Let It Bleed

14

The following Tuesday, Rebus was at work uncharacteristically early.

But not so early as to be the first to arrive. Gill Templer was already there, her door ajar, fighting her way through paperwork. Rebus knocked and pushed the door open a little further.

‘You’re early,’ she said, rubbing her eyes.

‘What about you? Have you been here all night?’

‘It feels like it. That coffee smells good.’

‘Want me to fetch you one?’

‘No, just give me half of yours.’ She handed him a clean mug, and he poured half the contents of his beaker into it. Standing over the wastebasket, he was able to see what she’d been working on. She was trying to acquaint herself with every ongoing case, everything Frank Lauderdale had left behind.

‘Tall order,’ he said.

‘You can help.’

‘How’s that, boss?’

‘You’re slow to type up your notes. The McBrane case and the Pettiford especially. I’d like to see them this morning.’

‘Do you know how fast I type?’

‘Just do it.’

‘Would you settle for one out of two? I’ve a funeral on.’

‘I want them both by lunchtime, Inspector.’

Rebus looked back at the open door. There was still no one else around. ‘You know,’ he said quietly, ‘I’m going to start taking this personally.’

She looked up from her work. ‘What’s that?’

‘The way you’ve been treating me ever since you got here. Frankly, it stinks. At first I thought it was just for show, but I’m not so sure. I know you’ve got something to prove to everybody, but that doesn’t — ’

‘Tread carefully, Inspector.’

Rebus stared at her. Finally she looked down at the work in front of her. ‘Thanks for the coffee,’ she said quietly. ‘I still want those case-notes by lunchtime.’

So he went to his desk and worked on them. He didn’t like typing up case-notes, the hard slog of always using the right words, of getting everything right. No police officer liked it when a report which had been painstakingly prepared was sent back by the Procurator-fiscal because of some tiny flaw in the surface of the whole. You were waiting for news that the precognition was being prepared, and instead the case came back to you with a note — ‘unable to proceed as stands’.

The reporting officer — whose job was to liaise with the Crown — took most of the flak, and Rebus was RO on both the McBrane and Pettiford cases. It was his job to make a case that the Procurator-fiscal would accept. He supposed it was Gill Templer’s job to make sure he did the work, but her attitude still rankled. As far as he could gather, she’d been a far from popular choice as Frank Lauderdale’s replacement. If Lauderdale hadn’t been universally respected, at least he’d been a man; and more than that, he’d been ‘one of them’. Gill Templer had been brought in from Fife. And she was a woman. And she didn’t even play golf.

The female officers seemed happy enough — the ill-feeling was among the males only. Siobhan Clarke, Rebus had noticed, had a new spring in her step, working under a woman. Maybe she saw in Gill Templer a future that could be hers. But Gill would have to step carefully. Traps would be laid for her. She’d have to be careful who she trusted. Rebus had so far given her the benefit of the doubt, reckoning she was being hard on him because she couldn’t afford to be soft.

So far it looked like a one-way street.

He took his finished notes to her office, only to discover she was in conference with Farmer Watson. He left them prominently on her desk instead, and went to the washroom to change his tie, removing the blue one and replacing it with black. Brian Holmes came in as Rebus was checking himself in the mirror.

‘Off to a party then?’

‘In a manner of speaking, Brian. In a manner of speaking.’

Certainly, there was enough booze in the kitchenette to start a fair old hootenanny, but this was a wake rather than a celebration.

By the time Rebus got to Tresa McAnally’s flat, the place was bursting at the seams with middle-aged men and women and their disgruntled offspring, plus a few older souls who had the honour of being given chairs to sit on. And in the middle of the living room, dressed top to toe in black but with red gloss fingernails, sat the widow. The curtains were closed, as were those of the neighbouring flats — a sign of solidarity. The Scots always rallied round for a send-off.

Rebus squeezed his way through the whispering throng, and held out his hand. ‘Mrs McAnally,’ he said.

She took his hand and exerted the minimum of pressure. ‘Good of you to come.’

Then he was off again, backpedalling before she could turn to someone and say, ‘This is the policeman who went to the school, he saw Wee Shug flat out on the floor and missing half his head.’ Normally at these occasions the men retreated to the kitchen and got stuck into the whisky. But here there was only the kitchenette, separated from the living area by nothing more than a breakfast-bar. So the men had crammed themselves into the kitchenette, for all the world like a rush-hour busful. They passed around clean glasses, and then the whisky. Tumblers of sweet and dry sherry were passed out to the ladies. Soft drinks for the younger mourners, though you didn’t have to be too old to qualify for a nip of the harder stuff.

Rebus took a glassful and toasted the small man next to him. The man was in his seventies, and wore a wartime charcoal-and-chalkine suit. He had a pinched face and kept moving his lips, pursing and puckering them. When he spoke, it was in an undertone.

‘Here’s to you then, son.’

‘Slainte.’ They drank for a moment, savouring the cheap whisky. Savouring was better than having to talk, one reason why so much whisky was consumed at funerals.

‘The hearse gets here in ten minutes,’ the man informed Rebus.

‘Right.’ A closed casket of course; Tresa McAnally had been denied a final peek at her husband’s blasted remains.

‘Here’s the minister.’

There was nothing wrong with the old guy’s eyesight, despite the thick smeary lenses in his glasses. Rebus watched the minister as he moved through the room towards Tresa McAnally. He wore black, with the white dog-collar, and as he moved the crush of mourners parted before him. Ministers didn’t make friends, not easily; they were like cops that way. People were always afraid they’d say the wrong thing in front of them. They had a skill though, these men of the cloth: they could conduct a conversation while remaining inaudible to all but the person they addressed.

The old man was unscrewing another whisky bottle, different brand. ‘She’s made the flat nice, hasn’t she? I haven’t been here for a couple of years.’

Rebus nodded, noticing that the huge TV set had been moved out to make more space. He guessed it was in the bedroom. He scanned the male mourners again, looking for old lags, known faces, looking for someone who could have procured a shotgun for Wee Shug.

‘Oh aye,’ the old man went on, ‘it’s lovely now. New carpets and wallpaper, really nice.’

And new TV, Rebus thought. New front door, and bedroom fittings that didn’t exactly look superannuated. Money: where the hell had the money come from?

‘New carpet in the hall, too,’ the man was saying. He lowered his voice still further. ‘I suppose she did it for Wee Shug. You know, to make his coming home a bit more welcome. I mean, after a jail cell you want something nice.’

Rebus looked at the man more closely. ‘Served time yourself?’

‘A long time ago, son. Back in the fifties. Saughton was a different place then, everything was different. And mind, I’m not saying it was worse.’ Their drinks replenished, he screwed the top back on and passed the bottle to the next man along. Rebus wondered how many more old lags there were in the crush around him. Then he saw someone else coming into the room, and he stopped with his glass half an inch from his mouth.

She was dressed in black, a small woman with a pillbox hat and a short veil which covered her eyes but not her mouth. And behind her, much taller, a younger woman wearing a simple navy suit, low-cut and tight at the hips. It looked the sort of thing you would wear a blouse under, but Maisie Finch wasn’t wearing a blouse, or anything else beneath it that Rebus could see.

For now though, he was more interested in the woman with her. It was Helena Profitt. Rebus turned towards the draining-board, where a rubicund man, hot and jacketless and sporting bright red braces, was dispensing the drinks.

‘Give us a couple of sherries,’ Rebus murmured in the man’s direction. The order was passed along and a few moments later Rebus had his sherries. He left his own whisky on the breakfast-bar and carried them into the living room.

Helena Profitt was having a muted conversation with Tresa McAnally, so Rebus tapped Maisie Finch on the shoulder. When she turned towards him, he handed her the glasses.

‘Thanks.’ She sniffed the contents before handing one glass on to Helena Profitt.

‘Funny,’ Rebus said, ‘you never mentioned knowing Miss Profitt.’

She smiled, then took a sip of sherry and screwed up her face.

‘Too sweet?’

‘It’s loupin’. Is there anything else?’

‘Whisky, dark rum, soft drinks. Maybe some vodka.’

‘A voddy would slip down.’ She surveyed the scrum in the kitchenette and changed her mind, draining the glass.

‘So,’ Rebus said in an undertone, ‘how do you know Helena Profitt?’

‘Same way most folk in this room do.’ She smiled again and turned to the widow. ‘Tresa, hen, mind if I smoke?’ The packet was already out of her pocket.

‘Go ahead, Maisie.’ A pause. ‘It’s what Wee Shug would have wanted. He liked a ciggie himself.’

Taking their signal from this, a lot of hands reached into pockets and handbags. Packs were opened, handed round. Rebus took one from Maisie, and she lit it for him.

‘Nice lighter,’ he said.

‘It was a present.’ She looked at the slim onyx and gold lighter before returning it to her pocket.

‘So,’ Rebus said, ‘Miss Profitt used to live in the tenement?’

‘Floor below this.’

As more people arrived and had to offer their condolences, or else needed to say goodbye before leaving, Rebus and Maisie found themselves moved away from the widow and Miss Profitt. They ended up by the mantelpiece. Rebus picked up a bereavement card. It was signed simply, ‘From all Shug’s pals in Saughton. We shall remember him.’

‘Touching,’ Maisie Finch said.

‘Either that or a bit sick.’

‘How’s that, Inspector?’ He noted she said ‘Inspector’ quite loudly. The nearest mourners looked him up and down, and he knew word would now go around.

‘Depends why he killed himself,’ he said. ‘Maybe it had something to do with Saughton.’

‘Tresa tells me he had the big C.’

‘That’s only one possible reason.’ He found her eyes. ‘I can think of others.’

She looked away, almost casual. ‘Such as?’

‘Guilt, shame, embarrassment.’

She smiled sourly. ‘Not in Shug McAnally’s vocabulary.’

‘Self-pity?’

‘That’d be more like it.’

Rebus saw a pillbox hat and veil moving towards the door. ‘I’ll be back,’ he said.

Helena Profitt was at the front door when he caught her.

‘Miss Profitt?’ She turned to him. ‘I think we’d better talk.’

He led her into the McAnallys’ bedroom.

‘Can’t it wait?’ she asked, looking around her, not liking the surroundings.

Rebus shook his head. The TV was in here sure enough, giving them a narrow aisle to move about in. ‘You’ve been avoiding me,’ he said.

She sighed. ‘Tom told me he’d told you.’

‘You recognised Mr McAnally that night?’

‘Of course I did.’

‘Did he recognise you?’

She nodded. ‘I’m certain he did.’

‘Did he know beforehand that you were close to the councillor?’

Now she stared at him through her veil. ‘What do you mean “close”? I’m his ward secretary, that’s all.’

‘That’s all I meant.’

‘How could he have known? No, I don’t think he knew.’ She suddenly saw what he was getting at. ‘His suicide had nothing to do with me!’

‘We have to check these things. Why didn’t you say anything at the time?’

‘I …’ She sat down on the edge of the bed, hands in her lap, then stood up again abruptly. Rebus watched the bedcover float, finding its level. It was a waterbed. Disconcerted, Helena Profitt patted her hat and tugged at her veil. It didn’t make much of a hiding place.

‘Is it to do with Maisie Finch?’ Rebus asked.

She thought about it, then nodded solemnly before bursting into a fit of loud sobbing. Rebus touched her shoulder, but she spun away from him. A mourner opened the door and looked in. Rebus got the feeling there were others out there, all wanting to see the tears.

‘She’ll be all right,’ he said, closing the door firmly. Helena Profitt had brought a hankie out of her sleeve and was blowing her nose. Rebus offered her his own handkerchief, and she used it to dab at her eyes. There was eyeshadow on the white cotton when she handed it back. The door was pushed open again. The man with the red braces stood there.

‘What’s going on?’

‘Nothing,’ Rebus said.

The man glowered. ‘We know who you are. Maybe you’d better leave.’

‘What are you going to do — throw me out?’

The sweaty face creased in a sneer. ‘You lot are all the same.’

‘And so are you lot.’ Rebus pushed the door hard until it closed. He turned back to Helena Profitt.

‘What is it you’re not saying?’ he asked solicitously. ‘It’ll come out eventually, you know.’

‘I moved out of this tenement four years ago,’ she said. ‘I’ve only been back a couple of times since. I should come more often. Maisie’s mother misses my little visits …’

Four years ago. ‘After McAnally raped Maisie?’ he guessed.

She breathed deeply a few times to calm herself. ‘You know, we didn’t do anything, none of us. We all heard a scream — I know I heard it — but nobody phoned for the police. Not until Maisie ran into Tresa’s. It was Tresa herself who phoned, to say her own husband had just raped their next door neighbour’s girl. We heard the scream, but we just went on minding our own business.’ She wiped her nose again. ‘Isn’t that typical of this bloody city?’

Rebus remembered the words he’d used so recently: guilt, shame, embarrassment.

‘You felt ashamed?’ he offered.

‘You bet I did. I couldn’t stand to live here any longer.’

He nodded. ‘Are you surprised Maisie stayed on, knowing McAnally would be back?’

She shook her head. ‘Maisie’s mum would never move. Besides, Maisie and Tresa, they’ve always been close, especially so since the …’

Rebus tried to imagine walking out of prison and into a situation like that. How much closer had Tresa and the younger woman grown in McAnally’s absence?

‘Tell me what happened that night.’

‘What?’ She tucked the hankie back into her sleeve.

‘The night of the assault.’

‘What’s it to you?’ Her cheeks were reddening with anger. ‘It’s none of your business. It’s long past, long forgotten.’

‘Forgotten, Miss Profitt?’ Rebus shook his head. ‘I don’t think so, not by a long chalk.’

Then he turned from her and left the room.

He looked into the living room. Smoke hung in the air like winter fog. He saw Maisie, perched on the arm of the widow’s fat armchair, one slim leg crossed over the other. She was holding Tresa McAnally’s hand and giving it a pat, and Tresa, head bowed, was listening to whatever Maisie was telling her. Listening to it, and managing to smile. Rebus would have called Tresa McAnally ‘feisty’; maybe even ‘brassy’. But neither description fitted her just now. Maybe it was just the circumstances, the funeral, but he didn’t think so.

‘Car’s here,’ someone at the window said, meaning that the hearse was arriving. The minister got to his feet to say a few words, a tumbler of whisky in one hand, cheeks redder than they had been. Rebus pushed his way back into the hall, slipped out of the open door, and made his way down the tenement stairs. The man in the braces leaned over the guard-rail.

‘I hope we meet again, pal, some place where there are no witnesses.’

The threat echoed down the stairwell. Rebus kept walking. When he drove off, he left a space kerbside for the hearse.

15

Rebus wasn’t the only one interested in Shug McAnally’s suicide. He’d read the newspaper article, scanning it quickly first to see if he was mentioned. He wasn’t, which was a relief. Mairie Henderson’s was one of three names sharing the by-line. It was impossible to see where her contribution started and ended except, of course, that she’d interviewed Rebus’s daughter Sammy; and though Sammy wasn’t mentioned by name, the outfit she worked for was: Scottish Welfare for Ex-Prisoners, or SWEEP as it preferred to be known.

The police called it Sooty.

SWEEP, like the other care agencies mentioned in the piece, was concerned that Hugh McAnally’s suicide only a week after his release from prison was evidence of a problem of readjustment and a lack of real concern ‘within the system’ — Sammy’s words to be sure. Police, prison staff, and Social Services were marked out for criticism. The governor of HM Prison Edinburgh could do no more than explain to the journalists how inmates were prepared for release back into society. A ‘spokesman for SWEEP’ insisted that ex-prisoners — SWEEP never called them ‘offenders’ — suffered the same psychological problems as released kidnap victims or hostages. Rebus could hear the words in Sammy’s mouth; he’d heard them from her before.

He’d been surprised to get a letter from his daughter a couple of months back, saying she’d got a job in Edinburgh and was ‘coming home’. He’d phoned her to check what this meant, and found it only meant she was returning to Edinburgh.

‘Don’t worry,’ she told him, ‘I don’t expect you to put me up.’

The job she’d landed was with SWEEP. She’d been working for some time with inmates and ex-prisoners in London, ever since she’d visited a friend in jail and had seen the conditions and, as she put it, ‘the loneliness’.

‘This friend,’ Rebus had unwisely said, ‘what were they in for?’

After which their conversation had become stilted to say the least.

She didn’t want to be met off the train, but he went to Waverley anyway. She didn’t see him watching as she flung her army-style kitbag and scuffed red rucksack on to the platform. He wanted to walk forwards to greet her, maybe throw his arms around her, or more likely stand there in the hope that she’d throw her arms around him. But she hadn’t wanted to be met, so he stood his ground, half hoping she’d see him anyway.

She didn’t; she just looked around the concourse with a good deal of pleasure, swung the rucksack on to her back, and picked up her kitbag. She was thin, dressed in clingy black leggings, Doc Marten shoes, a baggy grey T-shirt and black waistcoat. Her hair was long these days, ponytailed with pieces of bright cotton threaded through it. She sported several earrings in either ear, and a nose-stud. She was twenty years old, a woman, and her own woman at that, striding with confidence from the platform. He followed her up the ramp out of the station. A bright winter day was waiting for her. He didn’t suppose she’d worry about the cold.

Later, she’d come to Patience’s flat for a meal. Rebus had suggested vegetarian to Patience, just to be on the safe side.

‘I always cook vegetarian for the teens and twenties,’ she’d replied.

‘I might have guessed you would.’

After that visit, there had been others, Sammy and Patience growing closer as Patience and Rebus moved even further apart. Until one day Rebus had left, giving the students who rented his flat their marching orders and moving himself back in.

Two days later, his set of keys to Patience’s flat had been handed over to Sammy, and she’d moved her stuff into the guest bedroom. Not a permanent arrangement, as both women said; just something they wanted to do for now.

Sammy was still there.

That first evening, the evening of the stuffed red peppers, Rebus and Sammy had argued about prison and ex-prisoners, right and wrong, society versus the individual. Sammy kept using the words ‘the system’; Rebus niggled her by using the term ‘con’. Although he agreed with at least some of her points — well thought out, persuasively argued — he found himself setting up in opposition to her. It was something he did, not just with her. Glancing across the table at Patience, he’d seen a weary smile. She’d told him before: he liked to antagonise just to get a response.

‘Know why?’ she’d said. ‘Because conflict is more fun for you than consensus.’

‘No it isn’t,’ he’d told her. ‘I’m just the devil’s advocate, that’s all.’

