in the pub later?’
‘I’ll be there around six.’
‘Fine.’
Rebus walked out of the hospital and took a deep breath.
It was two-thirty in the morning, about as cold and dark as the night could get. He thought about checking on Lauderdale, but knew it could wait till morning. His flat was just across The Meadows, but he didn’t fancy the walk. The sleet was still falling, beginning to turn to snow, and there was that stabbing wind, like a thug you meet in a narrow lane, one who won’t let you go.
Then a car horn sounded. Rebus saw a cherry-red Renault 5, and inside it DC Siobhan Clarke, waving towards him. He almost danced to the car.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘I heard,’ she said.
‘How come?’ He opened the passenger-side door.
‘I was curious. I wasn’t on shift, but I kept in touch with the station, just to find out what happened at the meet. When I heard about the crash, I got dressed and came down here.’
‘Well, you’re a sight for sore teeth.’
‘Teeth?’
Rebus rubbed his jaw. ‘Sounds crazy, but I think that dunt has given me toothache.’
She started the car. It was lovely and warm. Rebus could feel himself drifting off.
‘Bit of a disaster then?’ she said.
‘A bit.’ They turned out of the gates, heading left towards Tollcross.
‘How’s the CI?’
‘I don’t know. They’re X-raying him. Where are we going?’
‘I’m taking you home.’
‘I should go back to the station.’
She shook her head. ‘I called in. They don’t want you till morning.’
Rebus relaxed a little more. Maybe the painkillers were kicking in. ‘When’s the post-mortem?’
‘Nine-thirty.’ They were on Lauriston Place.
‘There was a shortcut you could have taken back there,’ Rebus told her.
‘It was a one-way street.’
‘Yes, but nobody uses it this time of night.’ He realised what he’d said. ‘Jesus,’ he whispered, rubbing his eyes.
‘So what was it?’ Siobhan Clarke asked. ‘I mean, was it an accident, or were they looking to escape?’
‘Neither,’ Rebus said quietly. ‘If I’d to put money on it, I’d say suicide.’
She looked at him. ‘Both of them?’
He shrugged, then shivered.
At the Tollcross lights they waited in silence until red turned to green. A couple of drunks were walking home, bodies tilted into the wind.
‘Horrible night,’ Clarke said, moving off. Rebus nodded, saying nothing. ‘Will you attend the post-mortem?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can’t say I’d fancy it.’
‘Do we know who they were yet?’
‘Not that I know of.’
‘I keep forgetting, you’re off-duty.’
‘That’s right, I’m off-duty.’
‘What about the car, have we traced that?’
She turned towards him and laughed. It sounded odd to him, there in that stuffy overheated car, that time of night, with all that had gone before. Sudden laughter, as strange a sound as you’d ever hear. He rubbed his jaw and pushed an exploratory finger into his mouth. The teeth he touched seemed solid enough.
Then he saw feet suddenly sweeping out from under two young bodies, the bodies leaning back into space and disappearing. They hadn’t made a sound. No accident, no escape attempt; something fatalistic, something agreed between them.
‘Cold?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘I’m not cold.’
She signalled to turn off Melville Drive. To the left, what he could see of The Meadows was covered in a fresh glaze of slow. To the right was Marchmont, and Rebus’s flat.
‘She wasn’t in the car,’ he said flatly.
‘There was always that possibility,’ Siobhan Clarke said. ‘We don’t even know she’s missing, not for a fact.’
‘No,’ he agreed, ‘we don’t.’
‘Just two daft laddies.’ She’d picked up the expression, but it sounded awkward given her English accent. Rebus smiled in the dark.
And then he was home.
She dropped him outside his tenement door, and refused a half-hearted offer of coffee. Rebus didn’t want her to see the dump he called home. The students had moved out in October, leaving the place not quite his. There were things not quite right, not quite the way he remembered. Cutlery was missing, and had been replaced with stuff he hadn’t seen before. It was the same with the crockery. When he’d moved back here from Patience’s, he’d brought his stuff back in boxes. Most of the boxes were in the hall, still waiting to be unpacked.
Exhausted, he climbed the stairs, opened his door, and walked past the boxes, making straight for the living room and his chair.
His chair was much the same as ever. It had remoulded itself quickly to his shape. He sat down, then got up again and checked the radiator. The thing was barely warm, and there was a racking noise from within. He needed a special key, some tool that would open the valve and let it bleed. The other radiators were the same.
He made himself a hot drink, put a tape into the cassette deck, and got the duvet off his bed. Back at his chair he took off some of his clothes and covered himself with the duvet. He reached down, unscrewed the top from a bottle of Macallan, and poured some into his coffee. He drank the first half of the mug, then added more whisky.
He could hear car engines, and metal twisting, and the wind whistling all around. He could see feet, the soles of cheap trainers, something close to a smile on the lips of a fair-haired teenager. But then the smile became darkness, and everything disappeared.
Slowly, he hugged himself to sleep.
Down at the City Mortuary in the Cowgate Dr Curt was nowhere to be seen, but Professor Gates was already at work.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘you can fall from any height you want; it’s just that last damned half-inch that’s fatal.’
With him around the slab were Inspector John Rebus, Detective Sergeant Brian Holmes, another doctor, and a pathology assistant. The Preliminary Notification of Sudden Death had already been submitted to the Procurator-Fiscal, and now the Sudden Death Report was being prepared on two deceased males, probable identities William David Coyle and James Dixon Taylor.
James Taylor — Rebus looked at the mess over which Professor Gates was fussing and remembered that final embrace. Ain’t it good to know that you’ve got a friend.
The force of the impact of the bodies upon the steel deck of Her Majesty’s naval frigate Descant had turned them from human beings into something more like hairy jam. There was some on the slab — the rest sat in gleaming steel buckets. No next of kin was going to be asked to participate in a formal identification. It was the sort of thing they could just about accomplish by DNA-testing, if such proved necessary.
‘Flatpacks, we call them,’ Professor Gates said. ‘Saw a lot at Lockerbie. Scraped them off the ground and took them to the local ice rink. Handy place, an ice rink, when you suddenly find yourself with two hundred and seventy bodies.’
Brian Holmes had seen bad deaths before, but he was not immune. He kept shuffling his feet and shifting his shoulders, and glaring with hard, judgmental eyes at Rebus, who was humming scraps of ‘You’re So Vain’.
Establishing time, date and place of death was straightforward. Certified cause of death was easy too, though Professor Gates wasn’t sure of the precise wording.
‘Blunt force trauma?’
‘How about boating accident?’ Rebus offered. There were some smiles at that. Like most pathologists, Professor Alexander Gates MD, FRC Path, DMJ (Path), FRCPE, MRCPG, was possessed of a sense of humour as wide as his letter-heading. A quite necessary sense of humour. He didn’t look like a pathologist. He wasn’t tall and cadaverously grey like Dr Curt, but was a bossy, shuffling figure, with the physique of a wrestler rather than an undertaker. He was broad-chested, bull-necked, and had pudgy hands, the fingers of which he delighted in cracking, one at a time or all together.
He liked people to call him Sandy.
‘I’m the one issuing the death certificate,’ he told Brian Holmes, who filled in the relevant box on the rough-up Sudden Death Report. ‘My address care of Police Surgeoncy, Cowgate.’
Rebus and the others watched as Gates made his examination. He was able to confirm the existence of two separate corpses. Samples were taken of veinous blood for grouping, DNA, toxicology, and alcohol. Usually urine samples would be taken also, but that just wasn’t possible, and Gates was even doubtful about the efficacy of blood testing. Vitreous humour and stomach contents were next, along with bile and liver.
Before their eyes, he started to reconstruct the bodies: not so they became identifiable as humans, not entirely, but just so he could be satisfied he had everything the bodies had once had. Nothing missing, and nothing extraneous.
‘I used to love jigsaws when I was a youngster,’ the pathologist said quietly, bent over his task.
Outside it was a dry, freezing day. Rebus remembered liking jigsaws too. He wondered if kids still played with them. The post-mortem over, he stood on the pavement and smoked a cigarette. There were pubs to left and right of him, but none were yet open. His breakfast tot of whisky had all but evaporated.
Brian Holmes came out of the mortuary stuffing a green cardboard file into his briefcase. He saw Rebus rubbing at his jaw.
‘You all right?’
‘Toothache, that’s all.’
It was, too; it was definitely toothache, or at least gum-ache. He couldn’t positively identify any one tooth as the culprit: the pain was just there, swelling below the surface.
‘Give you a lift?’
‘Thanks, Brian, but I’ve got my car.’
Holmes nodded and tugged up his collar. His chin was tucked into a blue lambswool scarf. ‘The bridge is open again,’ he said, ‘one lane southbound.’
‘What about the Cortina?’
‘Howdenhall have it. They’re fingerprinting, just in case she ever was in the car.’
Rebus nodded, saying nothing. Holmes said nothing back.
‘Something I can do for you, Brian?’
‘No, not really. I was just wondering … weren’t you supposed to be at the station first thing?’
‘So?’
‘So why come here instead?’
It was a good question. Rebus looked back at the mortuary doors, remembering the scene all over again. The artic, assuming the crash position, Lauderdale spread across the bonnet, then seeing the other car … a final embrace … a fall.
He shrugged non-committally and made for his car.
Chief Inspector Frank Lauderdale was going to be all right.
That was the good news.
The bad news was that DI Alister Flower was looking for temporary promotion to fill Lauderdale’s shoes.
‘And with the funeral meats not yet cold,’ said Chief Superintendent ‘Farmer’ Watson. He blushed, realising what he’d said. ‘Not that there’s … I mean, no funeral or …’ He coughed into his bunched fist.
‘Flower’s got a point though, sir,’ said Rebus, covering his boss’s embarrassment. ‘It’s just that he’s got the tact of a tomcat. I mean, somebody’ll have to fill in. How long’s Frank going to be out of the game?’
‘We don’t know.’ The Farmer picked up a sheet of paper and read from it. ‘Both legs broken, two broken ribs, broken wrist, concussion: there’s half a page of diagnosis here.’
Rebus rubbed his bruised cheekbone, wondering if it was responsible for the broken wrist.
‘We don’t even know,’ the Farmer went on quietly, ‘whether he’ll walk again. The breaks were pretty severe. Meantime, the last thing I need is Flower and you vying for any temporary promotion it may or may not be in my power to give.’
‘Understood.’
‘Good.’ The Farmer paused. ‘So what can you tell me about last night?’
‘It’ll be in my report, sir.’
‘Of course it will, but I’d prefer the truth. What was Frank playing at?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I mean driving around like the Dukes of Hazzard. We’ve got expendables for that sort of escapade.’
‘We were just maintaining a pursuit, sir.’
‘Of course you were.’ Watson studied Rebus. ‘Nothing you’d like to add to that?’
‘Not much, sir. Except that it was no accident, and they’d no intention of getting away. It was a suicide pact: unspoken, but suicide all the same.’
‘And why would they do that?’
‘I’ve no idea, sir.’
The Farmer sighed and sat back in his chair. ‘John, I think you should know my feelings on all of this.’
‘Yes, sir?’
‘It was an utter balls-up from start to finish.’
… And that was putting it mildly.
They were only there because of power, because of influence, because a favour was asked. That was how it had started: with a discreet call from the city’s Lord Provost to the deputy chief constable of Lothian and Borders Police, requesting that his daughter’s disappearance be investigated.
Not that anything unlawful was hinted at. It wasn’t that she’d been abducted, assaulted, murdered, nothing like that. It was just that she’d walked out of the house one morning and not come back. Yes, she’d left a note. It was addressed to her father and the message was simple: ‘Arseholes, I’m off.’ It was unsigned, but was in the daughter’s handwriting.
Had there been a disagreement? An argument? Strong words? Well, it was impossible to have a teenager in the house without the occasional difference of view. And how old was the Lord Provost’s daughter, little Kirstie Kennedy? There came the crux: she was seventeen, and a mature, well-educated seventeen at that, well able to look after herself and old enough legally to leave home any time she wished. Which should have taken the matter out of the police’s hands, except … except that it was the Lord Provost asking, the Right Honourable Cameron McLeod Kennedy, JP, Councillor for South Gyle.
So the message filtered down from the DCC: take a look for Kirstie Kennedy, but keep it quiet.
Which was, everyone agreed, next to impossible. You didn’t ask questions on the street without rumours starting, people fearing the worst for the subject of your questions. This was the excuse given when the media got hold of the story.
There was a photograph of the daughter, a photo police had been given and which somehow the media got their paws on. The Lord Provost was furious about that. It proved to him that he had enemies within the force. As Rebus could have told him, if you went demanding a favour, someone down the line could come to resent it.
So there she was, on TV and in the papers: little Kirstie Kennedy. Not a very recent photo, maybe two or three years out of date; and the difference between fourteen or fifteen and seventeen was crucial. Rebus, father of a one-time teenage daughter, knew that. Kirstie was grown up now, and the photo would be next to useless in helping trace her.
The Lord Provost quietened the media hubbub by giving a press conference. His wife was with him — his second wife, not Kirstie’s mother; Kirstie’s mother was dead — and she was asked what she’d like to say to the runaway.
‘I’d just like her to know we’re praying for her, that’s all.’
And then came the first phone call.
It wasn’t hard to phone the Lord Provost. He was in the phone book, plus his appointments number was listed alongside every other councillor in a useful pamphlet handed out to tens of thousands of Edinburgh residents.
The caller sounded young, a voice not long broken. He hadn’t given a name. All he’d said was that he had Kirstie, and that he wanted money for her return. He’d even put a girl on the phone. She’d squealed a couple of words before being pulled away. The words had been ‘Dad’ and ‘I’.
The Lord Provost couldn’t be sure it was Kirstie, but he couldn’t not be sure either. He wanted the police’s help again, and they told him to set up a drop with the kidnappers; only there wouldn’t be money waiting for them, there’d be police officers and plenty of them.
The intention wasn’t to confront but to tail. A police helicopter was brought into play, along with four unmarked cars. It should have been easy.
It should have been. But the caller had selected as drop zone a bus stop on the busy Queensferry Road. Lots of fast-moving traffic, and nowhere to stop an unmarked car inconspicuously. The caller had been clever. When it came time for the pick-up, the Cortina had stopped on the other side of the road from the bus stop. The passenger had come hurtling across the road, dodging traffic, picked up the bag full of wads of newspaper, and taken it back to the waiting car.
Three of the police cars were facing the wrong way, and it took a devil of a time to turn them round. But the fourth had radioed back with the suspect car’s whereabouts. The helicopter, of course, had been grounded earlier, the weather being impossible. All of which left Lauderdale — officer in charge — furiously gunning his car to catch up with the race, and shedding years in the process.
Rebus hoped it had been worth it. He hoped Lauderdale, lying strapped up in hospital, would get a thrill from remembering the chase. All it had given Rebus were a sick feeling in the gut, a bad dream, and this damned sore face.
There was a collection going around to buy something for the chief inspector. Pointedly and all too quickly, DI Alister Flower put in a tenner. He was walking around with his chest stuck out and a greasepaint smile on his face. Rebus loathed him more than ever.
Everybody kept looking at Rebus, wondering if he’d be promoted over Flower. Wondering what Rebus would do if Flower suddenly became his boss. The rumours piled up faster than the collection money. It wasn’t even close.
Rebus was not alone in reckoning the kidnapping for a hoax. They’d know for sure very soon, now that they had traced the car, located its owner, discovered that he’d loaned it to two friends and gone to those friends’ shared house only to find nobody home.
The car owner was downstairs in an interview room. They were telling him that if he was straight with them, they’d forget about the car’s lack of proper insurance. He was telling them story after story, the life and times of Willie Coyle and Dixie Taylor. Rebus went down to listen for a while. DS Macari and DC Allder were doing the interview.
‘Detective Inspector Rebus enters, twelve-fifteen hours,’ Macari said for the benefit of the tape recorder. ‘So,’ he said to the seated youth, ‘how did they make out, Willie and Dixie? Both on the broo, but you can always supplement the broo, eh?’
Rebus stood against the wall, trying to appear casual. He even smiled towards the car owner, nodded to let him know everything was all right. The car owner was in his late teens, presentable enough, neatly dressed and groomed. He wore a discreet silver-loop earring in his right ear, but no other jewellery, not even a watch.
‘They got along,’ he said. ‘Like, the dole money’s no’ bad, even social security, you can live on it if you’re careful.’
‘And they were careful?’ Macari paused. ‘Mr Duggan nods his head.’ This again for the tape recorder. ‘So why would they pull a stunt like this?’
Duggan shook his head. ‘I wish I knew. I never got an inkling. Willie’d never asked for a loan of the car before. He said he had something to shift.’
‘What sort of thing?’
‘He didn’t say.’
‘But you loaned him the car anyway.’
‘Like I say, Willie’s the careful sort.’
‘And Dixie?’
Duggan gave the hint of a smile. ‘Well, Dixie’s different. He needed looking after.’
‘What? Was he soft in the head like?’
‘No, he was just laid back. He didn’t … it was hard to get him interested.’ He looked up. ‘It’s hard to put into words.’
‘Just try your best, Mr Duggan.’
‘Ever since school, Willie and Dixie had been best pals. They liked the same music, same comics, same games. They understood one another.’
‘And they shared digs ever since they left home?’ Rebus liked Macari’s style. Around the station they called him ‘Toni’, after the character in Oor Wullie. He’d managed to get Duggan relaxed and talkative; he’d forged a relationship. Rebus wasn’t so sure of Allder; Allder was one of Flower’s men.
‘I think so,’ Duggan was saying. ‘They were right close. We had a book at school once. It had two characters like them in it, one daft and the other not.’
‘Of Mice and Men?’ Rebus offered.
‘I thought that was Burns,’ Allder said.
Rebus indicated to Macari that he was leaving.
‘Inspector Rebus leaves room, twelve-thirty hours. So, Mr Duggan, to get back to the car …’
As ever, Rebus timed his exit just wrong. Alister Flower was walking along the corridor towards him, whistling ‘Dixie’.
‘There’s a lad in there,’ Rebus reminded him, ‘has just lost two pals, one of them called Dixie.’
Flower stopped whistling and barked a short, unpleasant laugh. ‘Must’ve been my, you know, subconscious.’
‘You’ve got to be conscious to have one of those,’ Rebus said, moving away. ‘Which sort of disqualifies you.’
Flower wasn’t letting him off so easily. He caught up with Rebus at the double doors. ‘Things’ll be different when I’m Chief Inspector,’ he snarled.
‘Yes, they will,’ Rebus agreed. ‘Because by then they’ll have cured cancer and put a man on Mars.’
Then he pushed through the doors and was gone.
He drove out to Stenhouse. It was further out of town than he remembered, and nicer too. Quiet, once you came off Gorgie Road. Two-storey semis with tidy front gardens and swept pavements. Some of the doorsteps looked scrubbed; his mother had got down on her knees with all the other women in their cul-de-sac a couple of times a week to scrub the step with hot soapy water or bleach. A dirty front step reflected badly on the home within.
Rebus was more used to central Edinburgh, tenement city. The little suburbia managed to surprise him. Salt had been put down along the pavements and roads. In summer the neighbours would be out gossiping over fences, but this was winter and they were hibernating.
An Edinburgh winter could be a real stayer, starting early in October and lasting into April. The days were not constant: sometimes it was twilight all day; other times, with fresh snow on the ground, the sun’s glare scoured your eyes. People walked everywhere squinting, either peering into the gloom or protecting themselves from the fierce light.
Today was a twilight day, the sky a dull maroon, threatening a fall. Rebus stuffed his hands into his pockets and felt the small paper bag. He’d found an ironmonger’s on Gorgie Road, and had been directed to a specialist shop where he’d been sold a radiator key. Now he looked around, found the house he was looking for, and walked up to the front door.
‘Afternoon sir,’ said Siobhan Clarke, answering his knock. ‘How are you feeling?’
Rebus pushed his way inside. The house wasn’t much warmer than outside. In the living room, Brian Holmes was flipping through a collection of CDs.
‘Anything?’ Rebus asked.
Holmes stood up. ‘There are a few newspapers with items about the Kennedy case. Probably gave them the idea. No sign she’s ever been here. Pretty unlikely she’d run about with dossers like those two. She’s a Gillespie’s girl; Willie and Dixie were strictly comprehensive.’
‘Looks like a straightforward hoax, sir,’ Clarke agreed.
Rebus was looking around. He turned to Clarke. ‘Say you’re a well brought-up wee lassie, good school, nice lifestyle. Say you want to run away from home and just disappear for a while, maybe for ever. Would you take up with people your own class, or would you head downmarket, where nobody’d know you and nobody’d care?’
‘Down to guys like Willie and Dixie you mean?’
Rebus shrugged. ‘I’m only speculating. If you were to ask me, I’d say she’s done what every runner from Scotland does — gone to London.’
‘God help her,’ Holmes said quietly.
‘So, have you finished looking around?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Then don’t let me stop you. In fact, plug that electric fire in and I might even lend a hand.’
Brian Holmes searched in his pockets for coins for the electric meter, then they got to work.
There were two bedrooms, one tidy, the bed made, the other a mess. The tidy room belonged to Willie Coyle, as a letter from the DSS lying by the bed confirmed. There were books on a bookshelf, most of them brand new. Rebus wondered which bookshop had been losing stock recently. He pulled out something called Trainspotting, and saw that there were some sheets of paper hidden behind the row of books. The sheets were stapled at one corner, professionally word-processed with charts and graphs. They seemed to comprise a business report, a plan of some kind.
Holmes looked over his superior’s shoulder. ‘Don’t tell me Willie was an entrepreneur?’
Rebus shrugged, but rolled the report up and put it in his pocket.
‘In here!’ Siobhan Clarke called. By the time they reached her, she was pulling out her haul from beneath Dixie Taylor’s bed. Three disposable syringes, still in their wrappers, a candle burnt to a nub, and a dessert spoon blackened on its bottom.
‘No sign of any skag,’ she said, standing up and straightening her hair.
‘I’ll check beneath the other bed,’ Holmes said.
Rebus was smiling. ‘“Skag”?’ he said. ‘What sort of books have you been reading?’ Then his face turned serious. ‘Better call for backup, give this place a thorough going over.’
‘Right, sir.’
When Rebus was alone in the room, he examined the syringes. There was a fine layer of dust on the packets, and little balls of fluff lay in the spoon. Dixie obviously hadn’t used his works in some time. Rebus went to the bathroom, checking for Methodone or whatever the doctors gave you these days to wean you off. But he found only flu powders, paracetamol, mouthwash. He checked the mail again, but found nothing from any hospital or rehab centre.
Then he phoned Professor Gates and asked about the blood samples.
‘I haven’t had the results yet. Is there a problem?’
‘Possible heroin use,’ Rebus said. ‘At least by one of them.’
‘I could check the bodies again. I wasn’t really looking for puncture marks.’
‘Would you find them if they were there?’
‘Well, as you saw yourself, the bodies aren’t exactly pristine, and IV users are good at hiding their wounds. They’ll inject into the tongue, the penis — ’
‘Well, see what you can do, Professor.’ Rebus put down the phone. He suddenly didn’t feel comfortable indoors, so went to get some air. He lasted thirty seconds outside, then went next door and pushed the bell. A middle-aged woman opened the door, and Rebus started to show her his ID.
‘I know who you are,’ she said. ‘It’s a crying shame, those poor wee lads. Come in, come in.’
Her name was Mrs Tweedie, and she kept a warm house. Rebus sat down on the sofa and rubbed his hands, getting some feeling back into them while avoiding the burn on his palm.
‘Did you know them well, Mrs Tweedie?’
She watched him take out his notebook and pen. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’ he asked.
‘Not at all, but I thought I might make us a cup of tea first. Is that all right?’
That was just fine with John Rebus.
He sat there for over half an hour. The room was so hot he thought he might nod off, but what Mrs Tweedie had to say brought him wide awake.
‘Nice lads, the pair of them. Helped me home with my shopping once, and wouldn’t stop for a cup of tea.’
‘You saw them often?’
‘Well, I saw them coming and going.’
‘Did they keep regular hours? I mean, were they active at night?’
‘I wouldn’t know. I’m not late to bed. They sometimes played their music a bit loud, but all I did was turn up the telly. If they were having a party, they always warned us in advance.’
Rebus brought out the Kirstie photograph. ‘Have you seen this girl before, Mrs Tweedie?’
‘Gracious, yes!’
‘Oh?’
‘I saw her in the Daily Record.’
Rebus felt his hopes sink. ‘But never round here?’
‘No, never. I saw their landlord often though.’
Rebus frowned. ‘I thought these houses were council-owned?’
Mrs Tweedie nodded. ‘So they are.’
Rebus started to get it. ‘But it’s not Willie’s and Dixie’s names in the rent book?’
‘They explained to me that they were … er, sub-something.’
‘Sub-letting?’
‘Aye, that’s it. From the lad who had the house before them.’
‘And what’s his name, Mrs Tweedie?’
‘Well, his first name’s Paul. I don’t know his second. Nice young lad, always smartly dressed. Only thing I didn’t like, he wore one of those …’ She tugged her ear and made a face. ‘Doesn’t look at all right on a man.’
‘Paul Duggan?’ Rebus suggested.
She tried the name out. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘you could be right.’
As Rebus drove out on to Gorgie Road he had a song in his head. It was an old Neil Young number, ‘The Needle and the Damage Done’. He stopped the car in front of the jail to collect his thoughts. An access road ran from Gorgie Road up to the gatehouse, the tall fence, and the solid building behind with its massive door and large clock. Though not yet five o’clock, it was dark, but the prison was well lit. Officially it was HM Prison Edinburgh; but everyone knew it as Saughton Jail. The main building looked like a Victorian workhouse.