So he’d ignored the weary smile and continued his joust with his daughter …

He closed the paper, folded it, and tossed it into a wastepaper-bin. Gill Templer came into the office. He’d been waiting there for her for close to fifteen minutes. She didn’t apologise.

‘You forgot to tell me,’ she said, ‘that your daughter works for SWEEP.’

‘It’s not an issue.’

‘You should have told me.’

He saw what she meant. ‘You mean, before you gave an interview?’

‘Some woman reporter, nice as ninepence until the end of the session, then: “and tell me, what is your feeling about one of your inspectors having a close relative so involved with SWEEP?” ’

Mairie Henderson, thought Rebus. Probably not interested in the answer either, just trying to discomfit the interviewee, see if anything shook loose.

‘What did you tell her?’

‘I told her no comment. Then I went straight to Chief Superintendent Watson and asked him who the hell she’d meant.’ She paused. ‘It had to be you.’

‘Is that my cue for a song?’

She slammed a hand down on her desk. ‘It’s your cue to get the hell out of my office!’

Rebus got the hell out.

Rebus’s appointment with the governor of Saughton was in the late afternoon.

The guard-house phoned ahead, then let him through. He was met at the other side of the gate and taken to the governor’s office. There was an ante-room where the secretary sat behind a computer. She was taking a phone call, but nodded for him to take a seat.

‘You see,’ she said into the receiver, ‘control shift asterisk is supposed to clear that, but it’s not doing it.’ She listened, and tucked the receiver between cheek and shoulder so she could work on her keyboard with both hands. ‘No, that’s not working either. Hang on, that’s got it. Thanks, bye.’ She put the phone down and shook her head in exasperation. ‘Sometimes they’re more trouble than they’re worth,’ she confided to Rebus. ‘The governor will be back in a couple of minutes.’

‘Thanks,’ Rebus said. ‘Typewriters are about as high-tech as I can manage.’

‘They keep sending me on courses, but after half an hour I’m completely bamboozled.’

The door Rebus had come through opened suddenly, and the governor came in. Rebus stood up, they shook hands, and the governor led him into the inner sanctum.

‘Sit down, Inspector.’

‘I appreciate you seeing me, sir.’

The governor dismissed this with a wave of his hand. ‘It’s not often a suicide on the outside brings me into the equation, but I’ve had reporters hounding me on this one. McAnally’s death seems to have stirred up a bit of debate. They must be hard up for news.’ He sat back, resting his hands on his stomach. ‘And now,’ he said, ‘I’ve got you.’

The governor was a handsome man in his late fifties. He peered at Rebus over metal-framed glasses. He was bulky rather than fat, and his silvering hair was thick and healthy. His suit looked expensive, his shirt laundered, and his unfussy blue tie had a sheen that Rebus took for silk. He saw himself as a ‘man-manager’, and was a public voice in the drive to reform Scotland’s penal system: an end to slopping-out and cell-sharing; brighter, better equipped halls; a strong emphasis on vocational training, education and counselling. Not every sight-impaired Open University student knew that their braille text was probably transcribed by Saughton’s Braille Unit.

It wasn’t all sunny though: Saughton had its drug problems, its share of HIV-positive inmates. But at least it had a full-time medical staff to cope, or to begin to try to cope.

Rebus had never met the governor before, though he’d seen him at functions, and come across him in the media. His name was Jim Flett or, more often, just ‘Big Jim’.

‘Well, you’re right, sir,’ Rebus said, ‘I am here to talk to you about Hugh McAnally.’

‘So I gather.’ Flett tapped a manila file on his desk, the record of Prisoner 1117, C-Hall, HMP Edinburgh, McAnally, Hugh. Jim Flett opened the file. ‘I’ve had a read of this, and I’ve been to talk to some of the warders and McAnally’s fellow inmates.’ He gave Rebus a grin. ‘I think I’m prepared. By the way, something to drink?’

‘I’m fine, thanks. This won’t take long. Why was McAnally released so early?’

‘Not so early. His good behaviour was taken into account, as was his illness.’

‘You knew he was ill?’

‘Inoperable cancer. Normally, the stage of sentence he was at, we’d be readying to transfer him to the TFF hostel.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Training for Freedom. He’d have gone out unsupervised to a work placement. But Mr McAnally was a category C prisoner, and only category D’s qualify for TFF. In any event, he was due parole.’

‘What made him category C?’

Flett shrugged. ‘A bust-up with a warder.’

‘I thought you mentioned good behaviour?’

‘The bust-up was a while back. The man was dying, inspector. We knew we weren’t going to see him in here again.’

‘Did he seem suicidal?’

‘Not as far as I’m aware. I’m just glad he did away with himself on the outside: it makes him your problem rather than mine.’

‘What about aggro? Was he subject to threats or violence?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘He was a convicted rapist, his victim legally a child at the time of the offence. I hear the stories, same as everyone else: if you’re a sex offender and you’re not put in a separate wing, you get beaten up, people pish in your tea, you’re an outcast. Can’t exactly be good for the spirit.’

‘Spirit?’ Flett gave a wry smile. ‘Let’s just say I’m not aware of any incidents of that nature. If any occurred, they’d be dealt with.’

‘I don’t suppose the victims lodge complaints that often.’

‘You think you know so much about us, Inspector, maybe you should be sitting this side of the desk?’

‘No, thanks.’

‘Look, there’s nothing in his time here that made anyone think he was about to stick a shotgun in his gub.’

Rebus thought for a moment. ‘Did you know him?’

‘No, I didn’t. He’d only been here eleven months.’

‘Where was he before?’

‘Glenochil.’

‘Any problems while he was there?’

‘Not according to the files. Look, Inspector, I know what you’re thinking, what you’re trying to put together. But he didn’t commit harry-carry because of anything that happened to him in here. His cellmate was as shocked as anyone when he heard what happened. McAnally had served two previous sentences; it’s not as if incarceration was new or strange to him.’

Rebus thought again of Willie and Dixie, of what would have happened to them in prison.

‘Surely,’ Flett was saying, ‘it’s much more realistic to say that the illness wore him down and led him to kill himself.’

‘With respect, sir, his previouses weren’t for rape of a minor.’

Flett stared at Rebus, then glanced at his watch, letting him know the score.

‘Just a couple of final questions, sir. How much money did he leave prison with?’

Flett had to check that in the file. ‘There was eight pounds sixty among his effects when he came in.’

‘And other than that?’

‘Other than that, he was entitled to the same benefits as any other ex-prisoner. It seems an odd question to ask.’

‘His flat shows signs of a recent overhaul; I’m wondering where the money came from.’

‘Best ask his wife. Anything else?’

‘Who was his contact on the outside?’

‘You mean his supervising officer?’ Flett looked this up too. ‘Jennifer Benn at Social Services.’ Rebus entered the name in his notebook. ‘Well, if that’s all, inspector …?’ The governor was on his feet. He walked around the desk and smiled towards Rebus, and Rebus suddenly knew the man was hiding something. He’d been edgy during the conversation, as though expecting some awkward question to arise. It hadn’t, and his relief was evident in that smile, in his complete change of attitude.

Rebus tried to think what the question could be. Out in the secretary’s office, while Big Jim was shaking his hand a final time, he was still thinking about it. I’ve let him off the hook, he thought. He reran the meeting in his head as he walked back to his car.

‘Buggered if I know,’ he announced to himself. But as he sat in the idling car, he knew he was going to have to find out.

That evening, he visited one of only two drop-in centres available to ex-cons in Edinburgh. It reminded him most of Fraser Leitch’s establishment, except that here there was a colour TV rather than black and white.

Nobody could help him. Hugh McAnally hadn’t been near the place, not as far as anyone knew. He wasn’t about to press the point or outstay his lukewarm welcome, but he took a quick look round before he left.

In a corner of the main room, a woman with a huge canvas bag slung over her shoulder was crouching down in conversation with a man who sat slumped in a chair. The man stared past her, not interested. Eventually the woman gave up, wrote something on a pad, closed it, and returned it to the canvas bag. The man leaned forward then and whispered something into her ear. She listened, her cheeks reddened, and she got to her feet, turning to walk away.

Rebus was right behind her. She brought herself up short to avoid a collision.

‘You wouldn’t be Jennifer Benn, would you?’

‘That’s me.’

‘My lucky night.’ Rebus looked past her, to where the seated man was rubbing his forehead, trying not to let Rebus see his face. ‘Hiya, Pete.’

The man looked up and seemed to place Rebus. ‘Evening, Mr Rebus.’

‘How long have you been out?’

‘Three weeks two days.’

‘And you fancy another trip back already? Give the lady back her purse.’

The social worker stared in surprise as Pete slipped the bulging black leather purse out of his denim jacket. She snatched it back and checked the contents.

‘Do you want to press charges?’ Rebus asked. She shook her head. ‘Fine, then let’s have a little chat.’

By the time they reached the front door, Jennifer Benn had regained her composure.

‘Where are we going?’

‘Somewhere I’m a bit more welcome. There’s a pub across the road.’

‘I don’t like pubs.’

‘My car then?’

She turned to him. ‘Can I see some ID?’

‘I thought that scene back there would have been ID enough.’ But she wasn’t budging, so he dug out his warrant card, which she inspected slowly.

‘All right,’ she said, handing it back, ‘we can talk here.’

‘Here?’ They were on the pavement. She wrapped a woollen scarf around her neck and pulled on sheepskin mitts. She was in her late-twenties and had frizzy blonde hair and outsized glasses. ‘It’s freezing here,’ Rebus complained.

‘Then best hurry up.’

He sighed. ‘You were Shug McAnally’s social worker?’

‘That’s right.’

‘I’m investigating his suicide.’

She was shaking her head. ‘I’m afraid I can’t help. He never kept an appointment, we never met.’

‘Did you report him?’

She nodded. ‘But I didn’t think anything would come of it. What punishment do you mete out to someone with terminal cancer?’

And with that she turned and walked quickly to her car. Rebus thought that she’d asked a very good question indeed.

16

Next morning, he found himself summoned to Chief Superintendent Watson’s office.

Gill Templer was already there when he arrived. She was standing with her back to the filing cabinet, arms folded. There wasn’t much room: three large cardboard boxes marked ‘PanoTech’ sat on the floor by the desk.

‘My new computer,’ the Farmer explained. ‘Sit down, John.’ The Farmer looked like a man with bad news: Rebus had been here before; same look, same tone of voice.

‘I’d rather stand, sir.’

‘Been up to anything we should know about, John?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Nothing at all?’

‘Not that I know of, sir. Why?’

Watson glanced towards Gill Templer. ‘I had a phone call yesterday evening from Allan Gunner.’ Gunner: the deputy chief constable. ‘He doesn’t often call me at home.’

‘Do I take it he had bad news?’ Rebus decided to sit down after all.

‘HM Inspectorate of Constabulary are thinking of investigating us.’

‘Us?’

‘B Division.’

‘That’s us all right.’

‘It’s no joking matter.’

Nor was it. HMIC was independent of the police service; it reported directly to the Secretary of State for Scotland. HMIC’s public remit encompassed examining police standards and indicating areas for improvement. It inspected all eight regional forces each year, but only four of these were full ‘primary’ inspections. They looked at rises in crime stats, falls in detection rates, and complaints from the public. No problem there: the recorded crime rate was steady when it wasn’t falling, and recent clear-up rates were marginally improved. But HMIC could really screw up a station’s working practices, just by being on the premises. There were long lists of questions to answer, an initial pre-inspection followed by the full inspection … and, as everyone in the room knew, HMIC could sometimes stumble upon something better left unqueried. Or, as the Farmer put it,

‘You know those buggers, John. If they want to find dirt on us, there’s dirt to be found. We don’t exactly work in an antiseptic environment.’

‘That’s because we don’t deal with people who wash behind their ears every morning. What are you getting at, sir? So what if we’ve been picked out? It’s the luck of the draw.’

‘Ah,’ Watson said, holding up a prodigious forefinger. ‘I only said they were thinking of picking us out.’

‘I don’t get it.’

The Farmer shifted — so far as he was able — in his chair. He was not a small man; it was not a large chair. ‘To be honest, neither do I, the DCC was being bloody cagey. I think the gist was, we’re doing something naughty, and if we stop doing it, another division might find itself under scrutiny instead of us.’

‘Did he actually say that?’ Gill Templer asked.

The Farmer shrugged. ‘I’m giving my interpretation, that’s all. Now, after his phone call, I did some thinking. I asked myself: who would be getting up people’s noses? Well, I know one copper who’s like cocaine in that respect.’

‘Nobody sniffs coke these days, sir.’ Watson just sat there, unblinking. ‘OK,’ Rebus said, standing again. ‘I went to see Big Jim Flett yesterday, probably a couple of hours before Gunner called you.’

‘Why?’ Gill Templer asked. She looked furious that he hadn’t told her beforehand.

‘McAnally.’

‘The suicide?’ The Farmer frowned as Rebus nodded.

‘The thing is, sir, there’s something … I don’t know, I just think there’s something there. Why go all the way to Warrender School to blow your brains out in front of a councillor, a man who says he never even knew the deceased? And how come the widow’s suddenly got money to spend? Those are two questions; I’ve got a wheen more.’

‘Well,’ the Farmer said, ‘that might explain the second phone call. Also last night, and also at my home. It was from Derek Mantoni.’

‘I don’t know him.’

‘Councillor Mantoni is chair of Lothian and Borders Joint Police Board.’

Rebus saw now: Gillespie had been complaining to his friend.

‘He was asking about you, John.’

‘Nice of him.’

‘Apparently you’ve rubbed Councillor Gillespie up the wrong way. I should remind you that the councillor is a victim here, and one who’s been through a terrible experience.’ The Farmer sounded as if he was quoting Derek Mantoni.

‘Inspector Rebus,’ Gill Templer said, ‘is there any reason to believe it wasn’t a suicide?’

‘No,’ Rebus admitted. ‘I’m sure it was suicide.’

‘Then I don’t see the problem.’

Rebus turned to her. ‘Well, I do!’ He jabbed his thumb into his chest to reinforce the point. ‘And now everyone suddenly wants it covered up!’ She turned her head away from him.

‘John,’ the Farmer warned, ‘that’s out of order. I’ve been looking at the hours you’ve been putting in. You’re due some time off … a lot of time actually. It’s a quiet time of year.’

Rebus held the Farmer’s stare. ‘You’ve got to back me up on this, sir.’

‘I’m telling you to take some time off, that’s all.’

‘Who is it you’re scared of: the DCC? Mantoni? HMIC?’

The Farmer ignored him. ‘Take a week, ten days … clear your head, Inspector.’

Rebus slammed both hands down on the desktop. A framed photo of the Farmer’s family fell off and landed on a cardboard box. Gill Templer stooped to pick it up.

‘You’ve got to back me up,’ Rebus repeated. He knew Gill was a lost cause; he had eyes only for the Farmer, but the Farmer wasn’t looking.

‘I’ve given you an order, Inspector.’

Rebus gave one of the boxes a kick on his way out of the room.

When he thought it over later, Rebus didn’t blame the Farmer. He was covering his arse; so was Gill, if it came down to it. Now Rebus was a free agent, or at least a loose one. He couldn’t get anyone into trouble but himself, and that was fine with him. He’d cleared his desk, pushing everything into drawers and, when he ran out of space, the wastepaper-bin. He’d left St Leonard’s without a word to anyone.

There were just the two problems — neither of them insignificant — and he pondered them as he sat in the back room of the Oxford Bar with a half of Caledonian Eighty and a double malt.

The first problem was, police routine gave his daily life its only shape and substance; it gave him a schedule to work to, a reason to get up in the morning. He loathed his free time, dreaded Sundays off. He lived to work, and in a very real sense he worked to live, too: the much-maligned Protestant work-ethic. Subtract work from the equation, and the day became flabby, like releasing jelly from its mould. Besides, without work, what reason had he not to drink?

It worried him, because now there was nothing to stop him raising two fingers to the shade of Wee Shug McAnally, a man not exactly universally mourned, and get on with some serious bewying instead. He could spend a seven-to-ten stretch in the Ox no problem, augmented by betting-shop gossip and nourished by pies and bridies. It would be wonderfully easy.

Then there was the second problem, not unconnected to the first.

For, now that he had so much time on his hands, what was to stop him booking a dentist’s appointment?

The only thing to do was to keep working. Besides, there were some things he needed to do in a hurry, before word got around that he was on leave. The first of these involved another visit to C Division in Torphichen Place.

DI Davidson was again on duty, to Rebus’s relief.

‘I can smell it off you,’ Davidson said, leading him to the CID room.

‘What?’

‘The drink. How can you torture me like that? There’s another two hours before I finish my shift.’

Rebus saw that they were alone in the CID room. ‘I need the casenotes on McAnally, the ones from the rape charge.’

‘What for?’

Rebus shrugged. ‘I just need to see them.’

Davidson went to a desk drawer and brought out a bunch of keys. ‘You know, John, there’s enough to be getting on with in the here-and-now.’ He went to a walk-in cupboard and opened it. ‘I don’t suppose there’ll be a copy still here. Everything’ll have been archived by now.’

There were reports packed tight along each shelf. On every spine, in fat felt-marker, was an officer’s name, depending on whose copy the report was. The spines faced upwards, the base of each report facing out. On the base was the name of the accused. There was no McAnally.

So then they’d to traipse to another part of the building, locate another set of keys, and unlock a storeroom, inside which stood a dozen tall double-doored filing cupboards. Davidson stood in thought for a moment, then pointed at one.

‘That’s probably got the year we’re after.’ He unlocked the cabinet. There was a smell of musty paper, much stronger than in the cupboard they’d tried earlier. Davidson ran his finger along each row of spines. ‘McAnally,’ he said at last, pulling out two thick files of A4 paper and handing them to Rebus. Each was loose-bound, held together by two removable metal clips. The blue covers were faded at their edges. Davidson’s surname was on the spine. Rebus read from one of the covers.

“‘The Case Against Hugh McAnally, Born 12.1.44.”’ He flipped through both files, not surprised to see their bulk consisted of witness statements.

‘Enjoy,’ said Davidson, relocking the cabinet.

Rebus stopped off on his way home and bought a jar of coffee, rolls, bacon, and two four-packs of Export. He was preparing for a long haul.

The flat was fairly warm. He emptied the jar beneath the leaking radiator and replaced it, then turned the hi-fi on. He washed three aspirin down with a swig of beer, then checked his face in the bathroom mirror. The skin around and below his nose was definitely inflamed. When he waggled one particular tooth it felt deadened, anaesthetised, while its neighbours jangled like they’d been wired to the mains. The blister on his palm had receded, and now sported only a thin strip of sticking-plaster. Beneath the plaster, the engine’s serial number was still there.

I’m in great shape, he thought. I’m the perfect fucking specimen.

He took the beer through to the living room, sat down with the reports in his chair, and started to read.

He started with the Summary of Evidence, barely glanced down the List of Productions and List of Witnesses, skipped the Annual Leave of Officers, and got to work on the Statements and Tape Transcriptions. The witnesses comprised neighbours, the victim, the accused’s wife, a couple of barmen, and the police doctor (Dr Curt, as it turned out), who had examined and taken samples from both victim and accused. Maisie Finch had been examined in hospital, where she spent the rest of the night under observation. It was noted that her mother — unaware of her daughter’s presence — was in the same hospital at the time, just one floor up.

Hugh McAnally had been examined in the medical examination room at Torphichen. During the examination he kept protesting, ‘I used a johnny, for fuck’s sake, what’s the problem?’

These words had endeared him to no one.

The story from the victim’s point of view: Maisie had been alone in the flat, her mum being in hospital for a minor operation. At this time, her mother was already all but housebound, looking after her a full-time occupation for Maisie. (Nobody had asked her how it felt to be cooped up all day with an invalid; or how it felt when her mum had been taken into hospital … Rebus remembered his own meeting with her — the bottles of strong lager, the ‘holiday mood’.) Maisie knew Mr McAnally very well, had known him for years. She regarded him not just as a neighbour but as a family friend.

McAnally told her he had come to ask after her mother. Though he smelled of alcohol, she’d let him into the flat and offered to make a cup of tea. He asked if she had anything stronger. She knew there was a bottle of whisky in the bottom of her mother’s wardrobe. It had been there since her father’s death. Maisie went to fetch it, and McAnally followed. He pushed her on to the bed so she was face down, and held her head down with one hand …

Afterwards, he mumbled something. She thought it might have been an apology, but maybe not. He went out, leaving the door to the flat ajar. She could hear him tramping noisily down the stairwell. She ran to Mrs McAnally’s door and thumped on it till she got an answer. Mrs McAnally herself called the police.

McAnally, by his own admission, left the tenement and headed for Lothian Road, drinking in a couple of pubs he frequented. This was backed up by the two barmen. Then he bought a fish supper, and was finishing it as he approached the main door of the tenement, where he was apprehended by two police officers who had been waiting in their car. He was taken to Torphichen Place police station and questioned, then charged.

McAnally’s version was: he had indeed gone to Maisie Finch’s flat to inquire about her mother, but also in the hope of having sex with Maisie. They’d had sex once before, while her mother was asleep in the other room. Both times, Maisie initiated proceedings. McAnally knew she was a ‘good girl’, but thought she got bored at home. He knew he was ‘no spring chicken’ nor yet ‘Mr Universe’, and her home life explained why Maisie wanted to have sex with him — ‘I dare say I wasn’t the only one.’ Maisie herself had never said anything, never explained, and McAnally wasn’t really bothered, ‘so long as I was getting my hole.’

After a minute or so’s conversation in the living room, Maisie suggested going through to her mother’s bedroom, her reasoning being that her mother had a double bed, while Maisie only had a single. (Asked to describe Maisie’s bedroom, McAnally was able to, though this proved nothing, since as he later acknowledged, he’d been in there the previous month to change a faulty light-fitting.)

On the night in question, they progressed to the mother’s bedroom, where — McAnally’s version — intercourse took place, ‘doggy style’. Asked why that particular position, McAnally said he thought maybe Maisie didn’t like to look at his ‘ugly old coupon’. (Rebus was glad he hadn’t interviewed McAnally; he’d probably have taken a swing at him.) McAnally said he left the flat immediately afterwards, as Maisie didn’t like him to hang about. One thing he said was that Maisie herself had provided the condom: ‘I can’t run around with johnnies in my pooch, Tresa’d be bound to find them.’

Yes, he was a choice article, Mr Hugh McAnally.

Rape cases could be difficult. Scottish law required corroboration, not just one person’s word against another’s. With allegations of rape, there was seldom absolute corroboration — rapists didn’t work to an uninvited audience. But in this case there was the girl’s cry, heard by some in the tenement (though not by all), and the fact that she made, as Davidson himself commented, a ‘stonking good witness’. She would go into the witness box — not all rape victims would, for very good emotional reasons — and she would testify. She would ‘put the old bastard behind bars’.

And she did.

Asked about the cry, McAnally at first said she was ‘a screamer’ — in other words, that she cried out at the point of climax. Davidson had added a pencilled comment in the margin, perhaps meaning to erase it later: ‘What young girl would climax with the likes of you?’ McAnally then changed his mind and said there was no scream, no cry at all. Which was excellent news for the prosecution, who had witnesses ready to testify that they had heard a cry.

Which point, Rebus mused, though tiny in the wider scheme of the case, was almost certainly what had swung the jury. Mostly it was his word against hers; but there were witnesses to the scream, witnesses like Helena Profitt.

Miss Profitt had given a statement, but had not been called to give evidence at the trial. That was probably the Procurator-fiscal’s decision. The Fiscal’s office would have precognosced Miss Proffit, and would have made a note for future reference that she was timid, nervy, and unlikely to perform well in court. Crown counsel had picked the best neighbours to show to the jury. It was part of their particular skill.

Rebus reached down for another tin of beer, and found they were all empty. He went to the fridge and found a solitary can, a couple of months past its expiry. It was freezing to the touch, but had plenty of gas when he opened it. He was drinking these days with one side of his mouth only, avoiding the painful side with anything too hot or cold. He put the can down and fried up some bacon, cutting open two rolls. He ate the rolls at the kitchen table.

It has to be serious, he thought. The governor of Saughton, the deputy chief constable … maybe even the Constabulary Inspectorate. They just didn’t want him around. Why not? That was the question. It had to have something to do with McAnally. It looked to Rebus very much as though it had something to do with McAnally’s time in Saughton.

He went back into the living room and got out McAnally’s list of previous convictions. Small beer, he thought, taking a drink. He’d been lucky though, landing more than his fair share of fines and tickings-off when a custodial sentence might have been more usual. He’d served a year one time, eighteen months another — both for housebreaking — and that was about it. Otherwise it was just fines and admonitions.

Rebus sat back, forgetting to swallow the beer in his mouth. He was thinking something, something he didn’t want to think. There was only one good reason he could think of why Wee Shug had been so lucky, one good reason why a judge might be so lenient time and time again.

Someone had put in a word.

And who was it usually put in a word with the judge? Answer: policemen.

And why did they do it …?

Rebus swallowed the beer. ‘He was a grass! Wee Shug McAnally was somebody’s bloody snitch!’

Next morning, he woke up raring to go to work — then remembered he had no work to go to, no place he would be welcome. Just when he needed to ask some of his fellow officers a few very discreet questions.

He’d lain awake half the night, watching the amber streetlight on his bedroom ceiling, tumbling configurations in his mind. He couldn’t get past the notion that McAnally had been somebody’s eyes and ears on the street. All good policemen had them; anyone who wanted to get anywhere had them: grasses, stoolies, snitches, informers. They had a hundred titles and a hundred job descriptions.

It made sense; it explained those lenient sentences. But then McAnally had crossed the line — no judge was going to listen to too many pleas for leniency in a rape case. Four years off the street and a snitch lost his usefulness: there were new bandits around, people he didn’t know and could never get to know. Four years was a long time on the street; the world moved fast down there.

Something else had occurred to Rebus in bed, around three a.m. by the blue-lit numerals on his clock. It — whatever ‘it’ was, whatever it was people were scared of — had to do with McAnally, yes, but the councillor was involved too. Rebus had let the councillor slip from the equation. He’d been busy on fractions on one half of the board, while the councillor sat untroubled on the other. And the councillor, unlike McAnally, was still alive to answer questions. Rebus was only going to get so far following the trail of the dead. It was time to concentrate on the living.

It was time to get concerned.

17

Councillor Tom Gillespie lived in a huge, bay-windowed semi not five minutes walk from Rebus’s flat. The house had been divided into two flats, one on the upper storey, one on the lower. Gillespie’s was the ground-floor property. There was a trim lawn in front of the house, and a low stone wall topped with black glossy railings which ended in arrow-headed points. Rebus opened the gate and walked up to the front door. Clay-coloured road-salt crunched underfoot, spread up and down the path during the worst of the snow and ice. Now the ice had melted, apart from trimmings of sooty white in corners the sun never reached, and roads and paths throughout the city were blighted by salt, as treacherous underfoot as the ice it replaced.

Rebus could see movement behind the bay window as he rang the doorbell. It was an old-fashioned pull affair, the sprung bell chiming inside. Rebus heard an inner hallway door open, then a lock being pulled. The solid main door was opened by the councillor himself.

‘Good morning, Mr Gillespie, mind if I have a word?’

‘I’m up to my eyes in it, Inspector.’

From within, Rebus heard a motorised whine, then the sound of a woman sneezing. Gillespie’s arm was across the doorway, blocking any attempt by Rebus to enter. It wasn’t exactly Costa del Sol weather on the doorstep, but the councillor was sweating.

‘I appreciate that, sir,’ Rebus said, ‘but this will only take a minute.’

‘Did you speak to Helena Profitt?’

‘I did, yes. And, by the way, thanks for setting the Joint Police Board on me.’

Gillespie wasn’t about to apologise. ‘I told you I had friends.’

There was a yip from within, like a Pekinese getting a deserved kick up the arse, and then a furious female voice.

‘Tom! Tom!’

Gillespie pretended not to hear.

‘I think you’re wanted indoors,’ Rebus remarked.

‘Look, this really isn’t the time for — ’

‘Tom, for Christ’s sake!’

Gillespie snarled, turned on his heel and sprinted indoors. The front door was closing on Rebus with infinite slowness. He pushed it open and walked into the hall.

‘Bloody thing’s jammed again,’ the woman was saying. ‘Why the hell can’t you do this?’

Then Gillespie, trying to keep his voice low. ‘Just don’t let him in! Go on then!’

A woman stumbled out of the front room like she’d been pushed from behind. She bumped into Rebus and some empty files clattered to the tile floor.

‘Damnation,’ she said. As the door closed behind her, Rebus could see that the bay-windowed room was some kind of office. He glimpsed a desk with a computer, chests of drawers with heaped documents slewed across their tops. He couldn’t see whatever was making the noise, and he couldn’t see Gillespie, but he heard a slap as the councillor either punched or kicked a piece of machinery.

He helped the woman retrieve the files. ‘Nice colours,’ he said.

‘What?’ She tucked some stray hairs back into place behind her ear. She was a tall, heavy-boned woman with a face full of strong features. Her thick dark hair was shoulder-length and parted to one side, a little lacking in life. Her eyes were full of life though; her eyes were blazing. She looked harassed, but was dressed with thoughtful elegance in a pearl-coloured silk blouse and a long skirt of Black Watch tartan.

‘The files,’ Rebus explained. ‘The ones I always seem to buy are blue or grey or green. These are … well, they’re more colourful.’

She looked at him like he was mad: they were only files.

‘A stationer’s on George Street,’ she said.

Rebus nodded, trying not to look like he was memorising the letters on the front of the file he’d been studying. Not that the letters SDA/SE were difficult to remember.

‘Something jammed?’ Rebus asked.

She had been brought up a polite girl, taught manners at home and in school. She couldn’t not answer a question so casually put, a harmless inquiry.

‘The shredder,’ she said.

Rebus nodded, confirming that he too had problems with his paper-shredder. ‘You must be Mrs Gillespie?’

‘That’s right.’

‘He’s got you helping him, eh?’

She tried to laugh. ‘Press-ganged.’

‘I thought Councillor Gillespie had a secretary.’

Her smile vanished. She was thinking up some lie to tell him when the door opened and Gillespie emerged. This time, peering into the room, Rebus saw several cardboard boxes full of long thin strips of paper. Shredded documents.

Gillespie propelled his wife gently but firmly back into the office, closing the door after her. ‘I don’t recall inviting you in, Inspector.’

‘Maybe you’ll want to talk to your friend Councillor Mantoni again.’

Gillespie pulled out a handkerchief. ‘Well, now you’re here, come into the kitchen.’ He wiped the handkerchief across his forehead. ‘I’m parched.’

He led Rebus down the long hall, past a sitting room and dining room. They took a left past the blocked-in staircase and passed through a shorter, darker passage into the kitchen. There was pine everywhere: pine units, pine tongue-and-groove covering every surface except the floor, which boasted boards freshly sanded and varnished. A conservatory had been added to the back, giving views on to the wide rear garden, mature rose bushes and laurel hedge; a small brick patio.

Gillespie busied himself with the kettle.

‘I won’t offer you a cup, Inspector. I know you’ll be keen to be on your way.’

‘I’m not that busy today actually, Mr Gillespie, but I won’t stay for coffee.’ Rebus paused. ‘Thanks for the offer.’

Gillespie opened a cupboard and glowered at the mugs and glasses within. Reflected glare, thought Rebus.

‘So what is it you want?’ Gillespie reached for a mug.

‘Dog shit,’ said Rebus.

Gillespie fumbled the mug but retrieved it. ‘What did you say?’

‘Dog shit, Councillor: on the pavements, the grass … everywhere. It’s a disgrace.’

‘Are you trying to tell me you’re not here in your official capacity?’

‘Did I say I was? No, I’m here as a private individual, a constituent voicing a complaint to his elected representative.’

Gillespie opened a cafetiere and poured ground coffee into it from a packet. By the time he finished he’d regained his composure.

‘Well, Mr Rebus,’ he said, ‘people only usually complain in the summer. That’s when the offending article is at its softest and smelliest. I’ve never received a complaint in the winter.’

‘Then I’m speaking for the silent majority.’

Gillespie managed a smile. ‘What do you really want? If I had a mind, I could construe this visit as harassment.’

After what Rebus had seen, he didn’t really want anything else, but he was enjoying himself, and what were holidays for if you didn’t enjoy yourself?

‘Just what I say,’ he replied.

Gillespie poured boiling water over the coffee grounds. ‘Well, I’m surprised at you.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I’d have expected you of all people to know that dogs fouling the byways are a matter for the police. It’s down to the police to trace the owners and bring a prosecution.’

‘And the council doesn’t do anything?’

‘On the contrary, we’ve a Dog Warden Section whose job is to educate owners to act responsibly. The wardens also help the police in cases of prosecution. The Warden Section is part of the EHD.’

‘Environmental Health Department?’

‘Precisely. I can give you their number if you like. It’s the least I can do … for a constituent.’

Rebus smiled and shook his head. He put his hands in his pockets and made as if to leave. But he stopped beside the councillor and lowered his voice.

‘How scared are you?’

‘What?’

‘You look to me like you’re shitting snowballs.’

The councillor started sweating again. He opened his mouth to say something, then changed his mind and concentrated on stirring the contents of the cafetiere.

‘All the shit that’s about these days,’ Rebus went on, ‘you’ve got to watch you don’t tread in it. You might end up on your arse, isn’t that right, Councillor?’

‘Just get out, will you?’

Rebus turned to leave. Gillespie put out a hand to stop him. ‘Inspector, you’re making a mistake.’ Not a threat; a simple statement of fact.

‘Talk to me.’

Gillespie thought about it, biting his bottom lip, then shook his head. Rebus stared at him, willing him to change his mind. But Gillespie was scared; it was in his eyes, in the sheen of his face.

The man was terrified.

‘I’ll let you out,’ Gillespie said, leading Rebus back down the hall. He had the cufetiere in one hand, two mugs in the other. Through the office door they could hear Mrs Gillespie cursing the machine again. She sounded like she was kicking it.

‘Bit of a temper, your wife,’ Rebus commented. He saw that Gillespie didn’t have a free hand, so did the kindly thing and opened the office door for him.

‘Has he gone yet?’ Mrs Gillespie snarled.

‘Just on my way, Mrs Gillespie,’ Rebus told her, popping his head round the door, taking a good look round. ‘Nice to have met you.’

Her face was flushed, anger turning quickly to embarrassment. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

‘No need for that.’

And Rebus left them to it, whatever it was …

18

It took Rebus half the afternoon to decide that he was doing the right thing.

More accurately, it took him ten minutes to make up his mind, and a couple of hours to drink himself into a state where he was confident enough to follow through.

He wasn’t just drinking though, he was hunting; eyes and ears open for news of Rico Briggs.

Rico was just about the best and worst housebreaker on the east coast. It wasn’t that he was cack-handed: he could be in and out of most homes in minutes flat, be the occupants asleep, slumped in front of the TV, or making merry at a party. Rico’s problem was that he was conspicuous, and fences didn’t like that. Rico had been a big Hearts fan, not missing a fixture in seasons 1977-80, except when he’d served a wee stretch in Peterhead. One night in Leith Walk, dizzy after a trouncing of the Hibees, Rico had marched into a tattoo parlour and demanded the works.

Next morning, Rico had looked at his face in his bathroom mirror and seen that both tender cheeks now boasted the Hearts badge, a maroon heart with a cross in the middle. It took him only a day or two to start loathing his once-loved team; which was ironic, considering he was now a public poster-site for the men of Gorgie.

Not surprisingly, the tattoos were unique, and as good as fingerprints as far as the police were concerned. Realising this, Rico had started sporting a balaclava when working, which accentuated his other remarkable facial feature — a nose the dimensions of the Pyramid of Cheops. This, too, people tended to notice.

Rebus had tried talking Rico Briggs into retiring, and had been semi-successful. These days, Rico concentrated on passing his skills on to a series of apprentices; he’d even given Rebus a few clandestine lessons in lock-picking. They helped when the policeman mislaid his house-keys; and at other times too.

Rebus finally found Rico in a bar off Nicolson Street, a place whose sad-faced clients were usually in hiding after a haircut at the half-blind barber’s next door. Surrounded by bad haircuts, it was surprising how Rico blended in.

‘Hiya, Rico,’ Rebus said, sliding on to the wooden stool next to him. ‘How are you doing?’

Rico had the daily tabloid folded at the quick crossword, and was tapping it with a half-size betting-shop pen, the kind with a ten-minute lifetime guarantee.

‘Eight letters,’ Rico said in a voice like road-salt, ‘M-SOMETHING-R-SOMETHING- 0. “On a desert island”.’ He looked to Rebus.

‘Marooned.’