They’d have ended up in jail, he thought to himself. They knew even a hoax kidnapping was a serious offence.
Willie Coyle, the taller, the fair-haired of the two. Rebus was imagining what had gone through Willie’s mind in those final seconds before he took the plunge. Dixie and he would go to jail. They’d almost certainly be separated: different wings if not different jails. Dixie would have no one to look after him. Rebus thought of Lenny in Of Mice and Men. Dixie had been an injector, maybe he’d been helped off, helped by his friend Willie. But in Scotland’s jails, there were plenty of drugs. Of course, you’d have to have something to trade, and a boy Dixie’s age always had something to trade.
Had Willie weighed up the options? And had he then hugged his friend, hugged him to death? Rebus was beginning to like Willie Coyle. He was wishing he wasn’t dead.
But he was, they both were. Cold and commingled on the slab, leaving not much behind except the fact that Paul Duggan was a very cool customer indeed. Rebus would be talking to Paul Duggan, sooner rather than later. But for now he had other people to see, another appointment. It was the one appointment he’d known all day he would keep, come hell or high water.
There was a gas-fire, the kind that gave out actual flames, burning in what looked like the original grate; and smoke too, though the smoke came from cigarettes and pipes. The TV was on, all but drowned out by the live music. As often happened on a winter’s evening, Edinburgh’s folk musicians managed to find themselves in the same pub at the same time. They were playing in a corner: three fiddles, a squeeze-box, a bodhran, and a flute. The flautist was the only woman. The men were bearded and ruddy-cheeked and wore thick-knit jumpers. The pints on their table were three-quarters full. The woman was thin and pale with long brown hair, but her cheeks were bright from firelight.
A few customers were up dancing, arms linked and birling in what space there was. Rebus liked to think they were just keeping warm, but in fact they looked like they were having fun.
‘Three more halfs and a couple of nips,’ he told the barman.
‘And what are your friends drinking?’
‘Ha ha,’ said Rebus. He was flanked at the bar by his drinking companions, George Klasser and Donny Dougary. While Klasser was known as ‘Doc’, Dougary was called ‘Salty’. Rebus didn’t know either of them very well outside the confines of the pub, but most evenings between six and half-seven they were the best of pals. Salty Dougary was trying to be heard above the general confusion.
‘So what I’m saying is, you can go anywhere on the superhighway, anywhere, and in future it’ll be even bigger. You’ll do your shopping by computer, you’ll watch telly on it, play games, listen to music … and everything will be there. I can talk to the White House if I want: I can download stuff from all over the world. I sit there at my desk and I can travel anywhere.’
‘Can you travel to the pub by computer, Salty?’ a drinker further down the bar asked.
Salty ignored him and held his thumb and forefinger a couple of inches apart. ‘Hard disks the size of credit cards, you’ll have a whole PC in the palm of your hand.’
‘You shouldn’t say that to a policeman, Salty,’ George Klasser offered, causing laughter. He turned to Rebus.
‘How’s that tooth?’
‘The anaesthetic helps,’ Rebus said, tipping the last of his whisky into his mouth.
‘I hope you’re not mixing alcohol and painkillers.’
‘Would I do that? Salty, give the man some money.’
Salty stopped talking to himself. The barman was waiting, so he pulled out a ten-pound note, watching its sad ebbing as it flowed into the till. Salty was called Salty because of salt and sauce, which were what you put on your chip-shop supper. The connection being chips, since Salty worked in an electronics factory in South Gyle. He’d been a late arrival in ‘Silicon Glen’, and was hoping the industry would continue to prosper. Six factories before this one had closed on him, leaving long periods of jobless space between them. He still remembered the days when money was tight — ‘I could have collected Social Security for Scotland’ — and watched his money accordingly. He made microchips these days, feeding an assembly plant on Clydeside and another in Gyle Park West.
‘Ye dancing?’
Rebus half turned to see a woman grinning toothlessly at him. He thought her name was Morag. She was married to the man with the tartan shoelaces.
‘Not tonight,’ he said, trying to look flattered. You could never tell with the man with the tartan shoelaces: dance with his wife and you were flirting; turn her down and you were, by implication, snubbing him. Rebus rested his foot on the polished brass bar-rail and drank his drinks.
By eight o’clock, both Doc and Salty had left, and an old guy in a shapeless bunnet was standing next to Rebus. The man had forgotten his false teeth, and his cheeks were sunken. He was telling Rebus about American history.
‘I like it, ken. Just American, not any other kind.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Eh?’
‘Why just American?’
The man licked his lips. He wasn’t focusing on Rebus, or on anything in the bar. You couldn’t be sure he was even focusing on the present day.
‘Well,’ he said at last, ‘I suppose it’s because of the Westerns. I love Westerns. Hopalong Cassidy, John Wayne … I used to like Hopalong Cassidy.’
‘Could It Be Forever,’ said Rebus, ‘that was one of his.’
Then he finished his drink and went home.
The telephone was ringing. Rebus considered not answering; resistance lasted all of ten seconds.
‘Hello?’
‘Hello, Dad.’
He flopped into his chair. ‘Hello, Sammy. Where are you?’ She paused too long. ‘Still at Patience’s, eh? How are you?’
‘Fine.’
‘How’s work?’
‘You really want to know?’
‘Just being polite.’ Fatherly, he thought suddenly: I should have said fatherly, not polite. Sometimes he wished life had a rewind function.
‘Well, I won’t bore you with the details then.’
‘I take it Patience is out?’ It stood to reason: Sammy never called when she was home.
‘Yes, she’s out with … I mean at something. She’s out at something.’
Rebus smiled. ‘What you really mean is that she’s out with someone.’
‘I’m not very good at this.’
‘Don’t blame yourself, blame your genes. Do you want to meet?’
‘Not tonight, I’m dog-tired. Patience asked … she wondered if you’d like to come to tea some day. She thinks we should see more of one another.’
As usual, thought Rebus, Patience was right. ‘I’d like that. When?’
‘I’ll ask Patience and get back to you. Deal?’
‘Deal.’
‘Well, I’m off for an early night. What about you?’
Rebus looked down at his chair. ‘I’m already there. Sleep tight.’
‘You too, Dad. Love you.’
‘You too, pet,’ Rebus said quietly, but only after he’d put down the phone.
He went over to the hi-fi. After a drink, he liked to listen to the Stones. Women, relationships, and colleagues had come and gone, but the Stones had always been there. He put the album on and poured himself a last drink. The guitar riff, one of easily half a dozen in Keith’s tireless repertoire, kicked the album off. I don’t have much, Rebus thought, but I have this. He thought of Lauderdale in his hospital bed; Patience out enjoying herself; Kirstie Kennedy in a Charing Cross cardboard-box. Then he saw cheap trainers, a final embrace, and Willie Coyle’s face.
Rebus just couldn’t seem to drink him off his mind.
He remembered the report he’d found hidden in Willie’s bedroom. It was on the kitchen worktop, and he went to fetch it. It was a business plan, something to do with a computer software company called LABarum. The text explained that the dictionary definition of ‘labarum’ was ‘moral standard or guide’, and the reason the company would use upper case for the first three letters was to emphasise Lothian And Borders. The business plan discussed future development, costings, projected balance sheet, employment range. It was dry, and it was couched in the conditional. Rebus got out the phone book but found no listing anywhere for LABarum.
Someone had been working on the text, underlining some phrases, circling words, doing jotted calculations beside the graphs and bar charts. Sentences had been deleted in red pen, words changed. Some points had been ticked. Rebus couldn’t know if the handwriting was Willie Coyle’s. He didn’t know if Willie had owned such a thing as a red Biro. But he did wonder what such a document was doing hidden in Willie Coyle’s bedroom. When he turned to the last sheet, there was a word scrawled diagonally across it and underlined heavily. The word was DALGETY. He flipped through the report again but found no other mention of Dalgety. Was it a person, a place, another company? The word was scored into the paper in blue ink. It was impossible to say if it was in the same hand as the amendments and marginalia.
He poured another drink — this would be his last — and flipped the album over. He was annoyed, more with himself than anyone. It was case closed after all: a couple of desperate hoaxers fell off a bridge and died. That was all. He should have cleared it from his mind by now. Yet he couldn’t.
‘Damn you, Willie,’ he said out loud. He sat down again with his drink and picked up the business plan. There were a couple of letters in the top right-hand corner, written faintly in pencil. CK. He wondered if they were an abbreviation for ‘check’.
‘Who cares?’ he said, trying to concentrate on the music. What a shambles the band were, yet sometimes they could get it so exactly right that it hurt.
‘Here’s to you, Willie,’ Rebus said, raising his glass in the air.
It wasn’t till he woke up in the morning freezing that he remembered the radiator key in his jacket pocket. The pipes were gurgling, the boiler roaring away, yet the radiators were barely warm.
He got coffee and a bacon roll from a cafe and had breakfast in his car on the way to work. There was a hard frost on the ground, and the sky was leaden, threatening worse. It had taken him five minutes to scrape the ice off his windscreen, and even so it was like driving a tank, peering through the one clear slit.
A message on his desk warned of a nine-thirty meeting in the Farmer’s office. Rebus felt he deserved another coffee, and made for the canteen. A lone woman sat at a table, slowly stirring a beaker of tea.
‘Gill?’
She looked up. It was Gill Templer. Rebus’s face broke into its first grin of the year. He pulled out a chair and sat down.
‘Hello, John.’ Her eyes were on her drink.
‘I thought you were in Fife.’
‘Yes.’
‘Sex Offences Unit, isn’t it?’
‘That’s it.’
He nodded, trying to ignore the coolness in her tone. ‘You look good.’ He meant it too. Her short dark hair was feather-cut, long crescents sweeping over both ears to her cheeks. Her eyes were emerald green. She hadn’t changed a bit. Gill Templer smiled an acknowledgment but didn’t say anything.
Brian Holmes put a hand on Rebus’s shoulder. ‘Those pathology tests have come in.’
‘Oh?’
Holmes went to fetch himself coffee and a dough-ring, Rebus following. ‘So what’s the news?’ he asked.
Holmes took a bite out of his dough-ring and shrugged. ‘Nothing,’ he mumbled, swallowing. ‘The professor can’t confirm the presence of heroin or any other drug in the blood of either deceased. He thinks he may have a couple of jab marks on one corpse, but they’re not recent.’
‘Which body?’
‘The shorter.’
‘Dixie.’ Rebus lifted his coffee and left Holmes to pay for it. When he turned, Gill Templer wasn’t at the table any more. She had left the beaker of tea untouched.
‘Who was she?’ Holmes asked, tucking change back into his pocket.
‘Someone I used to know.’
‘Well, that narrows things down.’
Rebus picked a new table for them to sit at.
DI Alister Flower looked like he was on his way to a fashion shoot for one of the stores on Princes Street.
‘Run out of dummies, have they?’ Rebus asked, entering Farmer Watson’s office.
Flower was wearing a light blue suit with blue shirt and a black and white tie with a zig-zag motif. He’d set things off with polished brown loafers and what looked like white tennis socks. Rebus sat down next to him and realised his own shoes could do with a polish. There was a speck of grease from the bacon roll on his shirt.
‘I’ve called this meeting,’ the Farmer was saying, ‘to put your minds at rest.’
‘Inspector Flower’s mind’s always at rest, sir,’ Rebus said.
Flower attempted an unselfconscious laugh, and Rebus realised how desperate the man was.
‘See, John,’ said the Farmer, ‘you always have to make a joke of things.’
‘Leave them laughing, sir.’ But the Farmer wasn’t laughing, and Rebus knew what that silence meant — as long as Rebus maintained ‘an attitude’, he’d find promotion impossible.
Which left Alister Flower.
‘Aly,’ the Farmer began. Flower sat to attention; Rebus had never seen the trick before. ‘Aly, can I get you a refill?’
Flower looked at his cup, then gulped the contents down. ‘Please, sir.’
The Farmer got up from his desk, took Flower’s cup, and walked to the coffee machine. He had his back to both men when he spoke.
‘The temporary replacement for Frank Lauderdale will start immediately.’
It hit Rebus then. It was like he’d assumed a new, much greater mass.
‘Her name,’ the Farmer went on, ‘is Gill Templer.’
Flower made straight for the toilets, where he could conduct a swearing match with the mirror. Rebus walked thoughtfully back to the CID room. Gill was already there, reading a pathology report.
‘Congratulations,’ he said.
‘Thank you.’ She kept on reading. He didn’t budge till she stopped and looked up at him. ‘John?’ she said quietly.
‘Yes, boss?’
‘My office.’
Lauderdale’s name was still on the door; they wouldn’t bother with a new plaque, not yet. But Rebus noticed she’d already changed a few things.
‘Don’t bother sitting,’ she said. Rebus brought out a packet of cigarettes. ‘Come on, you know the rules: no smoking.’
He put the cigarette in his mouth. ‘I’ll just suck on it then,’ he said.
She closed the door, then went to Lauderdale’s desk, resting against it, folding her arms.
‘John, there’s a lot of history here.’ Rebus looked around the office. ‘You know what I mean. I hear you and Dr Aitken have split up.’
Rebus took the cigarette out of his mouth. ‘So?’
‘So you’re on the rebound, and I don’t want you thinking I could be your springboard. Don’t go thinking you can jump me a few times before you dive back in the pool.’
Rebus smiled. ‘Did I catch you rehearsing in the canteen?’
‘All I mean is, let’s leave the past well alone, let’s keep things professional.’
‘Fine.’ He put the cigarette back in his mouth.
She went behind the desk and sat down. ‘So, what can you tell me about these two imbeciles who shut the Forth Bridge?’
‘Hoaxers, maybe with debts or a habit to finance. Desperadoes. No sign that they ever knew the girl. Howdenhall checked the car; there are none of her prints inside.’
‘So why were you so interested in the toxicology results?’
‘Was I?’
‘Someone came looking for you in the canteen to tell you they’d arrived.’
Rebus smiled again. ‘I just wonder if maybe they were working for someone else.’
‘Do you have a name?’
‘Paul Duggan. He loaned the desperadoes his car. Plus they were sub-letting his council house.’
‘That’s illegal.’
‘Yes, it is. We might want to ask him a few follow-up questions.’
She thought this over, then nodded. ‘What else are you working on?’
He shrugged. ‘Not a lot, it’s always quiet this time of year.’
‘Let’s hope it stays that way. I know your reputation, John. It was bad enough when I knew you, but the story goes that it’s even worse these days. I don’t want trouble.’
Rebus looked out of the window. It had started snowing. ‘Weather like this,’ he said, ‘there’s never much trouble in Edinburgh, trust me.’
Hugh McAnally was universally known as Wee Shug. He didn’t know why people called Hugh always ended up nicknamed Shug. There were a lot of things he didn’t know, and never would know. He wished he’d spent his time in jail bettering himself. He supposed he’d bettered himself in some ways: he could use machine tools, and knew how a sofa was put together. But he knew he wasn’t educated, not like his cell-mate. His cell-mate had been really clever, a man of substance. Not like Shug at all; chalk and cheese, if you came down to it. But he’d taught Shug a lot. And he’d been a friend. Surrounded by people, a jail could still be a lonely place without a friend.
Then again, what difference would it have made if he’d been brainier? None at all really, not a jot.
But he was going to make a difference to his life this evening.
It was another grievous night, a wind that was like walking through razor-blades.
Councillor Tom Gillespie wasn’t expecting many souls to make the trek to his surgery. He’d get a few complaints from the regulars about frozen and burst pipes, maybe a question about the cold weather allowance, and that would be about it. The constituents in his Warrender ward tended to be self-reliant — or easily cowed, depending on your point of view. Depending on your politics. He smiled across the room towards the extravagance he called a secretary, then studied the art on the classroom walls.
He always held his surgery in this school, third Thursday of every month during term-time. Between consultations he would catch up on correspondence, dictating letters into a hand-held recorder. The Central Members’ Services Division at the City Chambers typed the letters up. For general political matters, matters relating to his party, there was a separate admin assistant.
Which was why, as Gillespie’s wife had pointed out on numerous occasions, a private secretary was such an extravagance. But as the councillor had argued (and he was very good at argument), if he was going to get ahead of the crowd he needed to be busier than the other councillors, and above all he needed to seem to be busier. Short term extravagance, long term gain. You always had to be thinking in the long term.
He used the same rationale when he resigned his job. As he explained to his wife Audrey, half the district councillors had other jobs beside the council, but this meant they could not concentrate all their energies on council or political business. He needed to seem so busy that he had no time for a day job. Council committee meetings took place during the day, and now he was free to attend them.
He had other arguments in his favour, too. By working on council business during the day, his evenings and weekends were relatively free. And besides (and here he would smile and squeeze Audrey’s hand), it wasn’t as if they needed the money. Which was just as well, since his district councillor’s basic allowance was?4,700.
Finally, he would tell her, this was the most important time in local government for twenty years. In seven weeks’ time there would be new elections and the change would begin, turning the City of Edinburgh into a single-tier authority to be called the City of Edinburgh Council. How could he afford not to be at the centre of these changes?
Audrey, though, had won one condition: his secretary should be an older woman, plain and bomely. Helena Profitt fitted that bill.
Thinking of it, he never really won an argument with Audrey, not outright. She just snarled and spat and started slamming doors. He didn’t mind. He needed her money. Her money bought him time. If only it could save him the purgatory of these Thursday nights in the near-deserted school.
His secretary brought her knitting with her, and he could measure how quiet things had been by how much she got done in the hour. He watched her needles work, then went back to the letter he was writing. It wasn’t an easy letter to write; he’d been trying for over a week now. It wasn’t the sort of thing he could trust to dictation, and so far all he’d managed were his address at the top and the date beneath.
The school was quiet, the corridors well lit, the radiators burning away. The caretaker was busy somewhere, as were four cleaners. When the cleaners and the councillor had gone home, the caretaker would lock up for the night. One of the cleaners was a lot younger than the others, and had a tidy body on her. He wondered if she lived in his ward. He looked at the clock on the wall again. Twenty minutes to go.
He heard something slam, and looked over to the classroom door. A short man was standing there, looking deathly cold in a thin bomber-style jacket and shabby trousers. He had his hands deep in his jacket pockets and didn’t look inclined to remove them.
‘You the councillor?’ the man asked.
Councillor Gillespie stood up and smiled. Then the man turned to Helena Profitt. ‘So who are you?’
‘My ward secretary,’ Tom Gillespie explained. Helena Profitt and the man seemed to be studying one another. ‘Can I help you?’
‘Aye, you can,’ the man said. Then he unzipped his jacket and drew out a sawn-off shotgun.
‘You,’ he said to Miss Profitt, ‘get the fuck out.’ He pointed the weapon at the councillor. ‘You stay.’
Helena Profitt ran screaming from the classroom and nearly knocked over the cleaners. A pail of dirty water clattered to the wooden floor.
‘I’ve just polished thon!’
‘A gun, he’s got a gun!’
The cleaners stared at her. A sound like a tyre exploding came from the classroom. Miss Profitt, who had fallen to her knees, was joined by the other women.
‘What in Christ was that?’
‘She said a gun.’
And now there was a figure in the doorway. It was the councillor, almost in control of his legs. He looked for all the world like one of the paintings on the classroom wall, only it wasn’t paint that spattered his face and his hair.
Rebus stood in the classroom and looked at the paintings. Some of them were pretty good. The colours weren’t always right, but the shapes were identifiable. Blue house, yellow sun, brown horse in a green field, and a red sky speckled with grey …
Oh.
The room had been cordoned off by the simple act of placing two chairs in the doorway. The body was still there, spreadeagled on the floor in front of the teacher’s desk. Dr Curt was examining it.
‘This seems to be your week for messy ones,’ he told Rebus.
It was messy all right. There wasn’t much left of the head except for the lower jaw and chin. Stick a shotgun in your gub and heave-ho with both barrels and you couldn’t expect to win Mr Glamorous Suicide. You wouldn’t even make the last sixteen.
Rebus stood beside the teacher’s desk. There was a pad of lined paper on it. Scribbled on the top sheet was the message, ‘Mr Hamilton — allotment allocation’, alongside an address and telephone number. Blood had soaked through the paper. Rebus peeled off this first sheet. The sheet below was obviously the start of a letter. Gillespie had got as far as the word ‘Dear’.
‘Well,’ Curt got to his feet, ‘he’s dead, and if you were to ask for my considered opinion, I’d say he used that.’ He nodded towards the shotgun, which lay a couple of feet from the body. ‘And now he’s gone to the other place.’
‘It’s just a shot away,’ said Rebus.
Curt looked at him. ‘Is the photographer on his way?’
‘Trouble getting his car to start.’
‘Well, tell him I want plenty of head shots — pun unavoidable. I gather we’ve a witness?’
‘Councillor Gillespie.’
‘I don’t know him.’
‘He’s councillor for my ward.’
Dr Curt was pulling on thin latex gloves. It was time to search the body. Initially, they were looking for ID. ‘Cosy as this room is,’ Dr Curt said, ‘I’d prefer my own hearth.’
In the back pocket of the deceased’s trousers, Rebus found an official-looking envelope, folded in two.
‘Mr H McAnally,’ he read. ‘An address in Tollcross.’
‘Not five minutes away.’
Rebus eased the letter out of the envelope and read it. ‘It’s from the Prison Service,’ he told Dr Curt. ‘Details of assistance open to Mr H McAnally on his release from Saughton Jail.’
Tom Gillespie had a wash in the school toilets. His hair was damp and lay in clumps against his skull. He kept rubbing a hand over his face and then checking the palm for blood. His eyes were red-rimmed from crying.
Rebus sat across from him in the headteacher’s office. The office had been locked, but Rebus had commandeered it when the head arrived at the school. The cleaning ladies were being given mugs of tea in the staffroom. Siobhan Clarke was there with them, doing her best to calm down Miss Profitt.
‘Did you know the man at all, Mr Gillespie?’
‘Never seen him in my life.’
‘You’re sure of that?’
‘Positive.’
Rebus reached into his pocket, then stopped. ‘Do you mind if I smoke?’ From the odour of stale tobacco in the room, he already knew the head wouldn’t mind.
Gillespie shook his head. ‘In fact,’ he said, ‘give me one while you’re at it.’ Gillespie lit the cigarette and inhaled deeply. ‘Gave up three years ago.’
Rebus didn’t say anything. He was studying the man. He’d seen his photo before, in election rubbish pushed through the letterbox. Gillespie was in his mid-forties. He wore red-rimmed glasses normally, but had left them on the desk. His hair was very thin and wispy on top, but curled thickly either side of his pate. His eyes had thick dark lashes, not just from the crying, and his chin was weak. Rebus couldn’t have called him handsome. There was a simple gold band on his wedding finger.
‘How long have you been a councillor, Mr Gillespie?’
‘Six years, coming up for seven.’
‘I live in your ward.’
Gillespie studied him. ‘Have we met before?’
Rebus shook his head. ‘So this man walks into the classroom …?’
‘Yes.’
‘Looking for you in particular?’
‘He asked if I was the councillor. Then he asked who Helena was.’
‘Helena being Miss Profitt?’
Gillespie nodded. ‘He told her to get out … Then he turned the shotgun around and stuck the end of it in his mouth.’ He shivered, ash falling from his cigarette. ‘I’ll never forget that, never.’
‘Did he say anything else?’ Gillespie shook his head. ‘He didn’t say anything?’
‘Not a word.’
‘Do you have any idea why he did it?’
Gillespie looked at Rebus. ‘That’s your department, not mine.’
Rebus held the stare until Gillespie broke it by looking for somewhere to stub out the cigarette.
There’s something in you, Rebus thought, something below the surface that’s a lot cooler, a lot more deliberate.
‘Just a few more questions, Mr Gillespie. How are your surgeries publicised?’
‘There’s a district council leaflet, most homes had one delivered. Plus I put up notices in doctors’ surgeries, that sort of place.’
‘They’re no secret then?’
‘What good would a councillor be if he kept his surgeries secret?’
‘Mr McAnally lived at an address in Tollcross.’
‘Who?’
‘The man who killed himself.’
‘Tollcross? That’s not in my ward.’
‘No,’ Rebus said, getting to his feet. ‘I didn’t think it was.’
DC Siobhan Clarke sat in on the interview with Helena Profitt. Miss Profitt was still bawling, her few utterances barely decipherable. She was older than the councillor, maybe by as much as ten years. She clutched a large shopping-bag on her lap as if it was a lifebuoy keeping her afloat. Maybe it was. She was short, with fair hair which had been permed a while back, most of it lost now. A pair of knitting needles protruded from her bag.
‘And then,’ she wailed, ‘he told me to get out.’
‘His exact words?’ Rebus asked.
She sniffed, calming a little. ‘He swore. He told me to get the f-u-c-k out.’
‘Did he say anything else?’
She shook her head.
‘And you left the room?’
‘I wasn’t about to stay!’
‘Of course not. What did you think he was going to do?’
She had not yet asked herself this. ‘Well,’ she said at last, ‘I don’t know what I thought. Maybe he was going to hold Tom hostage, or shoot him, something like that.’
‘But why?’
Her voice rose. ‘I don’t know. Who knows why these days?’ She collapsed into hysterical sobs again.
‘Just a couple more questions, Miss Profitt.’ She wasn’t listening. Rebus looked to Siobhan Clarke, who shrugged. She was suggesting they leave it till morning. But Rebus knew better than that; he knew the tricks the memory could play if you left things too long.