‘Thanks, in that case I’ll have a double,’ Rico chuckled. ‘Not heard that one before, Mr Rebus?’

‘Not since Double Barrel was at the top of the charts.’ Rebus ordered the drinks while Rico rubbed both cheeks, the idea being that if he rubbed them often enough he’d sand the tattoos away.

‘So, Mr Rebus, is it a job?’

Rebus nodded, wary of saying too much: he might be surrounded by bad haircuts, but nobody’s ears had been severed.

‘Tell you later.’

They drank their drinks in silence. The whole bar was quiet. Further down the bar, a customer nodded to the barman for a refill and the barman nodded back. A silent order, Rebus thought. Like monks. Which, given the tonsures, wasn’t such a bad image.

They got out of the pub and walked towards the Pleasance. If they took a right, they’d come to St Leonard’s, but they went left instead and headed to the Cowgate and Canongate. They talked as they walked, then entered a howff on the High Street to toast the mission.

At six o’clock, dark overhead except for an arc of moon looking like someone had pressed their thumbnail into the sky, Rebus and Rico sat in Rebus’s parked car, engine running to keep the heater on. They were across the road from the Gillespie house, and Rebus was describing the layout. Rebus was more nervous than he would admit: if Rico were caught, if he talked, then Rebus could end up one of Big Jim Flett’s clients. Rico asked a few questions, and Rebus supplied answers where he could.

‘I’ll go in through the conservatory,’ Rico decided. ‘You’re sure about the alarm?’

‘No alarm,’ Rebus said.

People were hurrying along the pavement, faces down to avoid the icy wind which, Edinburgh fashion, was blowing horizontally just at head height. Rebus was having doubts about the whole enterprise, but could see no way round it. He thought of something else he’d wanted to ask Rico.

‘Know anyone who’s just come out of Saughton?’

‘I don’t mix with felons, Inspector.’

‘Of course you don’t, you’ve gone straight, we both know that.’ Rebus’s voice was quiet but insistent. ‘Only, if you did know anyone, I’d like to talk to them. Nothing heavy or official, just a chat, a bit of info on Saughton itself.’

‘There’d be a cash incentive?’

‘There’d be a drink in it for both of you.’

‘Well, wouldn’t do any harm to ask around.’

‘No harm at all,’ Rebus agreed. He looked over to the Gillespie house. ‘What time will you go in?’

‘Two in the morning should do it. Best not stay here much longer though — we don’t want to attract attention.’

Rico had a point: in Marchmont, you were always in somebody else’s parking space. There were barely enough gaps for the residents, never mind visitors. Rebus put the gearstick into first.

‘We’ll get a bite to eat,’ he said.

‘Hiy, hold on.’ Rico was pointing towards the house. The front door was standing open, and Mrs Gillespie suddenly appeared carrying two black binbags. Behind her, her husband carried two more. They opened their gate and deposited the bags on the pavement outside. Something wonderful dawned on Rebus. He looked up and down the street. Sure enough, a few bags were already out.

‘Rubbish day the morn?’ Rico suggested.

‘Rico, it looks like I won’t be needing you after all.’

In the end, Rico helped load the boot.

Rebus sat alone in his flat, having paid Rico off and dropped him back in the town centre. One of the binbags had contained nothing but empty tins, bags and boxes, and now it sat outside the main door of Rebus’s tenement. But the other three sat open in the middle of Rebus’s living room. He emptied the first bag on to the floor. Strands of white paper fell in a shivering heap. Rebus picked up one strand. It was the length of an A4 sheet and no more than two millimetres wide. He’d heard stories that shredded documents could be reconstructed. All it took was patience: colossal patience. He was sure there were clever ways of doing it — UV analysis or watermark-matching or batch-sorting — but all he had were his eyes. He couldn’t just march into Howdenhall and drop the stuff off. Too many questions would be asked. He sat on the floor, picked up a few strands, and tried putting them together.

It took him about four minutes to realise the job was impossible.

He sat there smoking a cigarette, staring at the strands. They might tell him everything he needed to know. He finished the cigarette, poured himself a drink, and tried again. It took him a while to lose his temper. He dragged the kitchen table through and sat at it. Then he brought the anglepoise lamp through from his bedroom and plugged it in. The machine had jammed; there was a chance not all the strips had been separated completely.

He didn’t find as many as two strips still joined at any one point.

He swore for a while and walked around the flat, emptied the coffee jar and set it back under the radiator, then put his coat on and went to buy cigarettes and whisky. The corner shop was closed when he reached it. His watch said eleven-fifteen; he couldn’t believe it was so late.

He walked on to the nearest pub and waded through the smoky, shouting throng. The barmaid gave him change for the cigarette machine but couldn’t sell him a carry-out: it was after last orders. She told him about a licensed chip shop he could try, but it was a car-run away, so he walked briskly back to the flat and sought out untried bottles. There was a quarter of Bacardi for emergency dispensation should he ever manage to drag a woman as far as his bedroom. The thought of neat Bacardi repelled him only slightly more than the thought of mixing it with anything.

Which means, he thought, I can’t be an alcoholic.

He unscrewed the top from the Bacardi anyway and sniffed it, then screwed it back on. He’d have to be a lot more desperate … say, come four in the morning. Then he remembered the freezer. He opened it up and chipped away at the ice until he’d broken through to two trays of ice cubes, a single fish finger … and a small bottle. It was Polish vodka; a neighbour had given it to him after a trip home to Lodz; a present for feeding the cat for a week.

Rebus found a glass, filled it, and belatedly toasted Solidarity before draining it. The stuff was as smooth as anything he’d ever tried. A third of a litre of eighty-four proof. He took glass and bottle into the living room and put Exile on Main Street on the hi-fi. It sounded as good as ever.

He got back into the game, then decided to leave the first bag and start on the second. He filled the first bag back up, then dumped bag two on to the floor.

And his doorbell rang.

It was a little after midnight.

The main door was sometimes left unlocked. No need for visitors, welcome or not, to announce their presence until they were outside the door of the flat.

At this time on a Thursday night?

Rebus looked at the mess on the floor, then went out into the hall and tiptoed to the front door, just as the bell rang again. He could hear two voices at least, little more than murmurs. Suddenly, fingers pushed open his letterbox. Rebus stood to the side of the door, back pressed to the wall.

‘Maybe he leaves the lights on when he’s out.’

‘Aye, and maybe he’s half-shot and sleeping it off.’

Rebus turned the snib silently and yanked open the door. Siobhan Clarke, who’d been peering through the letterbox, stood up, but Rebus’s eyes were on Brian Holmes.

‘Half-shot, is it, Brian? I’m glad you hold me in such high regard.’

Holmes just shrugged. ‘It’s what I’d do on holiday.’

Rebus filled the doorway, his arms folded. ‘So what are you doing: canvassing, polling, or maybe you were just passing?’

‘We were working,’ Brian Holmes explained. ‘We went to get something to eat afterwards, and when we ran out of interesting topics, the conversation came round to you.’

‘What about me?’

‘We wondered,’ Siobhan Clarke said, ‘what the hell’s going on.’

Rebus smiled. ‘You and me both.’ He stood back from the doorway. ‘You better come in. You’re the first to arrive; I haven’t even got the party snacks out.’ He noticed a brown carrier bag on the landing behind Brian Holmes.

‘We brought our own party with us.’ When Holmes picked up the bag, Rebus heard cans and bottles collide.

‘You’re always welcome here, Brian,’ Rebus said, leading them indoors.

They sat in the living room, staring at the pile of paper strips. Siobhan Clarke took a gulp of coffee.

‘You stole these?’

Rebus shook his head. ‘A public service; I saved the binmen a job.’

Holmes looked to Siobhan. ‘We did say we were coming here to help.’

‘Yes, but this lot …?’ She flapped her arms. ‘I doubt the “Blue Peter” appeal could sort this lot out. Talk about shreds of evidence.’

Rebus held up a pacifying hand. ‘Look, this is my problem, not yours. I won’t be disappointed if you scurry off home. In fact, it would be better for you if you did.’

‘We know,’ said Holmes.

Rebus looked at him. ‘What do you mean?’

Siobhan Clarke explained. ‘The Farmer spoke to us this afternoon. Basically, he warned us off. He said you were on leave, but he didn’t think that would stop you sticking your nose in.’ She looked up. ‘His words, not mine.’

‘We’ve been given new duties,’ Brian Holmes added. ‘Desk work, restructuring the filing system prior to full computerisation.’

‘To keep you busy?’

‘Yes.’

‘And away from me?’

They both nodded.

‘So naturally you come straight here?’ Rebus got to his feet. ‘You could be fucking up both your careers!’

‘I’m not in CID to sort through a lot of old paperwork,’ Siobhan Clarke retorted. Then she realised what she’d said, looked at the mound of shredded paper in front of her, and laughed.

They all did.

They hit lucky with the third bag.

‘Look,’ Siobhan Clarke said, ‘it’s not just white paper.’

Rebus took a strip from her: yellow card. ‘Files,’ he said. ‘They shredded the folders as well!’

‘Must be some machine,’ Brian Holmes added.

‘That’s a bloody good point, Brian.’

The folders were a breakthrough. The problem with the paper was that there was so much of it. There wasn’t nearly so much card, and what there was could be grouped by colour. The front of each file had a white printed label, and these were what Rebus wanted. He wanted the reconstructed labels.

But even knowing what they were looking for, it took time and effort. Rebus’s eyes were stinging, and he kept rubbing them, which only blurred his vision.

‘Get you two anything?’ he kept saying. They would only shake their heads. Rebus demolished the cans on his own. He knew he’d had too much when he polished off a tin of Irn-Bru without realising it was non-alcoholic.

The streets grew quieter after the students had slouched home on the wings of blasphemy. Around two-thirty, the central heating clocked off and Rebus turned on the gas fire. They each worked on a different colour of folder.

‘I saw one of the folders when Mrs Gillespie dropped it,’ Rebus said. ‘It was marked SDA/SE. I presume the letters stand for Scottish Development Agency and Scottish Enterprise. Scottish Enterprise took over when the SDA was wound up. Councillor Gillespie, by the way, sits on an industrial planning committee.’

‘So,’ Holmes remarked, ‘the SDA file could be completely innocent.’

‘Certainly he had a genuine reason for having a file on the SDA. But why be in such a panic to shred it?’

Holmes conceded the point.

‘I think I’ve got something,’ Siobhan Clarke said. She’d all but completed a yellow file, the label intact save for a strip or two. ‘Looks like the letters A C,’ she said, ‘then a name: Haldayne.’

Rebus fetched the phone book. There was no A C Haldayne in Edinburgh.

‘Strange spelling,’ Brian Holmes said. ‘I’ve never come across Haldayne with a y.’

‘Misspelt?’ Siobhan Clarke said. ‘The name of one of the councillor’s constituents?’

Rebus shrugged. Half an hour later, it was Holmes’s turn to complete a red file.

“‘Gyle Park West”,’ he read out.

Rebus wasn’t paying much attention; he was close to completing the last of the coloured folders, this one a lurid green.

“‘Mensung”,’ he said, looking up. ‘What the hell is Mensung?’

Siobhan Clarke yawned and rubbed at her eyes, then blinked a few times, looking around the room.

‘You know,’ she said, ‘it’s a good job this paper’s lying everywhere. Without it, this place would look like a tip.’

It was six on Friday morning when Rebus’s phone started ringing.

He fell off the chair, the duvet sliding with him. The phone was underneath one of the heaps of paper strips.

‘Whoever you are,’ he said, ‘whatever you want … you’re dead.’

‘It’s Siobhan, sir. I’ve been thinking about A C Haldayne.’

‘Me, too,’ Rebus lied.

‘I’ve been thinking about that funny spelling. American names are sometimes spelt differently, aren’t they?’

‘Is that why you woke me up?’

‘Well, it would tie in with AC.’

‘Would it?’

‘Christ, you’re slow, sir.’

‘It’s six in the morning, Clarke.’

‘All I mean is AC could stand for American Consulate. Haldayne could be a surname, and AC the consulate.’

Rebus sat up and opened his eyes. ‘That’s not bad.’

‘I tried phoning the consulate, but got an answering machine. It offered me a lot of options, mostly to do with visa applications, then put me through to the consulate proper, but all I got was another answering machine message telling me the opening hours.’

‘Try again in the morning.’

‘Yes, sir. Sorry for waking you.’

‘That’s all right. Listen, Siobhan … thanks for helping me.’

‘It’s no problem, really.’

‘Then you won’t mind doing something else?’ He could almost hear her smile.

‘What?’

‘That shredder. I’m wondering how long Gillespie’s owned it.’

‘You want me to check?’

‘Yes.’

‘Will do. Goodnight, sir.’

‘Goodnight, Clarke.’

Rebus put down the receiver and decided to get up. Half a minute later, he was asleep on the living-room carpet.

19

On Sunday, Rebus was invited to Oxford Terrace for afternoon tea.

He was glad of the break, having spent much of the previous forty-eight hours trying to piece together some of the strands of A4 paper. He hadn’t made any progress, but it had taken his mind off his swollen gum. By Saturday afternoon, he’d had enough and phoned a dentist, but of course by then all the dentists in Edinburgh were in the clubhouse, deciding over a second gin whether to bother with eighteen holes or, in this weather, just settle for nine.

On Sunday afternoon, dress smart but casual, he went to start his car and found it recalcitrant. Probably a loose connection. He looked under the bonnet, but was no mechanic. He was alone on the street, no one around to give him a jump-start, so he went back indoors and called for a cab, noticing too late that he had oil on his hands, a smudge of which had transferred itself to his trouser leg.

He was not in the best of moods as his driver took him north across the city.

Sammy answered the door. She was wearing thick black tights with a short jumble-sale dress falling over them. Under the dress she wore a white T-shirt.

‘You’re almost on time,’ she said. ‘We weren’t expecting you so soon.’

‘Did Patience teach you that one?’

He followed his daughter down the hall into the living room. Lucky the cat took one look at Rebus, seemed to remember him, and stalked off into the conservatory. Rebus heard the catflap rattle shut. Now it was only two against one; the odds were improving in Rebus’s favour.

He knew there were things fathers said to their daughters, little criticisms they were expected to make to show they cared. But Rebus knew what his little criticisms would sound like: they’d sound like criticisms. So he kept his counsel. Patience came out of the kitchen wiping her hands on a dish-towel.

‘John._’

‘Hello, Patience.’ They kissed the way friends did, a peck on the cheek, a hand on the shoulder.

‘Be about two minutes,’ she said, turning back into the kitchen. He didn’t think she’d really looked at him. ‘Go into the conservatory.’

Sammy again led the way. The table had a clean white cloth on it, with some dishes already laid. Patience had brought her potted plants indoors for the winter, leaving not much room for anything or anyone else. The Sunday papers were heaped on the window-ledge. Rebus chose the chair nearest the garden door. Looking out of the conservatory window, he could see in through the kitchen window. Patience was busy at the sink, her face lacking emotion. She didn’t look up.

‘Liking it all right?’ Rebus asked his daughter.

She nodded. ‘It’s great, and so’s Patience.’

‘How’s the job?’

‘Very stimulating; not easy, but stimulating.’

‘What do you do exactly?’

‘SWEEP’S pretty small, we all muck in. I’m supposed to be developing communication skills in my clients.’

Rebus nodded. ‘You mean so they can be a bit more polite next time they mug their granny?’

She glowered at him and he raised his hands. ‘Just a joke,’ he said.

‘Maybe you need some communication skills yourself.’

‘He’s as blunt as a butt to the head,’ Patience said, bringing in the teapot.

‘Can I help?’ Sammy offered.

‘You sit there, I’ll be back in a second.’

She was away far longer than a second; there was no conversation between times. Rebus watched Lucky the cat staring at him from the garden path. Patience returned with plates of cakes and biscuits. His mouth was imploring him: no hot drinks, no cakes or biscuits, no sugar, no crunching.

‘I’ll pour,’ Sammy said. There was a clatter as Lucky came back in, seeking tidbits.

‘Cake, John?’ Patience said, offering him the pick from the plate. He took the smallest item he could find, a thin end-slice of madeira. Patience regarded his choice with suspicion: he’d always preferred ginger sponge, and she, who hated it, had bought one specially.

‘Sammy,’ Patience said, ‘try the ginger.’

‘It’s a bit sweet for me,’ Sammy replied. ‘I’ll just have a biscuit.’

‘Fine.’

‘This outfit of yours,’ Rebus began.

‘It’s called SWEEP,’ Sammy reminded him.

‘Yes, SWEEP, who funds it?’

‘We’ve charitable status. We get some donations, but spend more time than we ought to thinking up fund-raising schemes. The bulk of the money drips down from the Scottish Office.’ She turned to Patience. ‘We’ve this brilliant guy, he knows just how to word an application for funding, knows what grants are available …’

Patience looked interested. ‘Is he nice?’

Sammy blushed. ‘He’s great.’

‘And he deals with the Scottish Office?’ Rebus asked.

‘Yes.’ Sammy couldn’t see where this was leading. She worked with people who were mistrustful of police officers and other authority figures, mistrustful of their motives. Her colleagues were careful what they said in front of her. She’d been open with them from the start; she’d stated on the application form that her father was in Edinburgh CID. But there were some people who still didn’t trust her entirely.

She knew one problem was the media. When the media learned who her father was, they sought her out for a quote — her background made it more interesting. They called it ‘personalising the issues’. There were some people in SWEEP who felt resentful of the attention she got.

She didn’t really blame them. It was the system.

‘More cake, John?’

The catflap clacked again as Lucky went back outside.

‘No, thanks, Patience,’ Rebus said.

‘I think maybe I’ll try the madeira,’ Sammy said. Which left an awful lot of ginger cake.

‘You haven’t touched your tea, John.’

‘I’m waiting ’til it cools’. In the past, he’d always liked it scalding.

‘Why are you so interested in SWEEP all of a sudden?’ Sammy asked him.

‘I’m not, but I might be interested in the Scottish Office.’

Sammy looked like she didn’t believe him. She started to defend SWEEP, going on at length, her cheeks colouring with conviction. Rebus envied her that sense of conviction.

Then he said a couple of things, and an argument started. He couldn’t help himself; he’d just had to take a contrary point of view. He tried drawing Patience into the debate, but she only shook her head slowly and sadly. Finally, when Sammy had collapsed into a sulk, Patience was ready with her summing-up.

‘You see, Sammy, your father is the Old Testament type: retribution rather than rehabilitation. Isn’t that right, John?_’

Rebus just shrugged, drank some lukewarm tea, and absent-mindedly chewed on a slice of buttered ginger cake.