‘Just a couple more questions,’ he persisted quietly.
She sniffed, blew her nose, wiped her eyes. Then she took a deep breath and nodded.
‘Thank you, Miss Profitt. How long was there between you running out of the classroom and hearing the shots?’
‘The classroom’s at the end of the corridor,’ she said. ‘I pushed open the doors and bumped into the cleaning ladies. I fell to my knees and that’s when I heard … that’s when …’
‘So we’re talking about a matter of seconds?’
‘Just a few seconds, yes.’
‘And you didn’t hear any conversation as you left the room?’
‘Just the bang, that’s all.’
Rebus rubbed the bridge of his nose. ‘Thank you, Miss Profit, we’ll get a car to take you home.’
Dr Curt was finished in the classroom. The Scene of Crime Unit had taken over, and the photographer, who had finally arrived, was changing film.
‘We need to secure the locus,’ Rebus told the head-teacher. ‘Can this room be locked?’
‘Yes, there are keys in my desk. What about opening the school?’
‘I wouldn’t if I were you. We’ll be in and out tomorrow … the door might be left open …’
‘Say no more.’
‘And you’ll want to get the decorators in.’
‘Right.’
Rebus turned to Dr Curt. ‘Can we move him to the mortuary?’
Dr Curt nodded. ‘I’ll take a look at him in the morning. Has someone gone to that address?’
‘I’ll go myself. Like you say, it’s only five minutes away.’ Rebus looked to Siobhan Clarke. ‘See that the Procurator-fiscal gets that Preliminary Notification.’
Curt looked back into the room. ‘He’d only just been released from prison, maybe he was depressed.’
‘That might explain a suicide, but not one like this: the amount of forethought, the setting …’
‘Our American cousins have a phrase for it,’ Curt said.
‘What’s that?’ Rebus asked, feeling he was walking into another of the doctor’s punchlines.
‘In your face,’ Dr Curt obliged.
Rebus walked to Tollcross.
He had a taste in his lungs and a scent in his nostrils, and he hoped the cold might deaden them. He could walk into a pub and deaden them that way, but he didn’t. He remembered a winter years back, much colder than this. Minus twenty, Siberian weather. The pipes on the outside of the tenement had frozen solid, so that nobody’s waste water could run away. The smell had been bad, but you could always open a window. Death wasn’t like that; it didn’t go away just because you opened a window, or took a walk.
There was ice underfoot, and he skited a couple of times. Another good reason for not having a drink: he needed his wits about him. He’d copied McAnally’s address into his notebook. He knew the block anyway; it was a couple of streets up from the burnt-out shell of the Crazy Hose Saloon. There was an intercom at the main door. He flipped on his lighter and saw that MCANALLY was the third name up. His toes were going numb as he pressed the button. He’d been rehearsing what to say. No policeman liked to give bad news, certainly not news as bad as this. ‘Your husband’s lost the heid’ just didn’t fit the bill.
The intercom clattered to life. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve lost the keys, Shug? If you’ve been drinking and lost them, you can freeze your arse off, see if I care!’
‘Mrs McAnally?’
‘Who’s that?’
‘Detective Inspector Rebus. Can I come up?’
‘Name of God, what’s he done?’
‘Can I come up, Mrs McAnally?’
‘You better had.’ The intercom buzzed, and Rebus pushed open the door.
The McAnallys lived one floor up: for once Rebus had been hoping for the top storey. He climbed slowly, trying to prepare his speech. She was waiting at the door for him. It was a nice new-looking door, dark-stained wood with a fan-shaped glass motif. New brass knocker and letterbox too.
‘Mrs McAnally?’
‘Come in.’ She led him down a short hall into the living room. It was a tiny flat, but nicely furnished and carpeted. There was a kitchenette off the living room, both rooms adding up to about twenty feet by twelve. Estate agents would call it ‘cosy’ and ‘compact’. All three bars of the electric fire were on, and the room was stifling. Mrs McAnally had been watching television, a can of Sweet-heart stout balanced on one wide arm of her chair, ashtray and cigarettes on the other.
She looked feisty; no other words would do. Cons’ wives often got that look. The prison visits hardened their jawlines and turned their eyes into distrustful slits. Her hair was dyed blonde, and though she was spending the night in, she’d still polished her nails and stuck on some eyeliner and mascara.
‘What’s he done?’ she said again. ‘Sit down if you like.’
‘I’ll stand, thanks. The thing is, Mrs McAnally …’ Rebus paused. That’s what you did: you lowered your voice respectfully, said a few introductory words, and then you paused, hoping the widow or widower or mother or father or son or daughter would twig.
‘The thing is what?’ she snapped.
‘Well, I’m sorry to have to tell you …’
Her eyes were on the television. It was a film, some noisy Hollywood adventure.
‘Could we maybe have the sound down?’ he suggested.
She shrugged and pressed the remote. The ‘mute’ sign came up on the screen. Rebus suddenly noticed how big the TV was; it filled a whole corner of the room. Don’t make me say the words, he thought. Then he saw that her eyes were glinting. Tears, he thought. She’s holding them back.
‘You know, don’t you?’ he said quietly.
‘Know what?’ she snapped.
‘Mrs McAnally, we think your husband may be dead.’ She threw the remote across the room and got to her feet. ‘A man committed suicide,’ Rebus continued. ‘He had a letter in his pocket addressed to your husband.’
She glared at him. ‘What does that mean? It means nothing. Might have dropped it, somebody might’ve picked it up.’
‘The deceased … the man, he was wearing a black nylon bomber jacket and some light-coloured trousers, a green jersey …’
She turned away from him. ‘Where? Where was this?’
‘Warrender Park.’
‘Well then,’ she said defiantly, ‘Wee Shug went down Lothian Road, his usual haunts.’
‘What time were you expecting him home?’
‘Pubs are still open, if that answers your question.’
‘Look, Mrs McAnally, I know this isn’t easy, but I’d like you to come down to the mortuary and look at some clothing. Would that be all right?’
She had her arms folded and was rocking on the balls of her feet. ‘No, it wouldn’t be all right. What’s the point? It’s not Wee Shug. He’s only been out a week, one miserable week. He can’t be dead.’ She paused. ‘Was it a car run him over?’
‘We think he took his own life.’
‘Are you mad? Took his own …? Get out of my house! Go on, out with you!’
‘Mrs McAnally, we need to — ’
But now she was swiping at him, catching him with her solid fists, propelling him before her, out of the room and down the hall.
‘Keep away from him, do you hear? Keep away from both of us. This is nothing but harassment.’
‘I know you’re upset, Mrs McAnally, but an identification would clear things up, put your mind at rest.’
Her blows lost some of their power, then stopped altogether. Rebus’s burnt palm stung where she’d caught it.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, breathing hard.
‘It’s only natural, you’re upset. Do you have a neighbour, a friend, someone who could be with you?’
‘There’s Maisie next door.’
‘Fine. What if I get a car to pick you up? Maybe Maisie can go with you?’
‘I’ll ask her.’ She opened the door and stepped out on to the landing, shuffling along to a door marked FINCH.
‘I’ll use your phone if that’s all right,’ Rebus called, retreating back into the flat.
He took a quick look around. Just the one bedroom and bathroom, plus a box room. He’d seen the rest of the place already. Again, the bedroom was very nicely furnished, pink ruched curtains and matching bedspread, a small dressing-table covered in bottles of perfume. He went into the hall and made a couple of calls: one to order a car, the other to make sure someone from CID would be at the mortuary to help with the ID.
The door opened and two women came in. He’d been expecting Mrs Finch to be around Mrs McAnally’s age, but she was in her early twenties, leggy with a short, tight skirt. She looked at him as if he might be some warped practical joker. He offered a smile in return which mixed compassion with interest. She didn’t smile back, so he had to content himself with the sight of her long legs as she helped Mrs McAnally down the hall and into the living room.
‘A wee Bacardi, Tresa,’ Maisie Finch was saying, ‘it’ll calm your nerves. Before we do anything else, we’ll have a wee Bacardi and Coke. Have you any valium about the place? If you haven’t, I think I’ve some in my bathroom cabinet.’
‘He can’t be dead, Maisie,’ Tresa McAnally wailed.
‘Let’s not talk about him,’ Maisie Finch replied.
Strange advice, Rebus thought, making ready to leave.
It wasn’t much of a walk from Tollcross down to C Division HQ on Torphichen Place, but Rebus knew he was getting further and further away from his own flat. He didn’t intend walking back, and hoped Torphichen would have a spare car he could use as a taxi.
There was a tall bald man in a thick shabby coat in reception. The man had his arms folded and was staring at his feet. There was no one behind the desk, so Rebus pressed the buzzer. He knew it would keep buzzing till someone arrived.
‘Been here long?’ he asked.
The man looked up and smiled. ‘Evening, Mr Rebus.’
‘Hello, Anthony.’ Rebus knew the man. He was one of Edinburgh’s homeless, one of the army who sold copies of The Big Issue every twenty yards or so along Princes Street. Rebus usually bought a copy from Anthony, whose sacred pitch was outside the St James Centre. ‘Here to help us with our enquiries?’
Anthony gave a gap-toothed grin. ‘Just keeping warm. I told the desk officer I was waiting for DC Reynolds, only I saw Mr Reynolds go into the Hopscotch Bar on Dalry Road.’
‘Which means he’s on for a sesh.’
‘And I can sit here till somebody tumbles.’
A uniform was emerging into the reception booth. Rebus showed ID and the uniform came and unlocked the door for him.
‘You know the way, sir?’
‘I know the way. Who’s on duty?’
‘It’s a bit of a graveyard up there.’
Rebus climbed the stairs anyway. Torphichen was an old station, and small, with plain stone walls and a slightly depressing air. Rebus liked it. Certainly he preferred it to the much newer and supposedly ergonomic St Leonard’s, his home base. He looked into the CID room. The very man he wanted was sitting at a long, scarred wooden table, reading the evening paper.
‘Mr Davidson,’ Rebus said.
Davidson looked up, then groaned.
‘I want a favour,’ Rebus said, walking into the room.
‘Now there’s a surprise.’
‘Have you heard about Warrender?’
‘Shotgun suicide?’ News got around. Davidson closed his paper.
‘The man with the plan was called Hugh McAnally, lived in Tollcross.’
‘I know Wee Shug. Wee Bastard’s more like it. He’d only just come out of Saughton.’
‘Maybe he was pining.’
‘Want a drink?’
‘Coffee maybe.’
But Davidson was reaching for his coat. ‘I said a drink.’
‘So long as you’re not suggesting the Hopscotch. Rat-Arse Reynolds is in there.’
Davidson knotted his tartan scarf. ‘All right, let’s scotch the Hopscotch. And since you’re buying, you get to choose.’
Rebus chose a big public house near Haymarket Station. The public bar was seething, but the saloon was quiet. They ordered doubles.
‘Too cold outside to be drinking lager,’ Davidson said. ‘Your health.’
‘And yours.’ Rebus sipped and swallowed, feeling the liquid doing its immediate, no-nonsense business. It was almost too good sometimes. ‘So,’ he said, ‘tell me about Wee Shug.’
‘Ach, he was a small-timer, used to specialise in hopeless house-breakings.’
‘Used to?’
‘He moved on to reset, counterfeiting, this and that.’
‘So how long had he been inside?’
‘This stretch, you mean? Funny that, when I heard he was out I did a quick calculation. He’s out early, served a bit under four years.’
‘Well, if all we had him on was reset …’
Davidson was shaking his head. ‘Sorry, you misunderstand. My fault. He wasn’t sent down for any of his usual tricks.’
‘What then?’
‘Rape of a minor.’
‘What?’
Davidson nodded. ‘Thing is, we nailed him for it, but with hand on heart I don’t know if it was a clean result.’
‘Explain.’ Rebus signalled for two more whiskies.
‘Well, the lassie was fifteen, but everyone said the same thing — fifteen going on thirty-five. Not a shy lass at all, you should read the interview transcripts. But she was adamant he’d raped her. She was a minor, and the Procurator-fiscal went ahead with the prosecution. I wasn’t too bothered; getting Wee Shug off the street was fine by me.’
‘Was he living in Tollcross at that time?’
‘That’s always been his patch.’
Rebus paid for the second round of drinks. ‘Was he the violent type?’
‘Not that I ever saw. I mean, he had a temper when roused, but who doesn’t? That was the thing about the rape, there were no physical injuries.’
‘What about corroboration?’
‘We had a bundle of circumstantial evidence. Neighbours heard raised voices, a scream, the girl herself was in a terrible state, crying and all. Plus Wee Shug admitted having sex with her, said he knew it was illegal and all but, as he put it, “only by a few months”. The girl said it wasn’t consensual, and we just about put together a case.’
‘Say, for the sake of argument, that it was consensual.’
‘Yes?’
‘Then he’s just come out of a four-year stretch for something he didn’t do.’
Davidson shrugged. ‘You’re looking for a motive behind the suicide?’
Rebus was thoughtful for a moment. ‘Suicides interest me right now.’
‘And we’re always looking for motives, eh, John?’
Rebus drank his drink. ‘What about guns? Did he ever have anything to do with firearms?’
‘Nothing. But he’s probably still got cronies out there who know where to get them.’
‘It was a sawn-off.’
‘I can believe it. You couldn’t get a full-length shotgun in your mouth and be able to pull the trigger. Far easier with something shorter.’
‘Messy though.’
‘No doubt, but it would do the job. You don’t want to go off half-cocked, do you? With a sawn-off, there’s less margin for error.’
‘No margin at all,’ said Rebus.
It was only when they were leaving that he thought to ask a question.
‘McAnally’s victim, what was her name again?’
Davidson had to think about it. ‘Mary something. Mary Finlay. ‘No …’ He screwed shut his eyes. ‘Mary Finch.’
Rebus stared at him. ‘Maisie Finch?’
Davidson thought again. ‘That’s it, Maisie.’
‘She lives next door to the McAnallys.’
‘Did then, too. She’d known them for years.’
‘Christ,’ Rebus said quietly. ‘I’ve just sent her down to the mortuary to help Tresa McAnally identify her husband.’
‘What?’
‘Do me a favour, will you? Lend me a car and a driver.’
‘I’ll do better than that, I’ll drive you myself.’
But by the time they reached the mortuary, it was too late. The ID had been completed and everyone had gone home. Rebus stood on the Cowgate and looked longingly back towards the Grassmarket. Some of the pubs there would still be open, the Merchant’s Bar for one. But he got back into the car instead and asked Davidson to take him home. He felt tired all of a sudden. God, he felt tired.
‘He what?’ Rebus said.
He was on the phone from St Leonard’s to Dr Curt at the university’s Pathology Department. They kept Curt and his colleagues busy, no mistake about that. On top of police work, Curt had a full teaching load in the Faculty of Medicine, and did crossover lectures to law students too.
But then Curt had an advantage over mere mortals: he never slept. You could call him out at any hour, and he was always alert. You could catch him in his office at eight in the morning.
It was actually eight-fifteen, and Rebus was nursing a large black decaf coffee from the early-opening deli on the Pleasance.
‘Morning deafness, John?’ Dr Curt said. ‘I repeat, he was dying anyway.’
‘Dying how?’
‘Great big bloody tumours. Pancreas and large colon to start with. The man must have been in agony. I’m willing to bet the toxicology tests show the presence of powerful painkillers.’
‘You mean he was out of his box?’
‘He’d have to be to stand the pain.’
Rebus frowned. ‘I don’t get it.’
‘Haven’t you heard of voluntary euthanasia, self-inflicted in this case?’
‘Yes, but with a sawn-off shotgun?’
‘Well, that’s not my department. I can give you effect, not cause.’
Rebus terminated the call and went to see his chief inspector.
Gill Templer had made more changes to Lauderdale’s office. She’d brought in a few framed photographs of nieces and nephews, and a thriving yucca plant had appeared. There were also a couple of cards wishing her well in her new job.
‘I hear you were at that suicide last night,’ she said, motioning for him to sit.
He nodded distractedly. ‘There’s something not right about it.’
‘Oh?’
So he set out what he knew. Gill Templer listened with her chin resting on both hands, a gesture he knew of old. He recognised the perfume she was wearing, too.
‘Hmm,’ she said when he’d finished, ‘a lot of questions. But are they any of our concern?’
He shrugged. ‘To be honest, I’m not sure. Give me a day or two, I might have an answer.’
‘Those two lads on the bridge,’ she said. ‘Another suicide, another connection with the district council.’
‘I know. It could just be coincidence.’
‘I don’t see how it could be anything else. OK, take a day or two, see what you come up with. But report back to me regularly — at least a couple of times a day.’
Rebus stood up. ‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘You’re already managing to sound like a chief inspector.’
‘John,’ she said warningly, ‘remember what I said.’
‘Yes, ma’am. Will there be anything else?’
Gill Templer shook her head. She was already getting down to some paperwork.
Rebus left her office — it was hers now, no doubt about it — and walked straight into Siobhan Clarke.
‘Any news on Paul Duggan?’
‘He’s coming in for a chat this afternoon.’
‘Good,’ said Rebus. ‘Need me along?’
She shook her head. ‘Brian and me have perfected our Jekyll and Hyde routine.’
‘Which one of you plays Hyde?’
She ignored this. ‘So what are you up to today?’
It was a good question. Rebus formed his answer. ‘Chasing ghosts,’ he said, making for his desk.
He phoned Tresa McAnally. She’d identified her husband’s clothes, and had been able to identify his body, albeit with the face discreetly covered. Now all that was left for her were the funeral arrangements.
‘Sorry to bother you again,’ Rebus said, after introducing himself.
‘What do you want?’
‘Just wondered how you were coping.’
‘Oh aye?’ He should’ve known she wouldn’t fall for that sort of patter.
‘You knew your husband was ill, Mrs McAnally?’
‘He told me he was.’
‘Seriously ill though?’
‘He never really said.’
‘Well, what did he tell you was wrong with him?’
‘Where do you want me to start? High blood pressure, kidney stones, ulcers, a heart murmur, emphysema … see, Wee Shug was a bit of a hypochondriac.’
‘But he was ill; he was on medication.’
‘You know what doctors are like, they’ll hand you a placebo and kiss you goodbye. I’ve read the stories, I know what goes on.’ She paused. ‘If you don’t mind me asking, what’s the point asking about his health now?’
‘Well, I’ve reason to believe your husband was seriously ill. Terminally ill, Mrs McAnally.’
‘I should’ve guessed,’ she said finally, her tone chastened. ‘He was different when he came out this time, quieter like. Was it the big C?’
‘Yes.’
‘Used to smoke rollies. I always told him, that’s the way my own mother went.’ Another pause as she dragged on her filter-tip. ‘Is that why he did himself in?’
‘What do you think?’
‘Makes sense, eh? Poor wee bugger.’
Rebus cleared his throat. ‘Mrs McAnally, have you any idea where he could have got the gun?’
‘Not a clue.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘What’s the difference where he got it? He only hurt himself.’
Thinking back to Councillor Gillespie and Miss Profitt, Rebus wondered about that. It seemed to him that Wee Shug McAnally had managed to hurt a lot of people … which brought him to thoughts of Maisie Finch.
‘The funeral’s next Tuesday, Inspector. You’d be welcome at the house.’
‘Thanks, Mrs McAnally. I’ll do my best.’
The sun was out, bathing the tired buildings in dazzling light. Edinburgh’s architecture was best suited to winter, to sharp, cold light. You got the feeling of being a long way north of anywhere, some place reserved for only the hardiest and most foolhardy.
Rebus was glad to be out of the office. He knew he worked best on the street. Besides, the office was a battleground. He knew Flower would already be plotting against Gill Templer, marshalling his forces, waiting for her defences to slip. But she was tough — the way she was handling Rebus was proof of that. He knew she would keep him at arm’s length and beyond. She was right, he did have a bad reputation. She wouldn’t want any of his failures to rub off on her. So what if they’d known one another, had been an item? She was right — it was a long time ago. Now they were colleagues; more than that, she was his acting superior. He hadn’t known many women make chief inspector. Good luck to her.
He drove past the Infirmary, chiding himself for not stopping to visit Lauderdale, and headed for Tollcross. He didn’t want Tresa McAnally this time though.
He wanted her neighbour.
He pressed the buzzer marked FINCH and waited, shuffling his feet. His tooth was acting up. He’d made the mistake of opening his mouth to take a deep breath, and the frozen air had made straight for the nerve. He pressed the buzzer again, hoping he wouldn’t have to visit a dentist.
The intercom came to life.
‘Who is it?’ The voice was neutral.
‘Miss Finch? My name’s Inspector Rebus, we sort of met last night.’
‘What do you want?’
‘Can I come up?’
The door buzzed and Rebus pushed it open. At the top of the stairs, he all but tiptoed past Tresa McAnally’s door. Maisie Finch’s door was ajar. He closed it after him.
‘Miss Finch?’
She emerged suddenly from the bathroom, wearing a short towelling-robe and brushing her hair. He could smell soap and feel the warmth from her body.
‘I was in the bath,’ she said.
‘Sorry to trouble you.’
He followed her into the living room. It wasn’t what he’d expected. Half the space was taken up with what looked like a hospital bed, with cast-iron frame, roller wheels, and a side-guard. Next to it was a liver-coloured commode. The mantelpiece was like a chemist’s display, two dozen assorted boxes and bottles standing in a row.
Maisie Finch was moving magazines from the sofa. She motioned for him to sit, and took the commode for herself, tucking one leg under the other.
‘What’s the problem, Inspector?’
Her face was too angular to be good-looking, and she had slightly protruberant eyes, yet she was undeniably … the word that came to his mind was charged. He shifted on the sofa.
‘Well, Miss Finch …’
‘I suppose it’s about Tresa?’
‘In a way, yes.’ He looked at the bed again.
‘It’s my mum’s,’ she explained. ‘She’s house-bound, I have to look after her.’ Rebus made show of looking around for the missing parent, and Maisie Finch laughed. ‘She’s in hospital.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be. They take her every few months, just for a few days. It’s to give me a break. This,’ she said, opening her arms wide, ‘is my winter holiday.’
Her movements had loosened her robe. She didn’t seem to notice, and Rebus tried not to look. Men, he thought, are daft bastards.
‘Want something to drink?’ she asked. ‘Or is it too early for you?’
‘One person’s early is someone else’s late.’
She went into the kitchenette. Rebus walked over to the mantelpiece and examined the array of prescription drugs. He found a bottle of paracetamol and shook two into his hand.
‘Heavy night?’ she said, coming back with two bottles.
‘Toothache,’ he explained. He took the narrow bottle. It was chilled.
‘San Miguel,’ she told him. ‘Spanish lager. Know what I do?’ She sat down again, legs apart, resting her elbows on her knees. ‘I stick the heater on as high as it’ll go, shut my eyes and imagine I’m in Spain, poolside at some posh hotel.’ She closed her eyes to prove the point, and angled her head towards an imaginary Mediterranean sun.
Rebus washed the pills down with lager. ‘I’m sorry to hear about your mum though,’ he said.
She opened her eyes, not pleased to have her reverie broken. ‘Everyone tells me what a saint I am.’ She mimicked a much older woman: ‘“There’s no’ many like you, hen.” Too right, there’s not many as daft as me. You know how some people say life’s passing them by? Well, in this case it’s a fact. I sit on the commode between her bed and the window, and just stare out at the street for hours on end, listening to her breathing, waiting for it to stop.’ She looked over at him. ‘Have I shocked you?’
He shook his head. His own mother had been bed-ridden; he knew the feeling. But he hadn’t come here for any of this.
‘Sitting by the window all day,’ he said, ‘you must have seen Mr McAnally coming and going?’
‘Yes, I saw him.’
‘You don’t like him, do you?’
‘No, I don’t.’ She stood up abruptly.
‘Mrs McAnally’s all right though?’
She was moving towards the kitchenette, but stopped and turned on him. ‘I’m not the saint; that woman’s the saint! She’s suffered, you wouldn’t believe how she’s suffered.’
‘I think I would.’
She wasn’t listening. ‘Married to an animal like that.’ She looked at him. ‘You know what he did to me?’ Rebus nodded, and she took a step back, recovering. ‘You do?’ she asked quietly. ‘Is that why you’re here?’
‘I’m here because I’m curious, Miss Finch. I mean, you still live next door, you’re friends with his wife.’
‘What? You think mum and me were going to move out … because of him?’
‘Something like that.’
‘She’s been offered sheltered accommodation, but in Granton. We’ve always lived in Tollcross. We always will.’
‘This last week, it must have been awkward.’
‘I kept out of his way. You can bet he kept out of mine.’ She was by the window now, staring down on to the street, her back resting against the wall. It was as if she didn’t want to be seen. ‘He deserved what he got.’
Rebus frowned. ‘You mean, what he did to himself?’
She looked at him, blinked. ‘That’s what I said.’ Then she smiled and put the bottle to her lips.
The Ballistics facility at Howdenhall Forensic Science Lab wasn’t Rebus’s idea of a good time. There were too many guns around for his liking. He read the report and looked up at the white-coated scientist who’d prepared it. The other thing Rebus didn’t like about Howdenhall, all the forensic boffins looked about nineteen years old. They’d been in their smart new building a year, and still looked pleased with themselves. The new facility had been financed by selling property, including police homes. Rebus didn’t want to know how many homes the lab had cost.
‘Not much, is there?’ he said.
The white coat, who liked to be called Dave, laughed. ‘You CID,’ he said, plunging his hands into his pockets, ‘you always want more. Who fired it? Where did he get it?’