‘And he’s the classic Calvinist, too,’ Patience went on. ‘Let the punishment fit the crime, and then some.’

‘That’s not Calvinism,’ Rebus said. ‘It’s Gilbert and Sullivan.’ He sat forwards in his chair. ‘Besides, the problem is that sometimes the punishment doesn’t fit the crime. Sometimes there’s punishment and no crime at all. Other times there’s crime but no punishment; and worst of all — ’ he paused — ‘nearly all of the time there’s unfairness.’ He looked at Sammy, wondering what SWEEP would have done for Willie Coyle and Dixie Taylor, wondering if anything at all, anything worth a candle, would have been left of them after prison.

Eventually, they found other things to talk about. Sammy didn’t contribute much; she just kept staring at her father, as if seeing him afresh. The sky outside conceded defeat and collapsed from slate-grey to late-afternoon black. While Patience and Sammy were clearing the table, Rebus stared at Lucky through the window, then went over to the catflap and locked it shut. The cat saw what he had done. It miaowed at him once, registering its protest. Rebus waved it cheerio.

They sat in the living room, and Patience handed over a few things he’d left behind after the move: his second-best razor, some clean handkerchiefs, a pair of shoelaces, a tape of Electric Ladyland. He stuffed everything into his jacket pockets.

‘Thanks,’ he said.

‘You’re welcome.’

Sammy saw him back to the door and waved him off.

That evening, back at the flat, Rebus sat listening to Hendrix with a lined pad of paper in front of him. There were some words on it.

SDA/SE (Scottish Office?)

A C Haldayne (US Consulate?)

Mensung (?? — not in phonebook)

Gyle Park West (industrial estate)

He knew about Gyle Park West because he’d driven out there that morning. It was a low-rise sprawl of smallish industrial and commercial units, sited next to the imposing PanoTech electronics company. At the entrance to the estate there was a sign listing the various companies on the site, including Deltona. He remembered that Salty Dougary worked for Deltona, and that Deltona provided microchips for PanoTech, the PanoTech factory being more of an assembly line, constructing computers from components sourced elsewhere.

None of which seemed to tie Councillor Gillespie to Wee Shug McAnally. None of which was in itself suspicious. The councillor was on an industrial planning committee, which was excuse enough for owning files on the SDA and Scottish Enterprise and on Gyle Park West. But then why the panic, the hurry to destroy those files? That was what interested Rebus.

As he drove out of Gyle, an area of the city he didn’t really know, he realised something else. Gyle itself had boomed in the eighties, gaining new homes, industries, even its own railway station. Before then, it had just been a place near the airport. The airport had been its big advantage in the eighties, making for good fast communications. These days Gyle had an identity, and a lot of that was down to the injection of cash into the place. But there was something else in Gyle’s favour.

Its district councillor just happened to be the Lord Provost, Cameron McLeod Kennedy.

The telephone rang, bringing him out of his reverie. He snatched the receiver. ‘Hello?’

‘Hello yourself.’ It was Mairie Henderson.

‘I was beginning to think you’d forgotten me,’ Rebus said.

‘I’ve only finally managed to track down LABarum.’ Rebus picked up his pen and moved the pad closer. ‘The reason I had trouble was, it doesn’t exist.’

‘What?’

‘Not yet at any rate. It’s a PanoTech project. Do you know who they are?’

‘The computer company?’

‘That’s right. LABarum is something they’ve been toying with. See, the problem with Silicon Glen, with the whole Scottish electronics industry, is that it’s a manufacturer. It puts bits and pieces together, but that’s about all. Everything’s sourced elsewhere.’

‘Not everything, there’s Deltona.’

‘A very small cog in the machine. What we need in Scotland is a software giant, a Microsoft, somebody researching, developing and producing software to go into the machines.’

‘LABarum?’

‘That’s right. But my source tells me it’s not up and running yet. There’s a question of funding. The talent’s there, but to keep it in Scotland is going to cost money, lots and lots of money.’ She paused. ‘My source was curious, how did you hear about it?’

‘I saw a business plan.’

‘You did? Where? At PanoTech?’

‘No.’ What could he tell her? In a sub-let council house in Stenhouse? Hiding behind a teenager’s paperback collection?

‘Where then? The City Chambers?’

Rebus started. ‘Why do you …?’ Then he thought about it. A plan to start up a computer software company, presumably in Gyle Park West … He looked at the writing on his pad. The district council would want to discuss it, they’d need to be aware of it. Tom Gillespie’s committee would certainly know about it. And if it was to be sited in Gyle Park West, if it had anything to do with the district council at all, then the Lord Provost would know about it. Cameron McLeod Kennedy.

Rebus picked the business plan off the floor and looked at the initials on the front page. Mairie was telling him she’d drawn a blank with Dalgety, but he wasn’t listening.

‘CK,’ he said quietly. Cameron Kennedy. ‘Jesus, Mairie, those two kids did know Kirstie Kennedy after all!’

20

On Monday morning, Rebus went to the National Library on George IV Bridge. He passed through the security barrier and climbed the imposing staircase. At the main desk, he explained what he was looking for and was issued with a one-day reader’s card. Then he found a spare computer console and sat down at it, reading the instructions for using the on-line system.

His search didn’t take long. There was desperately little on the Scottish Development Agency; even less on Scottish Enterprise. He was sure that before its demise the SDA had been under the aegis of the Scottish Office, so tapped ‘Scottish Office’ into the computer. There were a lot of entries; he went through screen after screen of them: welfare, road-widening schemes, grants to the fishing industry, corporal punishment … But nothing new on either the SDA or Scottish Enterprise.

Across the road in the Central Library he met with similar results. The Edinburgh Room directed him to the Scottish Library downstairs, and the Scottish Library’s microfiches were every bit as unhelpful as the high-tech facilities across the way. Finally, Rebus approached one of the librarians. She sat at a desk, sorting newspaper cuttings into five distinct piles.

‘Yes?’ she whispered.

‘I’m looking for information on the Scottish Development Agency.’

‘Have you checked the fiches?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, those are our holdings.’ She thought for a moment. ‘You might try the Scottish Office direct.’

Yes, he might at that. He walked down the High Street and across North Bridge, then made down the side of the St James Centre — noting that Anthony wasn’t on his usual pitch — to where the Scottish Office had hidden itself in a concrete box called New St Andrew’s House. He told the guard on the door what he wanted, and was pointed in the direction of the reception desk. The woman there was very pleasant, but couldn’t help. She phoned up to the Library and Publications Room, who couldn’t help either. Rebus found it hard to believe that there was no history of the SDA available.

‘They say nobody’d be interested,’ she explained, putting down the telephone.

‘Well, I’m interested.’

‘You could ask at the HMSO Bookshop.’

‘On Lothian Road?’

‘Yes.’ She saw the look on his face. ‘I’ve some other literature here you could take away with you.’

Desperate for something to show for his morning, Rebus picked out a few leaflets, one of which was an introduction to HM Inspectorate of Constabulary. Rebus wondered if it would mention anything about bribery.

‘Thanks anyway,’ he told the receptionist. There was a display in the reception area and he went over to look at it. New St Andrew’s House was about to relocate to Leith. The move was costing millions. Rebus didn’t feel any better for knowing where his taxes were headed. Sleet was coming down as he left the building.

Which gave him the excuse he needed to drop into the Cafe Royal. It was eleven-fifteen and he was the second customer of the day. He liked the place when it was empty. It was one of the few bars he knew which had less atmosphere the busier it got. His feet were tingling from the walk. He’d left his car at home, only expecting to walk as far as George IV Bridge.

The sleet had stopped by the time he left the bar. He walked along George Street, in order to avoid the shoppers on Princes Street, then headed up Lothian Road. A Lothian Road wind was one of nature’s wonders; people were walking into it at an angle close to forty-five degrees. The headwind could exhaust you in minutes. Rebus kept his eyes to the pavement and concentrated on putting one foot after the other, like he was getting the hang of false legs.

The new Convention Centre was up. There was a lot of recent building work around the city: the Festival Theatre, Convention Centre, court annexe, National Library annexe, not to mention the new Scottish Office HQ. He stopped in a doorway to catch his breath and to consider the scale of the building programme: new roads, new developments … There was talk of building another road bridge across the Forth. But where was the money coming from? He walked on, deep in thought, and entered the HMSO shop. He’d been explaining his needs to the counter assistant for about thirty seconds when the man started to shake his head.

‘I haven’t finished yet,’ Rebus snapped.

The man listened in silence, and when Rebus was finished he advised: ‘You could try Scottish Enterprise direct.’ He brought out the phonebook to find its address. The HQ was in Glasgow, but there was a branch in Edinburgh: LEEL, Lothian and Edinburgh Enterprise Limited, had offices in Haymarket Terrace, which wasn’t that far to walk, not compared to the distance he’d come.

The smart new building which housed LEEL boasted two very bored-looking receptionists and no guard at all on the door. He explained that he wanted general background information.

‘Agatha will bring down what we’ve got,’ he was told with a pleasant professional smile. ‘If you’d like to take a seat …?’

He sat down and read the bumf spread across the table in front of him. He noticed that his calves were aching. This, he thought, is called exercise. Some people did it every day.

The lift opened and a young woman walked towards him. She too had a Stepford-wifely smile for the public as she handed over a lavish folder, inside which was a set of glossy documents.

‘This is all we’ve got at the moment,’ she said.

‘Thank you, Agatha, this is fine.’

Since he was so close, he dropped into Torphichen for a coffee. Davidson wasn’t around, but DC Robert Burns was, so Rebus chewed the cud with him, enjoying the feel of being back inside a cop shop. Then he asked Burns for a favour.

‘I need a lift home, Rab,’ he said. ‘Medical reasons.’

Back in his flat, Rebus read through what little he had. He hadn’t found anything on Gyle Park West or anyone or anything called Mensung. The sum total of his recent discoveries had nothing to do with Councillor Gillespie at all. But what he did know was that Kirstie Kennedy had known Willie and Dixie in some capacity: how else to explain a document belonging to the Lord Provost turning up in Willie’s bedroom? What he didn’t yet know was why it was there. He assumed Kirstie had taken it from her parents’ house, but why? Had it meant something to her? And why had Willie hidden it?

His phone was ringing. It was Siobhan Clarke. ‘Where’ve you been?’ she asked.

‘Walking.’

‘Walking?’

‘How are things at St Leonard’s?’

‘The chief super is keeping tabs on Brian and me, and he keeps piling the work on.’

‘So you haven’t been able to do anything?’

‘On the contrary, I’ve some interesting news. Councillor Gillespie’s document shredder wasn’t bought, it was rented. There’s a business supply company in Stockbridge, they hire out all sorts of office equipment. Which reminds me, when you get back there’s a little surprise for you.’

‘What?’

‘The new PCs have arrived.’

‘Good, we could do with a few more men on the beat.’

‘Gosh,’ her voice dripped irony, ‘I’ve not heard that one today. Anyway, there’s one on your desk, plugged in and ready to run.’

‘When did Gillespie rent the shredder?’

‘Wednesday. He told the shop assistant he’d been trying to find one for a few days, but they were too expensive to buy.’

‘Thank God he’s mean with money, or we might never know he’d shredded anything.’

‘Want to hear the rest? I finally got through to the consulate and asked to speak to Haldayne.’ She paused. ‘They told me Mr Haldayne was out of the office. His first name’s Richard. I got them to spell his surname for me: it has a “y” in the middle.’

‘You’re a genius.’

‘Want to hear the rest?’

Rebus forgot all about his sore calves, his weary feet. ‘Go ahead.’

‘I ran a check on Mr Richard Haldayne. Have you ever had dealings with the diplomats in town?’

‘No.’

‘Well, I have. I handed out a few parking tickets when I was in uniform. My boss said I was wasting my time ticketing a diplomatic plate. They never pay their fines, because we’re not allowed to prosecute them.’

‘So you looked in the computer?’

‘Eighteen unpaid parking tickets dating back to 1985. That’s under two a year, which counts as law-abiding for a diplomat.’

‘It’s still a lot of tickets. An officer might want a quiet word with Mr Haldayne about them.’

‘Just don’t get caught, sir.’

‘Same goes for you, Clarke, and thanks.’

He put the phone down and tapped his fingers on the receiver. It was a start, definitely a start. He lifted the receiver again and dialled Sammy’s work number. She wasn’t there. The woman who told him this sounded upset.

‘I’m her father,’ Rebus said, ‘is anything wrong?’

‘She was in a terrible state. Someone had to take her home.’

‘Why was she in a state?’

‘Her landlady.’ The woman sniffed.

‘What about her landlady?’

‘Well, she’s upset, and she got Sammy all upset.’

Rebus stopped pretending to be calm. ‘Upset about what?’

‘I love cats,’ the woman said.

‘What?’

‘Cats. It’s her landlady’s cat. It was torn to bits last night by somebody’s dog.’

Rebus finally plucked up the courage to phone Patience’s flat, and was relieved that Sammy herself answered.

‘I heard,’ he said. ‘How’s Patience?’

‘She’s gone out. She was … it was horrible.’

Rebus swallowed. ‘What happened?’

‘Lucky was in the garden, and some dog must have come over the wall. Lucky ran to the catflap to get in, but the catflap was locked …’ Her voice fell. ‘And that was that.’

‘Oh, dear,’ said Rebus.

‘The thing is, Dad, Patience blames me.’

‘I’m sure that’s not — ’

‘She says I must have locked the flap. She’s hardly spoken a word to me since I got back.’

‘The lock must have fallen by itself.’

‘I don’t know. But I know I didn’t do it.’

‘Look, Sammy, the reason I’m phoning — ’

‘Yes?’

Rebus stared at the notes in front of him. ‘SWEEP’s contact at the Scottish Office: can you give me his name …?’

He had an appointment that afternoon with the Lord Provost.

Rebus hadn’t been specific on the telephone; he’d just told the secretary that it was part of an ‘investigation’ — he’d been careful not to preface the word with ‘official policed. The secretary had taken his home number and called him back. The Lord Provost could see him for five minutes at four o’clock.

‘Five minutes should do it,’ Rebus had said.

As he walked through the main door of the City Chambers, he looked down at the floor, aware that directly beneath it was Mary King’s Close, Edinburgh’s buried plague street. They’d covered the street up and built on it anew: that was the Edinburgh way, to bury and forget.

The Lord Provost came out of his office to meet him. He looked tired, his pale face deeply lined, his square jaw slack. He had dark hair streaked with silver, and thick black eyebrows. It was a strongly defined face, the kind that might have been found, a generation back, at the coal-face.

‘Inspector.’ They shook hands. The Lord Provost turned to his secretary. ‘My constitutional,’ he said. ‘I’ll be five or ten minutes.’ He turned back to Rebus. ‘I like to get out of here for a few minutes in the afternoon, it clears my head. Do you mind?’

Rebus said he didn’t.

No one on the street seemed to recognise Cameron Kennedy. He crossed the High Street and nodded towards St Giles’ Cathedral. Rebus followed him into the huge old church. It was empty, save for a party of three tourists who huddled around their guidebook. Rebus and the Lord Provost walked the central aisle.

‘How can I help you, Inspector?’

‘Well, sir, it’s about your daughter.’

The Lord Provost’s face became more animated. ‘Have you found her?’

‘No, sir. But I know where she’s been quite recently. You remember those two hoaxers?’

‘Don’t I just. You were in that terrible crash, weren’t you?’

Rebus nodded. ‘The thing is, it may not have been a hoax after all.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, the girl you spoke to on the telephone …’

‘Ach, I don’t think it was Kirstie.’

‘It could have been. There’s evidence she knew the two boys who died.’

The Lord Provost looked at him. ‘Evidence?’

‘Something we found in a bedroom.’ Rebus brought out the business plan and handed it to the Lord Provost. ‘This is yours, isn’t it, sir?’

The Lord Provost studied it. ‘Where did you say you found it?’

‘It was hidden in the bedroom belonging to one of the boys. Do you know when and where you lost it?’

‘No, I … It was a while back. I thought I’d taken it home with me …’

‘Kirstie probably took it with her when she left.’

The Lord Provost nodded slowly.

‘The question is, why? I mean, did it have any significance for her?’

‘I don’t see how it could.’

‘Me neither, I was hoping you might help. Take a look at the last page, please.’

The Lord Provost turned to the last page and looked startled.

‘Did you write that, sir?’

‘No.’ He was staring wide-eyed at the name.

‘Is it Kirstie’s writing?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Well, do you know what it means?’

The Lord Provost shook his head slowly and closed the report. ‘Inspector, I … it seems to me maybe I’m making too much fuss over Kirstie. I’m sure she’s managing fine.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘I’m saying I’m grateful to the police for trying to trace her, but maybe it’s time to call a halt.’

Rebus narrowed his eyes. ‘Why now?’ He made to take the report back, but the Lord Provost was folding it into his pocket.

‘Does there have to be a reason?’

‘Is it something to do with that report?’

‘You’ve read it?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘It’s just an initial report of a possible business venture.’

‘In Gyle Park West?’ The Lord Provost nodded. ‘A new subsidiary of PanoTech?’

‘You’re well informed, Inspector.’

Rebus shrugged. ‘I’m just curious why Kirstie would take it, and why it was kept hidden, like it had some importance.’

Kennedy smiled. ‘It’s of no importance, Inspector. It’s a projection, it’s just something that might happen. God knows we could do with it.’

‘Why’s that, sir?’

‘The jobs, of course.’

‘Tell me, is the LABarum plan before any committee at present?’

The Lord Provost sat in a pew. Rebus sat one pew in front of him. ‘I don’t see what that could have to do with my daughter.’

Rebus shrugged. ‘I’m just curious.’

‘It will be discussed soon, yes.’

‘By Councillor Gillespie’s industry committee?’

‘Initially, yes. Look, I really don’t see what this has to do with Kirstie. I accept that she could have taken the document from my office at home. I’d say if it was anything, it was an act of pure rebellion — she took it because she could.’

‘Is she a rebel then, sir?’

‘Aren’t all teenagers?’

‘Not all teenagers are drug-users, sir.’

Rebus watched the colour come back to the Lord Provost’s cheeks. ‘What did you say?’

‘That’s why you didn’t have a more recent photo to give us. Junkies aren’t exactly photogenic.’

The Lord Provost shot to his feet. ‘How dare you!’ The tourists stopped consulting their guidebook.