‘We know who fired it, smart-arse. But your second question’s a good one. Where did he get it?’
‘I’m Ballistics, not Intelligence. It’s a common enough make of shotgun, the identifiers have been filed off. We’ve tried the usual processes, and there’s no chance of recovering them. The cartridges were common stock, too.’
‘What about the barrel?’
‘What about it?’
‘When was it filed off?’
Dave nodded. ‘The edge the file left is still shiny; say in the last couple of months.’
‘Have you checked the register?’
‘Of course.’ Dave led Rebus to a computer terminal and punched a couple of keys. ‘There are over seventy thousand shotgun certificates on issue.’
Rebus blinked. ‘Seventy thousand?’
‘Compared to thirty-odd thousand for all other firearms combined. Nobody’s really concerned about the amount of shotguns around.’ He tapped another key. ‘See? Ownership’s highest in rural areas — Northern, Grampian, Dumfries and Galloway. It’s not some brewhead from Gorgie that’s buying these things, it’s the establishment: farmers, landowners.’
‘What about thefts?’
‘They’re on the computer, but I’ve checked. Nobody around Edinburgh has lost a shotgun recently.’
‘Can I take a look anyway?’
‘Sure.’ Rebus sat down and Dave punched the keyboard again. The list of recently reported thefts was not large; nearly all of them were south of the border. ‘Want a print-out?’
‘Yes.’ Not that a print-out would help him.
‘What’s the big deal anyway?’ Dave asked. ‘It’s a simple suicide, isn’t it?’
‘Suicide’s still an offence.’
‘The only one we don’t prosecute after the fact. Is there something you’re not telling me?’
‘No,’ Rebus said quietly. ‘But there may be things some people aren’t telling me.’ He took the print-out and folded it into his pocket. ‘One other thing.’
‘What?’
‘The prints on the gun, were they the deceased’s?’
Dave seemed amused by the question. ‘His and his alone. What are you up to, Inspector?’
But John Rebus wasn’t about to answer that.
‘Thank you for coming in, Councillor.’
Rebus had just come into the interview room. He’d been biding his time outside the door, letting Tom Gillespie get a bit nervous. An interview room could do that; it could destroy all your pre-planning. You walked in knowing what you were going to say, the line you were going to take with the police, but then the room started to work on you.
The thing was, it was just a room — crime prevention posters on the walls, a table, three chairs, four electrical sockets. There was a tin ashtray, commandeered from a local pub. The walls were creamy matt custard, institution yellow, and there was strip lighting on the ceiling. The lights burred continuously, an almost subliminal electric hum. Rebus wondered if it was that noise that got to people. He guessed there was a simpler truth: the interview room was in a police station, and if you were there, you were going to be interviewed by the police.
And when it came down to it, everyone had something to hide.
‘Not at all,’ Gillespie said, crossing one leg over the other to let Rebus know how relaxed he was. ‘I hear the poor devil was an ex-prisoner.’
‘He’d served just under four years for the rape of a minor.’
‘Four years doesn’t seem very long.’
‘No, it doesn’t.’ They sat in silence for a moment, until Gillespie broke it.
‘I had a friend once who committed suicide. He was still at university — this is going back a while. He was worried about exams, and his girlfriend had left him.’ He paused. ‘Left him for me. I should add.’
‘Do you mind if I smoke?’ Rebus asked.
‘I thought smoking was forbidden in police stations.’
‘If it bothers you, I won’t light it.’ He stuck the cigarette in the corner of his mouth and offered one to Gillespie. The councillor shook his head.
‘I’d prefer it if you didn’t light up.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Rebus, putting away cigarettes and lighter both. Well, he thought, this is interesting. The guy’s been studying for this exam. Tells a personal story, one that doesn’t paint him in the rosiest glow, and then asserts his authority. And all it was supposed to be was a few follow-up questions.
‘How did he do it?’ Rebus asked.
‘Who?’
‘Your friend.’
‘Flung himself out of the halls of residence. Fifth floor. He was still alive, so they took him to hospital, checking for broken bones and internal bleeding. They were so busy, they didn’t notice he’d taken an overdose before the jump.’
‘Well,’ Rebus said, ‘both are fairly common roads out, aren’t they? You leap or you sleep. Mr McAnally, on the other hand …’
‘You were at the Forth Road Bridge, weren’t you? When those two kids jumped? I saw your name in the paper.’
‘We’re here to talk about McAnally, Councillor.’
‘Well, guns are a popular mode of suicide too, aren’t they?’
‘Maybe among gun owners, but McAnally didn’t own a gun and probably had never used one before.’
Gillespie uncrossed his legs and crossed them the other way. ‘But given his background, he’d find it easy enough to take possession of a gun.’
‘I agree,’ said Rebus. ‘All the same …’
‘What?’
‘Why go to all the bother? I mean, even if you’re determined to blow your head off, why walk from Tollcross to Warrender in the middle of a blizzard with this big heavy gun clutched beneath your jacket? And why walk into a school which would have been locked tight on every night of the month except one?’ Rebus had risen to his feet. He rested his buttocks against the edge of the table and folded his arms. ‘Why walk into a classroom and make sure Councillor Tom Gillespie is present? Why do that? Why did he specifically want to top himself in front of you? No other witnesses, no one else invited. It doesn’t make sense to me.’
‘Well, the man was obviously unhinged … maybe on drugs.’
‘I’ve just seen the toxicology results. The police lab has all these smart machines — ’
‘At Howdenhall?’ Rebus nodded. ‘Yes, I know. I was there for the official opening.’
‘Well, the results show that the deceased had had a couple of drinks, but no drugs, not one single painkiller.’
‘What’s your point, Inspector?’
Rebus turned around so that his hands were resting on the table. He was leaning over Gillespie, and Gillespie wasn’t enjoying it.
‘See, Councillor, Wee Shug McAnally was dying. He didn’t have long to live at all. His insides were rotten, and he should have been doped to the eyeballs to stand the pain. Those drugs, though, they make your brain mushy, and Wee Shug didn’t want that. He wanted to be compos mentis when he pulled the trigger.’ Rebus stood up straight. ‘Makes even less sense now, eh?’ He popped the cigarette back into his mouth.
‘Look, I don’t see what any of this has to do with me.’
‘Frankly neither do I. All I know is, it has something to do with you. Now what could that be?’
‘There was a line of perspiration on Gillespie’s top lip. He took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. Rebus walked to the far wall and lit his cigarette. He didn’t think the councillor would object.
‘Look,’ Gillespie said quietly, ‘I really don’t see any connection between this man McAnally and me, none at all. I’ve never met him, never heard of him, and he didn’t live in my ward.’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe he held some sort of mad grudge, something linked to his time in prison.’
Rebus walked slowly back to the table and sat down opposite Gillespie. ‘That’s it?’ he said. ‘That’s your explanation?’
‘I don’t have an explanation! I just … give me a cigarette, please.’
Rebus lit the cigarette for him.
Gillespie studied the burning tip, then looked at Rebus. ‘Why are you doing this?’
‘I’ve already told you, Councillor, I’ve to prepare a report on a sudden, violent death, and there are inconsistencies.’
‘You mean you don’t know why he did it?’
‘That’s what I mean.’
‘Well, I can’t help you, I’m afraid.’ Gillespie got to his feet, making ready to leave.
‘Can’t or won’t?’
Gillespie glared at Rebus, then sat down again. ‘What does that mean?’
‘It means I think you’re hiding something.’
‘Such as?’
‘That’s what I have to find out … before I can finish my report.’
‘Are all policeman like you?’
‘No. Some of them you wouldn’t want to meet.’
‘I meet quite a few actually. A colleague of mine — regional councillor rather than district, but the same party — is chair of Lothian and Borders Joint Police Board.’ Gillespie drew on his cigarette and blew the smoke out in a thin stream. ‘He’s quite a good friend.’
‘It’s always nice to have friends.’ Rebus said.
Gillespie got to his feet again. ‘Look,’ he began. He swung his arms, as if he was deciding to say something he’d rather not say. ‘I promised …’ He sighed and sat down yet again. ‘This may mean something or nothing, Inspector.’ Rebus busied himself tidying the end of his cigarette against the ashtray. ‘It’s Helena, Helena Profitt.’
‘Your ward secretary?’
‘She … she told me she knew him.’
‘McAnally?’
Gillespie nodded. ‘When McAnally came into the room and saw her … there was a moment when he just stared. I asked her about it afterwards, and she told me she’d known him a long time ago. She wouldn’t say any more than that.’
‘What’s wrong with your mouth?’
‘Huh.’
‘You keep poking it with your finger.’
‘Nothing’s wrong with it.’ But Rebus knew something was wrong; he was just hoping it would go away. There was pressure inside his gum and top lip, a dull, unpleasant sensation that was now spreading either side of his nose. It felt as if his whole face should be swollen, but it was just a little red beneath the nose — and that could have been the drink or the weather.
‘Whose idea was this?’ he said, folding his arms around himself. They were walking on Portobello beach, the only souls mad enough in this seizure-inducing wind.
‘Mine,’ said Mairie Henderson.
Rebus had turned up at her flat expecting a hot drink and a soft couch, but instead she’d dragged him out for what she euphemistically called her ‘constitutional’.
‘You’d have to have the constitution of an ox to survive this,’ Rebus muttered to himself. The blasts of air against his ears meant he could barely hear what Mairie was saying, and every time he opened his mouth to yell something back, the malevolent air flooded in and attacked his tooth again. Mairie ran to a wall and hunkered down with her back against it. Her cheeks looked as if they’d been sandblasted; which in a sense they had.
Rebus crouched beside her, thankful for the shelter. He liked to take an interest in Mairie, especially now she was a freelance journalist. He worried about that lack of salary, but she seemed to be doing all right.
‘So,’ he asked, ‘what exactly did you come up with?’
She smiled. ‘You forget, I used to cover local government, regional and district councils. It was my first job on the paper. I didn’t have to do much digging.’ She leaned forward and drew a circle in the sand. ‘Where do you want me to start?’
‘Give me some background.’
‘District council, not regional?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Well, about the only glamorous angle attached to district councildom is the fact of a big budget, which means only the four major cities are worth the candle.’
‘From a journalist’s perspective?’
‘It’s the only perspective I can give.’ She pushed the hair out of her eyes. ‘Therefore, being a district councillor is not an attractive proposition. You’ve got long, boring working hours, requiring you to take time off from your daytime job, plus eating into your evening hours, since a lot of the meetings are evening affairs, as are surgeries if they’re not on a Saturday.’
‘OK, so I won’t be standing for councillor, unless the money compensates.’
Mairie shook her head. ‘It’s not great for such a thankless task. Of course, you can claim expenses, plus if you chair a committee there’s a bonus, but even so … For all these reasons and others, you find that councillors tend to fall into one of several groups: retired, unemployed, self-employed, or with an affluent spouse.’
‘The first two because they’ve got lots of time, the last two because they can make time?’
She nodded. ‘Result? A lot of councils are not what you’d call dynamic. Edinburgh’s more interesting than most.’
‘So tell me about Edinburgh.’ Rebus stared out towards Inchkeith Island.
‘Well, we’ve sixty-two wards, Labour holding most of them.’
‘No surprise.’
‘But there isn’t much of a gap between Labour and the Tories, only about seven seats. The Lib-Dems have a few, and the SNP a couple. As to what the council does, if you’d ever had to sit in on their meetings and then write them up as even vaguely interesting prose, you’d know.’
‘Boring?’
‘Most councillors could bore for Britain at the World Ennui Cup.’
‘So that’s how you pronounce that word.’ This got him a smile. She didn’t smile much these days, not since she’d led Rebus to a horror above the Crazy Hose Saloon. Rebus looked out to sea. It seemed all whitecaps as far as the horizon.
‘There are all sorts of committees and sub-committees,’ she went on, ‘and the full district council meets once a month. But despite all that, what the council basically does is house people. Glasgow District Council is the biggest landlord in Britain — one hundred and seventy thousand houses. It’s rumoured the district councils were only given the housing portfolio after local government reorganisation so they’d have something to do.’
‘You’ve lost me.’
‘The Tories wanted to keep housing out of regional council control.’ She sighed at his puzzled look. ‘It’s all to do with politics and it’s all intensely dull.’
‘And the councillors are dull too?’
‘Almost of necessity. Maybe “worthy” would be a better word.’ She looked at him. ‘We’re focusing in nicely on Councillor Tom Gillespie. He chairs an industrial planning committee, looking at economic and property development. The council has its own department — Economic Development and Estates — and mostly the committee would be checking to ensure that the department is working hard and not trying to fix anything.’
‘Fix? You don’t mean as in repair?’
‘I don’t. Land deals and building contracts can be worth millions. Even repairs to buildings can be worth hundreds of thousands. Suppose I handed you the contract to clean the windows of every council building in the city?’