‘Then tell me I’m a liar,’ Rebus said quietly. The Lord Provost opened his mouth, then closed it again. ‘Tell me I’m a liar and I’ll take back what I said.’

Cameron Kennedy’s eyes were glistening in the half-light. He looked all around him, at the frayed standards hanging limply from the walls, at the altar and the windows and the roof. Then he looked back to Rebus, shook his head, and walked away.

Rebus sat a few minutes by himself, hands clasped in his lap. He didn’t exactly feel good about himself, but then that was nothing new.

21

The name of SWEEP’s contact at the Scottish Office was Rory McAllister, and he agreed to meet Rebus for lunch the next day, suggesting an Italian restaurant at the top of Leith Walk.

When Rebus arrived at twelve-thirty, McAllister was already there. He’d just about completed the Scotsman crossword with an elegant chrome ballpoint pen. He stood up long enough to shake hands. Rebus noticed he was drinking mineral water.

‘Stick to the businessman’s lunch,’ McAllister prompted, as a waiter handed Rebus an oversized menu. So Rebus stuck to the businessman’s lunch.

Rory McAllister was in his late thirties with thinning, neatly cut hair and a face which still seemed to bear traces of both puppy-fat and acne. He peered at Rebus with eyes slightly narrowed, as if he might need spectacles but was too vain to wear them. His dark wool suit went well with a cream-coloured shirt and grey tie, knotted tightly at the throat.

Every inch the civil servant, Rebus thought. McAllister’s voice was educated Edinburgh: nasal and lilting, not wanting to let go of the ends of syllables.

‘So, Inspector,’ he said, putting his newspaper out of sight under the table, ‘your call was intriguing. What is it you want exactly?’

‘I want you to tell me about the Scottish Office, Mr McAllister. I also need to know about the SDA and Scottish Enterprise.’

‘Well,’ McAllister started to unwrap a bread-stick, ‘let’s order while I collect my thoughts, shall we?’ He spoke to the waiter in a quiet, firm voice. Rebus knew the type: loud only in agreement, never in denial; when roused to anger, he’d bet McAllister’s voice would drop to a whisper.

‘The tomato soup’s not bad,’ Rebus was informed. ‘Ditto the veal, but the pollo is very good, too. And as for the wine …’ Rebus shrugged assent with any suggestion McAllister might make. ‘A half each of house white and red.’ The civil servant snapped shut the wine list, another piece of business brought successfully to a close. He waved to two diners across the room. Their suits were like a uniform. The restaurant was filling quickly; half the diners looked like refugees from New St Andrew’s House.

‘So.’ McAllister clapped his hands together and rubbed them. ‘You want to know about the Scottish Office. Well, shall I start at the bottom or the top? You’ve met me, so that’s the bottom taken care of.’ He smiled to let Rebus know this was a joke. Sammy had said McAllister was a high-flier, clever and dedicated.

And helpful.

‘So,’ he went on, ‘maybe I’ll start at the top — the top, of course, being one of two men, depending on your situation. You can say that the Secretary of State for Scotland is the head of the Scottish Office, and as far as the public is concerned you’d be right. But politicians come and go, the Scottish Office remains.’

‘You’re saying the real head is the most senior civil servant?’

‘Exactly, and that’s the Permanent Under-Secretary, more usually known as the Permanent Secretary.’

‘Why bother with two titles?’

McAllister laughed, a sound like a pig at the trough. ‘Don’t question; just accept.’ A basket of bread rolls arrived, and he broke one into three. ‘Now, the Scottish Office has responsibility for most functions of government in Scotland, excepting defence, foreign policy, and social security. We’ve a small outpost in Whitehall, but most of us are based here, either in St Andrew’s House or New St Andrew’s House.’

‘St Andrew’s House being …?’

‘It’s on Regent Road. You know, it looks like the Reichstag.’

‘Oh, the power station.’

McAllister conceded the image. ‘That’s where the Secretary of State and his advisors do their work. The rest of us are relegated to the neo-brutalism of New St Andrew’s House — until Victoria Quay is ready.’ Two bowls of thin-looking tomato soup arrived. ‘The Secretary of State’s retinue consists of the likes of the Lord Advocate and the Solicitor-General: they’re both ministers of the Crown, of course.’

‘Of course.’

‘Plus a minister of State and three pusses.’

‘Pusses?’

McAllister wiped the corners of his mouth with his napkin. ‘Don’t tell anyone I called them that: Parliamentary Under-Secretaries of State.’

‘I thought you said there was only one?’

McAllister shook his head. ‘Don’t confuse Parliamentary with Permanent: the Permanent Under-Secretary is the only one who’s a civil servant. He’s the only one who is — ’

‘Permanent?’

McAllister nodded. He took some soup and chewed on his roll, preparing for another onslaught. The wine had arrived, and he poured a glass of white for himself. Rebus opted for red.

‘Now,’ McAllister said, ‘we come to the departments.’ He counted them off on his fingers: ‘SOID, SOED, SOEnD, SOHHD, SOAFD, and — shamefully prosaic — Central Services.’

Rebus smiled. ‘Mr McAllister, I think you’re purposely trying to bamboozle me.’

McAllister looked shocked. ‘No, I assure you …’

‘Look, what I really want is a rundown on the SDA and Scottish Enterprise.’

‘We’ll get to them, don’t worry.’ The waiter came to take their bowls. ‘Bit peppery today,’ McAllister told him; not a complaint, a simple matter of interpretation.

The civil servant was halfway through his next dissertation before Rebus realised they’d moved on to the topics he was interested in.

‘… so he was at SOHHD until the LECs came along. The SDA and HIDB became SE and HIE and the poor man, who’d been responsible for RDGs and RSA found himself — ’

‘Keep going, you might just drift back into English.’

McAllister produced another snorted laugh. ‘Maybe I don’t have enough dealings with the public. I’m used to people who understand the codes.’

‘Well, I don’t understand the codes, so humour me.’

McAllister took a deep breath. ‘The SDA,’ he began, ‘was set up by Wilson in 1975, some say to appease the rising nationalism of that time. It had a budget of?200 million — which was not inconsiderable for the time — and took over from three old existing bodies, including the SIEC — the Scottish Industrial Estates Corporation. The SIEC brought with it twenty-five million square metres of factory space.’

‘Sounds like a lot.’

‘A hellish lot, a lot to keep occupied. The SDA got busy. It’s been estimated there were as many as five thousand projects under its aegis at any one time. And remember, the SDA didn’t cover the whole of Scotland — there was the Highlands and Islands Development Board, too. In fact, HIDB was by far the elder of the two.’ The pasta starters arrived. McAllister sprinkled parmesan cheese over his and got to work with his fork. ‘Then someone had the bright idea of getting rid of the SDA.’ He shook his head. ‘Do you know the old saying, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it? The SDA was in good fettle. It had been investigated by several bodies and committees and given a clean bill of health. It did get into trouble over the Glasgow Garden Festival, and over a deal with a building contractor called Quinlon, but by then the blueprint for Scottish Enterprise had already been set up.

‘On the first of April — note the date — 1991, the SDA and HIDB became Scottish Enterprise and Highlands and Islands Enterprise. Basically, the changes were twofold: the new agencies took on the Scottish remit of the Training Agency and, more importantly, the central role of the SDA became more devolved.’

‘How so?’ Rebus wasn’t touching the wine; he needed all his wits about him.

‘Authority was devolved to a network of private-sector-led local enterprise companies, LECs for short.’

‘Like Lothian and Edinburgh Enterprise Limited?’

‘Yes, LEEL’s one.’

‘Is there any Scottish Office control?’

‘Oh yes, Scottish Enterprise is sponsored by SOID.’

‘The Scottish Office Industry Department?’ McAllister gave a round of silent applause. ‘Which leads us,’ Rebus said, ‘to funding.’

‘Oh, I could talk all afternoon about funding, it’s my specialty.’

‘So what’s Scottish Enterprise’s annual budget?’

McAllister puffed out his cheeks. ‘Around four hundred and fifty million.’

Rebus swallowed the last of his pasta. ‘Forgive me, that sounds like a lot.’

‘Well, the money has to be split: it covers Enterprise, environment, youth and adult training, plus admin costs.’

‘Well, put like that I can see it represents excellent value for money.’

McAllister nearly choked with laughter. ‘You sound just like a civil servant!’

‘I was being ironic. Tell me, Mr McAllister, why did you agree to meet me?’

The question took McAllister by surprise. He took time forming his answer. ‘I’ve never met a police officer before,’ he said. ‘I suppose I was curious. Besides, it’s nice to meet someone who’s actually interested in what we do, no matter what his motives. You know, only about one in three voters in this country even knows there’s such a thing as the Scottish Office. One in three!’ He sat back and opened his arms. ‘And we’ve got a budget of millions!’

‘Tell me,’ Rebus said quietly, ‘any word of any … impropriety?’

‘At Scottish Enterprise?’

Rebus nodded.

‘No, none at all.’

‘What about the SDA?’

One waiter removed their bowls, another set down the main course and accompanying vegetables. McAllister tucked in. He swallowed the first mouthful before answering Rebus’s question.

‘If there had been, Inspector, it would be dead and buried by now. When the SDA became Scottish Enterprise, the accounting procedures were changed: new set-up, new set of books. Like wiping the slate clean.’

‘So what would have happened if any impropriety had been found?’

McAllister made a sweeping motion with his fork. ‘Under the carpet with it.’

Rebus pondered this: wiping the slate clean, under the carpet … The district council was about to disappear, just as the SDA had done.

‘You know, Mr McAllister, you don’t seem very curious about why I want to know about the SDA and Scottish Enterprise.’

McAllister chewed on that. ‘I suppose you’ll tell me if and when you’re ready. Until then, I don’t see that it’s any of my business. I’m not the curious sort, Inspector. In my line of work, that’s seen as a strength.’

After a while Rebus asked: ‘Who appoints the boards?’

‘At SE and HIE, the Secretary of State.’ McAllister poured the last of the wine into his glass. ‘Not on his own, of course. He’d be advised by the Permanent Secretary. That, after all is the job of the Permanent Secretary: to advise. Though he implements too, of course.’ McAllister glanced at his watch, then signalled for the waiter. ‘I don’t know about you,’ he said to Rebus, ‘but I think I might skip pud.’ And he patted his ample stomach. When the waiter approached, McAllister ordered espresso.

‘Is that what you’re investigating, Inspector — impropriety at the SDA?’

Rebus smiled. ‘I thought you weren’t curious. Tell me, does the word Mensung mean anything to you?’

McAllister tried it out. He’d torn open a plastic toothpick, and was working on his mouth. The sight made Rebus’s teeth jangle. ‘I do seem to know it … can’t think why or what it is. Want me to check?’

‘I’d be grateful, sir. One other thing, any connection between the SDA or Scottish Enterprise and the US Consulate?’

Again, McAllister seemed surprised by the question. ‘Well, yes,’ he said at last, as his coffee arrived. ‘I mean, we do try to persuade American companies to locate here, so contacts at a consular level are helpful — vital, even. They were especially so in the eighties.’

‘Why was that?’

‘Microelectronics was booming. Silicon Glen. Locate in Scotland was working superbly. Did I mention LiS? It was part-SDA, part-Scottish office, with a remit to get foreign companies to locate here. Most of its successes were American, mostly in the early to mid-eighties. Rumour had it that its successes had less to do with canny persuasion and economic argument than with a kind of informal freemasonry.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, a lot of top executives in American companies were and are Scottish, either born here or with Scottish roots. LiS would target those individuals and work on them, trying to get them not only to open a factory here, but to persuade other Scots in positions of influence. Look at IBM. Actually, this isn’t an example of LiS at work; IBM has had a presence in Scotland for forty years. They started in Greenock, and they’re still there — the plant’s massive, about a mile and a half long. But what took them to Greenock in the first place? I’ll tell you. It wasn’t economics or a skilled workforce — it was sentimentality. The head of IBM at that time was in love with the west coast of Scotland; and that’s all it was.’ McAllister shrugged and blew on his coffee.

Rebus wanted to go back a stage or two. ‘Is that how a lot of it works? Who you know?’

‘Oh, definitely.’

‘And bribes?’

‘Not for me to say.’

Why not? thought Rebus. You’ve said every bloody thing but. It was two-thirty, the restaurant empty save for their table.

‘I mean,’ McAllister said, ‘one man’s bribe is another’s “financial incentive”. Look at Pergau Dam. There’s always room to bend the rules without necessarily breaking them. Regional Selective Assistance, for example, was and is discretionary. Who’s to say it doesn’t make a difference if the person applying for it went to school with the person who’ll make the final decision? It’s the way the world turns, Inspector.’ He tried to find some dregs of coffee in his cup, then unwrapped the amaretto biscuit.

Rebus paid their bill, and the waiter locked the door after them. McAllister’s face was flushed, his cheeks a network of broken blood vessels. Now that he’d asked his questions, Rebus was keen to be elsewhere. There was something about McAllister he didn’t like. He knew how easy it was to cover something up by talking about it at length. One confession could be made to disguise another. He’d had cleverer men than McAllister in the interview room, but not very many …

The two men shook hands.

‘I appreciate you taking the time and trouble, sir,’ Rebus said.

‘Not at all, Inspector. I appreciate you paying for lunch. Besides, who knows? Maybe one day I might need a favour from you.’ McAllister winked.

‘You might at that,’ Rebus said.

After all, it was the way the world turned, the civil servant was right about that. Rebus turned and headed off in any direction that wasn’t McAllister’s.

22

‘All I’ve got,’ Rebus admitted, ‘are questions and loose ends, and none of it is getting me any closer to why McAnally killed himself or why the councillor’s so scared. Added to that, the Lord Provost sees the word Dalgety scrawled on a sheet of paper and suddenly doesn’t want us looking for his daughter any more.’

He was on the phone to St Leonard’s, speaking with Brian Holmes. The drip from the radiator was getting worse. His mouth was getting worse. Behind him in the living room were the binbags full of paper. All the answers, he felt, were there, just beyond his abilities.

‘So?’ said Holmes.

‘Thanks for the vote of confidence.’

‘What do you want me to say?’

Rebus pushed at the skin around his nose, feeling the pressure increase on his poor tooth. ‘The reason I phoned,’ he said, ‘is to ask what the state of play is with friend Duggan.’

Holmes rustled some papers. ‘Now there I can help you. Paul Duggan is Edinburgh’s answer to Rachman. He’s been cheating the council for years. Lives with his parents, doesn’t pay them a penny rent, but he’s applied for and been allotted four council properties … that’s how many we’ve traced so far, there could be others. He doesn’t mind hard-to-let flats, that’s his secret.’

‘How does he do it?’

‘A series of pseudonyms, plus girls he drags along to Housing Office interviews with a few bambinos in tow. The girls are friends of his, the kids aren’t his.’

‘But he becomes their father for the duration of the interview?’

‘And gets himself priority listed. Once he’s been allocated a place, all he does is let it out. I’m amazed he can find anyone for some of them. That place in Saughton was a palace compared to the others in his portfolio.’

Rebus dug into his back pocket and brought out the card he’d taken from the Waverley drop-in. Paul. Cheap rooms.

‘Why do you think,’ Rebus asked, ‘Willie and Dixie had the pick of Duggan’s properties? House that size, he could have squeezed a few more bodies in.’

‘Right enough, the flat I checked in Granton had sleeping-bags in the living room, kitchen, and bathroom.’

Rebus studied the telephone number on the card. ‘Maybe I’ll have a wee word with our friendly slum landlord. Is the Farmer keeping you busy?’

‘He keeps asking if I know what you’re up to.’

‘And what do you tell him?’

‘I can keep my mouth shut. I just hope you know what you’re doing, sir.’

‘Well, Brian, there’s a first time for everything.’

Rebus broke the connection and called the number on the card.

‘Hello?’ It was a woman’s voice, polite, not young.

‘Eh, is Paul there?’

‘I’ll just get him for you.’

‘Thanks.’

She put the receiver next to the phone, and he could hear her calling for her son, who was probably in his bedroom counting shillings into a sock. Finally, the receiver was picked up.

‘Aye?’

‘Paul?’

‘Who’s this?’

‘My name’s John, I saw your notice at the drop-in centre.’

‘Which one? I’ve got half a dozen notices up.’

‘The one behind Waverley.’

‘Oh aye, right.’

‘I need a room.’

‘Are you claiming social security?’

Rebus winged it. ‘I’d be paying cash, if that’s what you’re worried about.’

‘No, it’s just that you’ve caught me at a bad time, John. Bit of pressure on me at the moment, if you know what I mean.’

‘I know all about pressure.’

‘So I’m not really opening any new transactions right this minute.’ There was a pause. ‘Did you say cash? Would you need a rentbook?’

‘Cash, no rentbook.’

‘Tell you what, John, can we maybe meet?’

Rebus’s smile didn’t translate to his voice. ‘What’s the address?’

‘No address. Do you know Leith cop shop?’

Rebus stopped smiling. He’d been rumbled. But Duggan misinterpreted his silence.

‘Not keen, eh? Been in trouble, have you?’

‘A little bit.’

‘We’re only meeting outside. I can take you to a flat near there, down by the Shore. And that area’s coming up in the world, by the way.’

Rebus almost admired the cheek. ‘What time?’

‘Five on the dot.’

‘I’ll be there,’ said Rebus.

He phoned Brian Holmes back. ‘Rachman’s portfolio, anything down near the Shore?’

‘Leith? No,’ said Holmes, ‘nearest one to Leith’s the place in Granton. Why?’

‘Just that you haven’t tracked them all down yet, that’s all.’

At five minutes to five, he was across the road from the police station. He stood two steps up from the pavement in the doorway of a disused building. Leith was taking a few faltering steps towards respectability. Trendy cafes and restaurants had opened in hastily refurbished premises, usually carved out of larger blocks of unrented space. There was a temporary feel to these new businesses; they always seemed to be ‘under new management’. Leith’s revival had begun down on the Shore and had all but stopped there, with warehouse conversions and a couple of upmarket bars. Now the revival had been given fresh momentum: the new Scottish Office HQ was under construction at Victoria Dock, and a sailors’ home had been turned into a luxury hotel on Queen’s Quay.

But Leith still retained its old, unique charm: it was still just about the only part of the city where you’d see prostitutes in daytime, freezing in short skirts and skimpy jackets. Rebus had passed some on his way down Bernard Street, readying themselves for the going-home trade: one quick leap for the homeward bound.

He stood in the doorway for quarter of an hour before Paul Duggan turned up. The young man was wearing an ankle-length black woollen coat, its collar turned up. On his feet were white trainers, so new they were almost luminous when caught in the headlamps of the passing traffic.

Duggan didn’t pay any attention to Rebus as Rebus crossed the road; he was on the look-out for someone entirely different.

‘Waiting for me?’ Rebus asked.

It took Duggan a moment to place him. ‘Christ, what do you want?’

‘It was me that phoned. We didn’t know you had another place on the Shore.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Come on, Paul, let’s have a chat.’

‘In there?’

Rebus looked towards the police station. ‘No,’ he said, ‘not in there. This is just between us, understood?’

Rebus started walking, a hand on the sleeve of Duggan’s coat.

‘Where are we going?’ Duggan asked.

‘We’re just walking, that’s all. I’ve got a question for you. We know about four or five of your properties, and we know the Saughton let was the best of them by a fair old margin. So how come you only picked up two rents from it?’

Duggan stopped dead. ‘Is this a trap? Are you miked up?’

Rebus laughed. ‘For a tadpole like you? Behave, son, you’re the council’s problem, not mine.’

Rebus started walking again. Duggan caught him up. ‘So what’s the game?’

‘I’m interested in Willie and Dixie, that’s all. You told me you were their friend, so now I’m a wee bit interested in you, too.’

‘That’s why I gave them the house,’ Duggan blurted out, thinking on his feet. ‘They were my pals.’

‘You gave them it? They didn’t pay rent?’

‘Oh … oh aye, they paid rent. What I meant was — ’

‘Don’t bother, son, don’t compound one lie with another, you’ll never keep track. My guess is they worked for you. What did they do?’

Duggan bit his lip. ‘They collected the rents,’ he said at last.

‘And got free rent in return? That makes more sense. When I look at you, I see a skinny young kid, a sap. The kind of tenants you must deal with, you’d need back-up, isn’t that right? Just in case someone decided not to pay.’ Duggan nodded.

‘They’d’ve been perfect for that,’ Rebus continued.

‘Willie had brains, he could reason with the non-payers, and if that didn’t work, crazy Dixie could go to work. Is that about the score?’

‘That’s it.’

Rebus sniffed, and seemed to be thinking. ‘Whose idea was the kidnap ruse?’ he said casually.

‘I’ve told you, I didn’t know anything about that! They just asked for my car!’

‘Must have been Willie’s idea,’ Rebus went on, as if Duggan hadn’t spoken. ‘Dixie didn’t have the brains.’ He turned to Duggan. ‘Unless it was your idea, of course.’

Duggan made to protest, but thought better of it. They walked on in silence. ‘OK,’ he said at last. ‘OK, between you and me, right?’

Rebus shrugged. ‘Like I said, I’m not after you particularly, Paul, unless you lie to me. Lying to me is not advisable.’

‘I knew what they were up to.’

‘Of course you did. A tight-fisted wee bastard like you wouldn’t lend someone the steam from his breath without there being a pay-off.’ Rebus produced the photo of Kirstie Kennedy. ‘You saw her with Willie and Dixie, didn’t you?’

‘No.’

‘What about Dalgety?’

‘Eh?’ The name clearly meant nothing to Duggan.

‘Come on,’ Rebus said, ‘I know you’ve seen her. You spend a lot of time in drop-in centres — ’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘You told me yourself your cards are up on half a dozen noticeboards. How do they get there: by magic?’ Rebus pushed the photo towards Duggan. ‘You’ve seen her.’

‘No.’

‘You’re lying. What are you afraid of, Paul?’

They were down on the Shore, and Duggan was just realising it. They walked close to the water’s edge, across the street from the bars. Soon they’d be up to the dock entrance. Rebus stopped and tugged on Duggan’s arm. ‘Look at her!’ he spat. Duggan averted his face. ‘Look at her!’

Duggan glanced at the photo, then away again. His eyes were glinting in the streetlight.

‘She knew Willie well enough to leave something in his bedroom. She knew him… and I know damned well you knew her!’

Duggan blinked. ‘What did she leave in his bedroom?’ he asked quietly.

‘Just tell me where she is.’

Duggan started to shake his head, and Rebus hauled him by the coat-sleeve to the water’s edge. The street was empty save for a line of cars whose owners were all in the howffs.

‘Fancy a dip, Paul? It can be invigorating at this time of year, if the sewage and the rats don’t get you.’

‘This coat cost a fortune!’ Duggan squealed.

‘You won’t need it in jail, son. You’ll be tucked up in bed with some big bad bastard keeping you warm.’

‘All right, all right!’

Rebus released his grip. Duggan looked up and down the street.

‘Run if you like, Paul. I’ll find you.’

‘Jesus, calm down, will you? OK, I’ve seen her. She hung around for a while with Willie and Dixie.’

‘How long?’

‘A week, maybe a bit longer.’

‘Is she still around?’

‘I haven’t seen her. I only saw her a couple of times.’

‘At the house in Saughton?’

‘No, no, at a couple of drop-in centres.’

‘But you don’t know where she is, or what she’s doing?’ Duggan shook his head. ‘Right, here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to find her for me.’

‘What?’

‘Somebody like you, lots of contacts … should be easy.’

‘You don’t know what you’re asking.’

Rebus pointed to the water. ‘There’s your alternative.’ He held out the photo. ‘Take this, it might help.’

‘It won’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘That’s not what she looks like. We had a laugh when we saw that picture in all the papers. I mean, I can believe she might have looked like that before she started using.’

‘Drugs?’

‘And plenty of them by the look of her.’

Rebus frowned. ‘You think she’s been on them long?’

‘Long enough. Maybe a year or so.’

‘A year?’

Duggan shrugged. ‘Only a guess; I’m not into that scene.’

‘I’ll bet you don’t mind them as tenants though, eh?’ Duggan straightened his shoulders. ‘How about looking at it this way — I’m doing the council’s work for it, putting roofs over the heads of people who’d be on the street otherwise.’

‘Mr Social Conscience. They’ll be giving you the keys to the city next. Get out of my sight, and take the photo, it’s got my phone number on the back. If I don’t hear from you in a day or two, we’ll have another chat. Maybe at your place this time, with your mum and dad listening. How would you like that?’

Duggan didn’t answer. He rearranged his coat, which had fallen down over one shoulder, then pocketed the photograph. Rebus watched him shuffle away, back towards the traffic.

So, now he knew for certain why the Lord Provost hadn’t had a more recent photo of his daughter. He wondered why Duggan had been so curious about whatever Kirstie had left in Willie Coyle’s bedroom. But Rebus was beginning to get an idea about that, too.

23

He drove to the Ox, where Doc and Salty stood in their allotted places. Room was made for Rebus, and Doc ordered him a pint.

‘Oh what blessed company,’ Rebus said, lifting the glass. He turned to Salty Dougary. ‘I was out at Gyle Park West the other day.’

‘In your professional capacity?’

‘Sort of. What can you tell me about the place?’

‘It’s an industrial estate. I work there. What else is there to know?’

‘The businesses there, would they have dealings with Scottish Enterprise?’

Salty nodded. ‘LEEL,’ he said. ‘Our boss at Deltona is mad keen on “worker participation”, which means once a week we have to sit in the canteen for twenty minutes listening to him rattle on about client satisfaction, inward investment, productivity and the like. He’s always on about LEEL.’

‘So Deltona has had money from LEEL?’

‘John, everyone on that estate has had help of some kind: relocation incentives, start-up incentives, retraining incentives, you name it.’ He raised his glass. ‘God bless Scottish Enterprise.’

‘Why the interest?’ Dr Klasser asked. This was not their usual level of conversation.

‘It could be peripheral to a case I’m working on.’ Except that there was no case and he wasn’t supposed to be working.

‘Well, keep your paws off Deltona,’ Salty Dougary warned.

Rebus smiled. ‘Ever heard of Mensung?’ he asked.

‘Don’t they measure your intelligence?’

There was a snort from down the bar. ‘They’d only need a six-inch ruler to measure yours, Salty.’

Salty laughed, so the speaker would know he wasn’t amused. Rebus was still looking at him. ‘To be honest,’ Salty told him, ‘it does ring a bell, way at the back of the old brainpan. I think it was a company.’

‘On the estate?’

Dougary shrugged. The barman was taking a phone call. His eyes met Rebus’s.

‘For you, John.’ He brought the telephone over. Rebus had another question for Salty.

‘What about LABarum, ever heard of that?’

‘What is this, “Mastermind”?’

Rebus took the receiver from the barman. ‘Hello?’

‘Is that you, John?’

Rebus recognised the voice — but it couldn’t be, not calling him by his first name.

‘Is that you, Flower?’

‘Yes.’

DI Alister Flower — the Little Weed — calling Rebus ‘John’. Something was wrong.

‘What’s up?’

‘Just wondered if you could drop into the station for a chat.’

‘A chat? Will you have the tea and biscuits ready?’

Flower laughed like he hadn’t heard a better one all day. Rebus was more than curious.

‘When?’ he asked.

‘Whenever you like.’

Rebus said he’d be there in half an hour.

The station was mid-evening quiet. To keep busy, most of the CID contingent had gone off to the scene of a car smash. The smash had taken place outside one of the neighbourhood’s better Indian restaurants. So there was no one around the main office; no one but Alister Flower.

‘John, how’s the holiday?’

‘I’m having a bit of trouble getting a tan.’

Rebus studied Alister Flower. There were a hundred reasons to dislike or even thoroughly loathe the man. The fact that he was a complete prick came pretty close to the top. Flower’s eyes were always in movement, seeking out an angle or the main chance. The eyes were puffy, like the skin around them was constantly swollen. It could be genetic or to do with boozing, and it turned his eyes into slits. Rebus didn’t like the fact that he couldn’t always see those eyes.

Flower had friends around the station: spies, junior officers, who were a bit like him and would even like to be him. It scared Rebus. But there were no allies with him tonight. He sat on a desk, his feet on a chair. It wasn’t his desk, wasn’t his chair. Walking past his own desk, Rebus saw the new computer console. It didn’t interest him at all.

‘I was promised tea and biscuits,’ he said.

‘We can nip down the canteen after.’

‘After what?’

‘After I’ve shown you something. Come on.’

And he led Rebus down to the cells. There was a man in there, long-haired, unshaven, not happy.

‘So who is he?’

‘His name’s Terry Shotts,’ Flower explained. ‘He’s from Newcastle. We found him leaving a house in Prestonfield Avenue … with half the contents under his arm.’

‘So?’ Rebus closed the viewing-flap in the cell door.

‘So we went to his digs. There was some other stuff there, including some that we could trace immediately from the register. His scam is, he thieves here and sells in Newcastle, and what he thieves there he lays off here.’

‘It’s a tremendous feat of detection, Flower. I want to thank you for sharing it with me.’

Rebus started back upstairs, Flower following. He handed Rebus a folded sheet of paper.

‘This is a list of the stuff the Geordies found in his flat. They traced some of it to a couple of break-ins, but the lists didn’t match. Looks like he’d already sold some of the stuff on. Including a shotgun.’ Rebus began to see the point. ‘Shotts has been up here three weeks. I think he sold it to Shug McAnally.’

‘Have you asked Mr Shotts?’

‘He’s as good as admitted it.’

Rebus stopped. ‘Maybe I should talk to him.’

Flower blocked his path. ‘I don’t think that would do any good.’ Rebus wasn’t in the mood for a fight, so kept on walking. ‘I thought you’d be pleased. I mean, it ties up the loose ends, doesn’t it?’

‘It might tie up one of them, but it just unravels a couple more. Want to know what they are? Number one, why are you interested? Number two, why would you want me to be “pleased”?’

They were back in the CID room.

‘Well,’ Flower said, making for his desk, ‘I just thought you’d want to know.’

‘That’s just so much keech, Flower. What are you up to?’

Flower reached into a drawer and showed Rebus a bottle of whisky. Rebus shook his head, but Flower poured himself a measure into a broken-handled mug.

‘What are you so damned paranoid about, Rebus?’

‘You, for a start.’ Flower took a gulp of whisky, then lit a cigarette.

‘It’s a fair point,’ he conceded, through a wreath of smoke. ‘OK, I’ll tell you straight. Someone asked me to talk to you. You know I wouldn’t do it otherwise.’

‘That’s more like it.’ Rebus sat on the edge of a desk. ‘So who’s the someone?’

‘Just someone important.’

‘The Farmer?’

Flower smiled and exhaled noisily. Someone higher than the Farmer then, a lot higher.

‘And just what,’ Rebus asked, ‘does this anonymous patron want me to know?’

Flower examined the tip of his cigarette. ‘That you’re on your way out, the way you’re going.’

‘Out?’

‘Of the force.’ Flower paused. ‘At the very least.’

‘Why?’

‘You don’t need to know that.’

Which meant, thought Rebus, that it was because of something he might do rather than something already done.

‘So what should I do?’ he asked.

‘Stop being so bloody nosy.’

‘About what?’

‘McAnally, for Christ’s sake.’

‘What does — ’

‘Look, I’m just the message-boy, OK?’

‘If the cap fits …’

Flower’s eyes narrowed still further. ‘Look,’ he said at last, ‘you know if it was up to me, I’d leave you to squat on the pan and send your career down the lavvy like the night before’s kebab. All I’m doing is a favour for someone who wants you to have a final warning. Hear me? A final warning.’ He stood up and flicked his butt into a waste-bin.

‘Pretty convenient,’ Rebus said, ‘the source of the shotgun suddenly turning up … Who is it, Flower? The DCC? Big Jim Flett? What have they got to hide?’ Rebus was standing inches from Flower. ‘What’s it got to do with you?’ He jabbed Flower’s chest with his finger.

‘Touch me again, you’re dead.’

‘Tell your friend, if he wants to threaten me, he should do it himself. Nobody’s scared of the message-boy.’

Then he turned and walked away. He was worried though. If they were serious — whoever they were — when he was so far from solving the puzzle, how would they react if he got any closer? He stopped at the door.

‘By the way,’ he said, ‘your fag-end just set fire to that bin.’

Flower turned and saw that the contents of the waste-bin were indeed smouldering. He reached for some liquid to douse the fire.

He’d forgotten that it was whisky, not coffee, in his mug.

Rebus’s phone was ringing as he got home. It was Rico Briggs.

‘I had a word with a friend,’ he told Rebus. Rico never liked to say too much on the phone.

‘And?’

‘Be in the bus station at eleven.’

‘Tonight?’

‘Tonight.’

‘Whereabouts in the bus station?’

‘Just be there. You’ll pay him his share and mine.’

The line went dead.

24

At ten to eleven, Rebus was in the St Andrew’s Square bus station. A few early drunks had assembled for the last bus home. There was a pub in the bus station; it sounded busy. A man sprinted out of it, slipped in a patch of oil, and fell like a sniper’s bullet had got him. He got back to his feet in time to see his bus pull away, and started swearing. There was a gash in the knee of his trousers.

Exhaust fumes lay in heavy strata just above ground level. Rebus tried not to breathe too deeply as he walked up and down the ranks. A few teenagers were asleep on the precarious benches. An old man, looking dazed, crossed the concourse dressed in a duffel coat, pyjamas and slippers. The slippers looked brand new, maybe a Christmas present.

‘Where are you?’ Rebus hissed, stamping his feet. He pushed his hands deeper into his pockets and walked the ranks again.

‘Sit down,’ a voice said.

Rebus looked down at the figure. He’d thought the man was asleep, arms folded, head tucked into the front of his jacket. He was sitting at the last rank. There was a bus there, but with its lights off.

Rebus sat down, and the man looked up at him. He had greasy brown hair which fell over one eye, and he could have done with a shave. There was a small scar, no more than a nick, below his right eye. The eyes were piercing blue with long lashes. When he spoke, Rebus saw there was a tooth missing from the front of his mouth.

‘Money.’

‘You’re Rico’s friend?’

The man nodded. ‘Money,’ he repeated.

Rebus showed him two twenties, then handed them over. ‘He said half for him.’

‘He’ll get half.’ The voice was a lazy west coast drawl. ‘You want to know about Saughton?’

‘A man killed himself with a shotgun. He was fresh out of Saughton.’

‘Which bit?’

‘C Hall.’

The man shook his head. ‘Can’t help you then.’

A driver had come over to the bus, cashbox in hand. He opened the doors and went inside, closing them after him. Lights came on all the way up the bus.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Just what I say. I can’t help.’

The engine started up, spewing fumes. A couple of people had joined the queue and were wondering whether to jump ahead of the two seated down-and-outs.

‘Why not?’

‘Never really knew anyone in C Hall.’ The man stood up, Rebus rising with him. ‘This is my bus.’

‘Wait a minute.’

The man turned to him. The bus doors were opening, the people behind wanting to be in the warm. ‘Ask Gerry Dip.’

‘Gerry Dip?’

‘He was in C Hall, came out a few weeks back.’

‘Where can I find him?’

‘Dipping fish, that’s how he got the name.’ The man climbed on to the platform. ‘I hear he’s working in a chip shop on Easter Road.’

Every chip shop in Scotland was at its busiest after the pubs had emptied. Even the bad ones, the ones with bony fish and rubber batter, had queues. Rebus took one look at the wares on display in the second chip shop he tried, and decided he would go without.

There was a queue almost out the door, but he walked to the front, ignoring the stares. A teenage girl was serving, mouth open in concentration.

‘Salt and sauce?’ she asked the customer.

‘Is Gerry in?’ Rebus asked.

She nodded further along the counter. There was a small man there dipping fish in a bucket of batter before tossing them into the fryer.

‘Gerry?’ Rebus asked. The man shook his head and pointed towards the back of the narrow shop, where a very tall, very skinny young man wearing a white cotton apron was playing the video machine.

It was one of those kick-and-chop games, the enemy bounding into view only long enough to be taken out again by the snarling cartoon hero.

‘Gerry Dip?’ Rebus said.

The player was in his mid-twenties, with cropped black hair and a nose-stud. His bare arms sported tattoos, and there were more on the backs of his hands. On his right wrist was a tattooed watch, the hands of which pointed to twelve. Rebus checked his own watch and saw that Gerry Dip’s was dead-on.

Rebus saw that Dip was watching him in the screen’s reflection. ‘Not many people call me that,’ he said.

‘I’m a friend of a friend, someone you knew in Saughton. He said you could maybe help me. There’d be a drink in it.’

‘How big a drink?’

Rebus had been to a cash machine. He laid a crisp twenty on the console. Maybe it affected Dip’s concentration. A landmine tore the arms and legs off his man. The Game Over message flashed, and a digitised voice said, ‘Feed … Money … Me … Hungry.’