‘I’d have to buy a new chamois.’
‘You could afford it. The only thing about Gillespie is that he’s ambitious, but that’s nothing new. Twenty years ago, just before the corporation became the district council, Malcolm Rifkind, George Foulkes, and Robin Cook were all councillors. That’s another thing: the district council is about to disappear with effect from April 1996. There are elections coming up so we can install a sort of shadow authority, if anyone bothers to vote.’
‘Any news of crooked deals, bent councillors?’
‘Nothing. Tom Gillespie is a diligent, hard-working councillor with no bad press, no apparent skeletons in his closet, not even any rumours. He’s not a tippler, not a gambler, and he doesn’t cheat on his wife with the secretary — ’
‘What makes you say that?’
She shrugged. ‘It’s just one of those things people sometimes do.’ She touched the back of his hand. ‘Do you know something I don’t?’
Rebus stood up. ‘That’d be the day. Which is he, by the way: self-employed? Unemployed?’
‘Wealthy spouse. His wife runs her own business.’
Rebus looked around. ‘Is there a cafe open somewhere?’
‘We could try the Fun Park.’ She wiped her hands clean of sand. ‘Am I in for an exclusive?’
Rebus rubbed his shoe over the circle she’d made in the sand, obliterating it.
‘Well?’ she persisted.
‘Are you still singing in that country and western band?’
‘Now there’s a subtle change of subject. You were about to answer my question.’
‘What question?’
‘About the exclusive.’
‘No I wasn’t.’ They came off the beach on to the promenade. ‘Can you check a couple of other things for me?’
‘What?’
‘A company name: LABarum.’ He spelt it for her. ‘That’s all I’ve got on it. Plus another name. Dalgety.’
‘A company?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve checked, and there are companies called Dalgety, plus it’s a place name and a surname.’
‘So what do you want me to do?’
He shrugged. ‘If you find out anything about LABarum, maybe Dalgety will tie into it.’
‘I’ll see what I can do. Oh, I forgot to say, I’m talking to your daughter later on.’
Rebus stopped. ‘You forgot to say?’
‘OK, I wasn’t going to tell you. I’m interviewing her on the McAnally suicide.’ Rebus started walking again, Mairie hurrying to catch him up. ‘Any comment you’d like to make at this point, Inspector, strictly on the record?’
‘No comment, Miss Henderson,’ Rebus growled.
He’d decided the interview room might prove just too much for Helena Proffit, so made an appointment to see her at her work. She worked part-time in an office, on top of her post as Gillespie’s ward secretary. But someone from her office phoned to say Miss Proffit had been taken ill with a migraine and had gone home. He tried her home number, but got no answer. It could wait. Meantime he made another appointment, this time with the Governor of HM Prison Edinburgh. He told the governor’s secretary that it concerned the suicide of an ex-inmate. The secretary booked him in for Tuesday afternoon.
‘Sooner would be better,’ he told her.
‘Sooner isn’t possible,’ she replied.
That night, after the usual session with Doc and Salty, he drove out to the Forth Road Bridge, parked, and walked on to the bridge itself. For once there was no howling gale, hardly even a breeze. There was no moon, and the temperature was still a degree or two above freezing. The bridge had been reopened, some temporary repairs completed. Initial structural surveys had shown no real damage to the fabric, though if the car had snapped one of the thick metal support cables, it would have been different.
He stood there shivering after the warmth of the pub and his car. He was a few yards from where the boys had jumped. The area was cordoned off with metal barriers, anchored by sandbags. Two yellow metal lamps marked off the danger area. Someone had climbed over the barriers and laid a small wreath next to the broken rail, weighing it down with a rock so it wouldn’t be blown away. He looked up at the nearer of the two vast supports, red lights blinking at its summit as a warning to aircraft. He didn’t really feel very much, except a bit lonely and sorry for himself. The Forth was down there, as judgmental as Pilate. It was funny the things that could kill you: water, a ship’s hull, steel pellets from a plastic case. It was funny that some people actually chose to die.
‘I could never do it,’ Rebus said out loud. ‘I couldn’t kill myself.’
Which didn’t mean he hadn’t thought of it. It was funny the things you thought about some nights. It was all so funny, he felt a lump forming in his throat. It’s only the drink, he thought. It’s the drink makes me maudlin. It’s only the drink.
Sometimes people who knew next to nothing about them called Edinburgh’s drop-in centres drop-out centres. Rebus knew that the police weren’t the most welcome guests, so he phoned ahead first.
He knew the person who ran the centre behind Waverley Station. Rebus had done him a favour once, bringing back a heroin addict who’d suffered sudden cold turkey on Nicolson Street. Some officers would have lifted the hapless wretch and taken him to the station for a knee in the groin and a long sweat. But Rebus had taken him where he wanted to go: the drop-in centre at Waverley. Turned out he was undergoing withdrawal, doing it all on his own.
‘How is he?’ Rebus asked Fraser Leitch, the centre’s manager and guiding light.
Leitch was sitting in his mouldering office, surrounded by the usual mounds of paperwork. The shelves behind his desk were bowed under the weight of files, document boxes, magazines and books. Fraser Leitch scratched his grey-flecked beard.
‘He was doing all right, last I heard. Retrained as a chippie and actually found a job. See, Inspector, sometimes the system works.’
‘Or he’s the exception that proves the rule.’
‘The eternal pessimist.’ Leitch got up and crouched in front of a tray on the floor. He checked there was water in the kettle and switched it on. ‘I’ll make a bet with you. I’ll bet you’re here to talk about Willie Coyle and Dixie Taylor.’
‘I’d have to be daft to cover a bet like that.’
Leitch smiled. ‘You know Dixie was a user?’ Rebus nodded. ‘Well, as far as I know, with Willie’s help he’d been clean for a couple of months.’
‘His works were still under his bed.’
Leitch shrugged as he tipped coffee into two mugs. ‘The temptation’s always there. I’ll make another bet with you, I’ll bet you’ve never tried heroin yourself.’
‘You’d be right.’
‘Me neither, but the way I’ve heard it described … Well, like I say, the temptation never goes away. You have to take it one day at a time.’
Rebus knew Fraser Leitch used to have a drink problem. What the man was saying was that once you had it, you had it for life, because even if you dried out, the cause of your problem was still there, never quite beyond reach.
‘There’s a joke I’ve heard,’ Leitch said, as the kettle started to boil. ‘Well, it’s not much of a joke. Here it is: what kind of boat should Dixie have landed on?’
‘I give up.’
‘A sampan, because they’re both close to junk. Like I say, bad joke.’ He poured water and milk into the mugs, stirred them, and handed one to Rebus. ‘Sorry, we don’t stretch to pure Colombian.’
‘Is that another joke?’
Leitch sat down again. ‘I knew Dixie,’ he said. ‘I only met Willie a couple of times.’
‘Willie wasn’t a user?’
‘He probably toked up, maybe dropped some E.’
‘Pretty clean-living then? Were you surprised when you learned what they’d done?’
‘Surprised? I don’t know. How’s your coffee?’
‘Terrible.’
‘Terrible or not, it’s still twenty pence.’ Leitch pointed to a box on the desk. Rebus found a one-pound coin and dropped it in.
‘Keep the change.’
‘Giving a quid qualifies you as a patron.’ Leitch stuck his feet up on the edge of the desk, knees bent. He was wearing moccasins, their stitched seams coming undone. The bottoms of his denims were frayed too. He usually described himself as ‘just another old hippy’.
‘How’s the centre doing?’ Rebus asked.
‘We’re hanging on by the skin of our teeth.’
‘You get district council funding?’
‘Some.’ Leitch frowned. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘What happens when the district council is replaced?’
‘We pray the new authority keeps up our funding.’
Rebus nodded thoughtfully. ‘I was asking if you were surprised about Willie and Dixie.’
Leitch thought for a moment. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t suppose I was, except that it was a dafter stunt than I would have expected from them.’
‘Because Willie was smarter than that?’
‘He must have known they’d never get away with it. Dixie was a different proposition, crazy at times, a real heid-the-ba’, but Willie could keep him under control.’
‘Like Keitel and DeNiro in Mean Streets.’
‘That’s not a bad comparison. Dixie would do something daft, and Willie would slap him about the head. Dixie wouldn’t have taken it from anyone else. You realise a lot of what I’m telling you is second-hand? Like I said, I only met Willie a couple of times.’ He paused. ‘You were there, weren’t you?’
‘I was there,’ Rebus said quietly. He shifted in his chair. ‘They just … Willie put his arm around Dixie and then leaned back over the rail, and Dixie went with him. There was no resistance. They didn’t jump, they just slipped away.’
‘Christ.’ Leitch took his feet off the desk.
‘Why would they do that?’
Leitch got up and walked around the desk. ‘I think you know the answer to that, or at least you have an inkling. They couldn’t go to jail.’
‘I know,’ Rebus said. Two people die rather than go to jail; another dies rather than be out. Rebus touched his mouth with a finger, feeling the pain, the pressure, almost enjoying it.
Leitch landed a hand on his shoulder. ‘Have you seen a counsellor?’
‘What?’
‘Don’t the police have counselling?’
‘Why would I want counselling?’
Leitch squeezed Rebus’s shoulder and withdrew his hand. ‘It’s up to you,’ he said, going back to his chair. They sat in silence for a while.
‘Ever come across a guy called Paul Duggan?’ Rebus asked at last.
‘Name rings a bell. I can’t put a face to it. Maybe I’ve just heard him mentioned around the centre.’
‘He loaned Willie and Dixie his car. He was their landlord.’
‘Oh, right, yes. A couple of guys who sometimes come in are tenants of his.’
‘Any idea where they live?’
‘Abbey Hill, somewhere round there.’
‘What about the name Dalgety — does it mean anything to you?’ Leitch thought about it and shook his head. Rebus dug into his pocket and brought out the photo of Kirstie Kennedy. ‘I know it’s a long shot,’ he said, ‘but have you seen her around the centre?’
‘This is the Lord Provost’s daughter. A couple of uniforms came asking about her just after she went missing.’
‘The photo’s a bit out of date, she’d look different now.’
‘Then bring me a more recent photo. Don’t tell me an out-of-date picture’s the best her parents can do?’
Rebus thought about that as he left Fraser Leitch’s office. The man had a point. Then again, how many photos did Rebus have of his own daughter? Precious few after age twelve. He was standing in the short dark hallway, half its walls taken up with noticeboards, the other half with marker-pen graffiti. Rebus studied the notices. One card was recent, its edges not yet dog-eared. It was printed, unlike its ballpoint neighbours. Altogether a very superior card.
ROOMS TO LET CHEAP.
There was a phone number and a name. The name was Paul. Rebus removed the card and put it in his pocket next to Kirstie Kennedy’s photo.
He glanced into the two open rooms. In one, a couple of rows of plastic chairs were positioned in front of a TV. The TV was a twelve-inch black and white. One lad was in there, holding the indoor aerial above his head as he stared at the screen from a distance of about thirty inches. Another kid sat on one of the chairs, sleeping. In the other room, three more teenagers, two boys and a girl, were trying to play table tennis with one cracked ball, two rubberless bats, and a paperback book. Their net was a row of upended cigarette packets. They played quietly, without enthusiasm or hope.
On the steps outside, two more clients of the centre tried to bum first money and then cigarettes off him. He handed out a couple of ciggies, and even lit them.
‘Shame about Dixie, eh?’ he said.
‘Fuck off, porker,’ they said, moving back indoors.
Back at his flat, Rebus finally bled the central heating system, catching the water in empty coffee jars. One thing about the flat when he moved back in: plenty of empty coffee jars. He’d meant to ask the students why there were cupboards and boxes full of them.
He refilled the system, wondering what the pressure gauges on the front of the boiler should read. When he turned the system back on, there was a gushing, gurgling sound from the pipes, and the boiler shuddered as the gas jets burst into life.
He went through to the living room and stood with his hand on the radiator. It got warm, but stayed only warm, even with the thermostat all the way up. And there was a drip from the bleedcock. He twisted the key as hard as he could, but the drip remained. He tied a kitchen-cloth to it and let the cloth run down into one of the coffee jars. That would collect the drips, and stop them making a noise.
Yes, John Rebus had been here before.
He sat in his chair, lights out, and looked out of his window on to Arden Street, thinking of Maisie Finch, thinking of her mother and his own mother. There was frost on the roofs and bonnets of the parked cars. A group of students were laughing their way back to their digs. Rebus poured himself a whisky and told the students how lucky they were. Everybody out there was lucky. All the people sleeping rough, and bumming cigarettes, and plotting and scheming how to get ahead. Alister Flower, twisting and gnawing in his sleep; Gill Templer, still and unperturbed in hers; Frank Lauderdale, with an itch beneath his cast; Tresa McAnally, feet up in front of the TV; Kirstie Kennedy … wherever she was. They were all of them lucky.
Edinburgh was a lucky fucking town.