Gerry Dip palmed the note. ‘Let’s retire to my office.’

He led Rebus behind the counter and told the fish batterer he’d swop places in five minutes. Then he pushed open a door and led Rebus into a kitchen-cum-storeroom. Sacks of potatoes waited to be peeled, and two large freezers hummed.

‘I hope you’re not Environmental Health,’ Gerry Dip said, getting a glass of water from the sink and gulping it. ‘Actually, I know what you are, it gets so you can smell it after a while.’

Rebus let the remark go. ‘A man was released from C Hall a couple of weeks back. He stuck a gun into his — ’

‘Wee Shug.’ Dip nodded. ‘I knew him, played cards a few times, talked about telly and the football.’ Dip refilled his glass. ‘You’re up from six in the morning till nine at night, lights-out isn’t till ten. You get to know people. Plus I worked with him in the upholstery workshop. He said he’d come down the chippie and see me — then I read about him in the papers.’

‘Did you know he was ill?’

‘He saw the doctor a lot, never talked about it though. I know he had some medicine: we wanted him to hand it round so we could get a buzz. What was wrong with him?’

‘Cancer.’

‘That why he topped himself?’

‘Could be.’

‘Well, if you want to know about Wee Shug, you should talk to his cell-mate. Now there was a fucking character. Hoity-toity, stayed in his cell even when he didn’t need to.’

Big Jim Flett had mentioned a cell-mate; Rebus saw suddenly why Flett had been relieved at the end of their interview.

‘Gerry, what was Wee Shug in for?’

‘Housebreaking.’

‘You sure about that?’

‘That’s what I heard.’

‘Not rape?’

‘What?’

No, thought Rebus, because rapists are usually kept away from the other prisoners. But the governor had let it slip that Wee Shug shared a cell.

‘He wasn’t inside for rape,’ Gerry Dip said.

‘How can you be sure?’

‘We’d’ve known.’

‘He’s not likely to have told you himself.’

‘No, but the screws would have, somebody would have. It’s one secret you can’t have in the nick.’

‘Unless,’ Rebus said quietly, ‘nobody wanted you to know.’

25

Rebus called CID from a phone box near St Leonard’s and, without identifying himself, asked to speak to either DS Holmes or DC Clarke.

It was a morning of heavy haar, floating across the city in a wet cloud from the coast. The kind of morning where you could imagine yourself back in time, a horse and coach clopping out of the mist rather than cars with their headlights on full. Rebus’s skin and clothes were damp to the touch.

‘DC Clarke speaking.’

‘It’s me. I want you to look up a name on the computer.’

‘Well, it’s a bit chaotic here just now. There was a small fire last night, a waste-bin went up. It’s a bit of a mystery, nobody was here at the time.’

‘Dear me.’

‘The chief super’s ordered an investigation. Meantime, half the office is off limits.’

‘But the computer system’s OK?’

‘The only damage is the bin and the desk next to it. It was Inspector Flower found the blaze.’

‘Really?’

‘He threw a coat over the bin to snuff it out. It was Holmes’s coat.’

‘The one Nell gave him for Christmas?’

‘That’s the one. What’s the name you want checking?’

‘Charters.’ He spelt it for her. ‘I don’t have a first name, but he’s serving time in Saughton. I’d like his record. I’m in a callbox about a hundred yards away. There’s a cafe across from the DIY store, I’ll wait for you there.’

‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’

‘The dough-rings are on me.’

But when Siobhan Clarke finally turned up at the cafe, she ordered a fried-egg sandwich instead, then handed Rebus a manila envelope.

‘Did anyone see you at the computer?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Watch your back. It’s not just the Farmer — Flower’s up to something, too.’

‘What?’

‘Fire-raising for a start.’ Rebus opened the envelope and read through the contents. Clarke’s food arrived and she bit into it, dripping yolk on to the plate.

“‘Derwood Charters”,’ Rebus read aloud, ‘“age forty-six, divorced, ex-company director. Found guilty of fraud, serving three years of a six-year sentence at HMP Edinburgh. Home address in Cramond till the place had to be sold. Date of birth … name of solicitor … no wife or next of kin”.’ Rebus skipped through what little else there was. ‘It’s a bit bald, isn’t it?’

‘A bit.’

‘Like somebody’s been into the computer and shorn it. Which station dealt with him?’ He looked through the notes again. ‘Well, well: St Leonard’s.’

‘But before our time?’

Rebus nodded. ‘I was still at Great London Road. But then so was Chief Inspector Lauderdale, yet his name’s down here as part of the team.’ He was thoughtful for a moment. ‘Right, what I want you to do is — ’

‘Go back to the station and pull the case-notes out of the vault?’

‘I know it’s asking a lot.’

‘Only my career.’

But he knew she’d do it anyway.

Rebus waited over an hour for Clarke to return. She carried a supermarket carrier-bag with her, and laid it on the floor next to him. He ordered her a mug of tea; his own stomach was swilling with the stuff.

‘It wasn’t where it should have been,’ she told him. ‘It had been put back out of order.’

‘Like someone wanted to hide it?’

‘But without being too obvious. There are so many reports in the vault, it’s easy for one to disappear if it’s filed in the wrong place.’

‘Did anyone see you?’

‘Brian came to see what I was up to. I got him to keep an eye out for anyone else. Meantime, the sooner you read the case-notes, the sooner I can put them back.’

The woman who ran the cafe brought Siobhan Clarke’s tea, and saw Rebus lift a heavy folder out of the carrier-bag.

‘Thinking of taking up residence?’ she asked him.

‘I’m doing you a favour,’ he said, glancing at all the empty tables. ‘Nobody comes into an empty cafe.’

‘You did,’ she replied.

Rebus just smiled and opened the case-notes, starting to read.

At lunchtime, Rebus made a dentist’s appointment.

When he explained the problem, the receptionist asked him to hold the line. When she came back, she told him Dr Keene could squeeze him in at five.

The surgery was in a substantial semi-detached property on Inverleith Row, facing the entrance to the Botanic Gardens. Rebus was in a sweat as he sat in the waiting room. There was a woman in there with him, and he was relieved when she was called first. But that left only him. His ears seemed more receptive than usual. He could hear the whine of a drill, the clatter of metal probes being dropped on to trays. When the woman patient came out, she walked to the reception desk to make another appointment. The dentist was with her. Then the dentist turned and, smiling, came to the waiting-room doorway.

‘Mr Rebus? Through here, please.’

He wore a white coat and half-moon glasses, and Rebus judged him to be in his late fifties.

‘Sit down, please,’ Dr Keene said, washing his hands. ‘Some swelling around the mouth?’

Rebus sat on the chair and swung his legs up on to it, his hands gripping the armrests. Dr Keene came over.

‘Now, just lie back and try to relax.’ Rebus could hear his own hoarse breathing. ‘That’s it.’ The dentist used an electric foot-switch to set the chair back so it was nearly flat, and to raise it up. He angled the lamp over the chair and switched it on. ‘We’ll just take a look.’ He swivelled a tray of dental tools towards him and sat down on a high chair by Rebus’s side.

‘Open wide.’

There was music playing. Radio Two, the airwaves’ answer to a placebo. Rebus opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. There was a blown-up photograph there, a huge black and white aerial shot of Edinburgh, from Trinity in the north to as far south as the Braid Hills. He started to map out the streets in his mind.

‘Looks like a wee abscess,’ the dentist was saying. He put down one tool and reached for another, tapping it against one of Rebus’s teeth. ‘Feel anything?’ Rebus shook his head. The assistant had joined them. Dr Keene said a few things to her in a language the patient wasn’t supposed to understand, then started packing Rebus’s mouth with cotton.

‘What I’m going to do is drill into the tooth from behind, to try to drain off the poison. That’ll release the pressure. The tooth is pretty well dead anyway, I’ll do a root canal later. But for now the abscess needs to drain.’

Rebus could feel sweat on his forehead. A tube was being placed in his mouth, hoovering up what saliva there was.

‘A little injection first. It’ll take a minute or two to take.’

Rebus stared at the ceiling. There’s Calton Hill, where Davey Soutar ended up. There’s St Leonard’s … and Great London Road. Hyde’s Club was just down there. Ooyah! There’s Stenhouse, where Willie and Dixie lived. You could see Saughton Jail quite clearly. And Warrender School, where McAnally blew his head off. He had a sense of the way the streets interconnected, and with them the lives of the people who lived and died there. Willie and Dixie had known Kirstie Kennedy, whose father was Lord Provost. McAnally had sought out a councillor as witness to his act of self-destruction. The city might cover a fair old area, its population might be half a million, but you couldn’t deny how it all twisted together, all the crisscrossed lines which gave the structure its solidity …

‘Now,’ the dentist was saying, ‘you might feel some discomfort at first …’

Rebus raced up and down the streets. Marchmont, where he lived; Tollcross, Tresa McAnally’s home; South Gyle, only just taking off when the photograph was taken. There was no sign of the newer building work around the town. He saw holes in the ground and areas of wasteland where now there were structures and roads. And Jesus Christ Almighty it was hurting!

‘Ah,’ Dr Keene said at last, ‘there we are.’ Rebus could feel something nasty trickling down his throat. The pressure beneath his nose was easing. Like bleeding a radiator, he thought. ‘Drill into the poison,’ the dentist was saying, almost to himself, ‘and you relieve the pressure.’

Yes, Rebus thought, that was absolutely right.

The dentist gave the rest of his mouth a once-over. The assistant had a card in her hand and was writing on it as Dr Keene recited a litany of decay.

‘I won’t do any of these fillings today,’ he said to Rebus’s relief.

Eventually he was allowed to rinse and spit, and the assistant removed the elasticated bib from around his neck. Rebus ran his tongue around his mouth. There was a gaping hole in the back of one of his front teeth.

‘We’ve got to let that drain, give it a few days. Once it’s drained, I can do the root canal. All right?’ And he smiled at Rebus. ‘Incidentally, when did you last have your teeth checked?’

‘Eleven, twelve years ago.’

The dentist shook his head.

‘I’ll make up your appointments,’ the assistant said, leaving the room. Dr Keene removed his latex gloves and went to wash his hands.

‘Now that we all wear gloves,’ he said, ‘I don’t really need to wash them. But I’ve done it for thirty years, hard to break the habit.’

‘You wear the gloves because of HIV?’

‘Yes. Well, goodbye then, Mr — ’

‘Inspector Rebus, actually.’

‘Oh?’

‘I wonder if I might have a word?’ Rebus knew he was mumbling — the anaesthetic had frozen his mouth. But Dr Keene had no trouble understanding him.

‘You mean officially?’

‘Sort of. I believe you know a man called Derwood Charters?’

Dr Keene snorted and started rearranging his instruments.

‘I’ll take that as a yes,’ Rebus said.

‘Very much to my cost. Like you, he walked into my surgery one day requiring treatment. Then I bumped into him socially. We met a few more times, and he put a proposition to me.’

‘A financial proposition?’

‘He needed investors for a start-up. The man had a proven track record, he’d helped finance the PanoTech start-up for one thing, and you’d hardly call that a failure. Mind, I didn’t just take his word for anything; I had my accountant look at the figures. The projections seemed sound, professionally done.’

‘What was the company?’

‘Derry was very persuasive, he always stipulated the downside of any project. Somehow, the more he talked them down, the more attractive he made them sound. He came across like he wasn’t trying to sell you anything. The scheme I invested in, the company was going to profit from the downturn in the economy. That was the downside: other people’s misery was going to make his investors money. He was offering retraining and counselling for employees who suddenly found themselves “reorganised” out of a job. He explained that once the company was up and running — it was to be called Albavise — he’d be able to draw on European Community grants, Scottish Office funding, all that. What he needed was start-up capital.’ Dr Keene paused. ‘Know what? I believed him then and I believe him now: if he’d used the money to start the company, it would have succeeded.’

‘But he didn’t set up a company, did he?’

Dr Keene sighed. ‘He used it to pay off debts, and to finance his lifestyle. He’d picked out ten investors, each handing over five thou. Fifty thousand pounds, Inspector, and he blew the lot inside three months.’

Yes, and then tried to do a runner. Only, one of his investors had an accountant who was sharper than most. Charters was arrested as he made to board the shuttle to London.

‘Once they started investigating his affairs — the Inland Revenue, Fraud Squad, what have you — they found a lot of discrepancies, none of which Derry was willing to discuss. He kept his peace all through the trial.’ He looked at Rebus. ‘Has something happened?’

Rebus shrugged. ‘Early days yet, sir.’ The stock response, but Dr Keene accepted it.

‘It wasn’t the cash that hurt, you know,’ he told Rebus. ‘It was that sense of betrayal.’

‘I can imagine.’

The Charters case-notes had made for fascinating reading. For example, Rebus now knew that Frank Lauderdale had been attached to the Fraud Squad at the time they’d been investigating Albavise and Derwood Charters’ other business interests. Thinking back on it, Rebus did recall a period when Lauderdale had been away from Great London Road. But Lauderdale was the least interesting part of it. For the man who had been head of the Fraud Squad back then, Chief Superintendent Allan Gunner, was now deputy chief constable of Lothian and Borders Police.

And that wasn’t all …

‘Dr Keene, do you know a man called Haldayne? Spelt with a y.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘He’s American, works at the consulate.’

Dr Keene was shaking his head. ‘No, I don’t know him. Is it important?’

‘He’s another of the investors ripped off over Albavise. I thought you might have met, that’s all.’

‘We might have met in court, had any witnesses been called. But Charters changed his mind at the last minute and pled guilty.’

‘Really? Any idea why?’

‘None. My solicitor was amazed. The case against him was by no means watertight and, as I say, he had a very good track record. It was possible he might have gone free, or at least got off with a heavy fine. But instead, he went to jail. I’ve often wondered why he did that.’

Rebus was wondering the same thing. ‘Maybe,’ he said, ‘to protect someone or something that could have come to light at the trial.’

‘But who or what?’

Rebus just smiled and winked. He collected his coat and put it on in the hallway. The assistant had already gone home. There was an appointment card on her desk. Dr Keene picked it up and handed it to Rebus.

‘See you in a few days.’

Rebus looked at the card. There was a long column of appointments listed on its back. Six of them. Dates and times.

‘Dr Keene,’ he said, ‘exactly how many fillings do I need?’

‘Fifteen,’ the dentist said matter-of-factly. Then he saw Rebus to the door.

26

That night, Rebus went to see Tresa McAnally.

The tenement door wasn’t locked, so he climbed the stairs to her flat. He could hear music inside, good-time music, and the sounds of hands clapping in time. Rebus pressed the bell and waited, then pressed it again. The music was turned down. A voice came from behind the door. ‘Who is it?’

‘Inspector Rebus.’

‘Wait a minute, will you?’ She was a long time opening the door; even then she kept the chain on. ‘What do you want?’

Behind her, the door to the living room was closed. There was a case of mixed spirits on the hall carpet. Tresa McAnally was dressed casually — baggy T-shirt, tight black slacks, looped gold earrings — and she was sweating from recent exertion.

‘Can I come in?’ Rebus asked.

‘No, you can’t. What is it?’

‘It’s about Wee Shug.’

‘He’s dead, end of story.’ She made to close the door. Rebus pushed his hand against it.

‘Where did the money come from, Tresa?’

‘What money?’

‘The money you spent on the flat.’

‘You’ve no right to — ’

‘Maybe not, but I’ll keep coming back till you tell me.’

‘Then you’ll be coming back till doomsday.’

Rebus smiled. ‘That may be closer than you think.’ He lifted his hand from the door, but she didn’t shut it.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Who’s in there with you?’

‘Nobody.’

‘Nobody?’

Not even Tresa McAnally was brass-necked enough to repeat the lie. She pushed the door closed.

Rebus stood for a moment, listening, then walked along to Maisie Finch’s flat. He rang her bell, but she couldn’t very well answer, not when she was busy hiding behind Tresa McAnally’s living-room door.

Next morning, Rebus called the US Consulate.

‘You’re not another recording, are you?’ Rebus asked.

‘No, I’m not.’

‘Good, can you put me through to Mr Haldayne, please?’

‘Your name?’

‘Detective Inspector John Rebus.’

‘Hold the line, Inspector.’

He didn’t have to hold long.

‘Inspector? What can I do for you?’ An American accent, smooth, urbane. Rebus wasn’t exactly sure what ‘Ivy League’ meant, but Haldayne’s voice brought to mind the image.

‘Well, sir, for one thing you can start paying your parking tickets.’

A confident chuckle. ‘Goodness, is that what this is all about? Well, certainly, if you insist. I wouldn’t want to make a diplomatic incident out of it.’

‘But you could, is that what you mean? The tickets aren’t the main reason I’m ringing. I’d like to talk to you about Derwood Charters.’

‘Jesus, what has he done this time?’ A pause. ‘Don’t tell me I’m getting back my money?’

‘Could we discuss it in person?’

‘Yeah, I guess. You want to come here?’ The US Consulate, where Haldayne would be at his most consular.

‘The North British,’ Rebus suggested, ‘for morning coffee.’

‘It’s not called the North British any more, is it?’

‘You’ve got a lot to learn about Scotland, Mr Haldayne. Ten-thirty?’

‘That’s fine, Inspector. I look forward to meeting you.’ Rebus’s next call was to St Leonard’s. He asked for Siobhan Clarke. ‘How’s life?’

‘Ms Templer had me in her office first thing, wanting to know if you’d been in touch. She was asking a lot of questions.’

‘Let her ask. As far as you know, I’m in Lanzarote.’

‘Right.’

‘Listen, Haldayne’s parking tickets, what were the exact locations?’

‘I think I jotted them down.’ He could hear her searching her notebook.

‘How goes the blaze inquiry?’

‘A non-starter. It’s down to an Act of God. They didn’t find a cigarette or a match in the bin.’

‘Of course not, Flower tidied up before he reported the fire.’

‘Here we are: Princes Street, James Craig Walk, and Royal Circus. Those are all I’ve got, and no dates. The last two were multiples.’

Rebus thanked her and hung up. He found his A-Z and looked up James Craig Walk. It was hard by New St Andrew’s House. So Haldayne did have dealings with the Scottish Office. Princes Street could just mean he was shopping. Rebus wasn’t sure what or who Royal Circus represented. He remembered the councillor’s files: SDA/ SE; A C Haldayne; Gyle Park West; Mensung.

He still didn’t know anything about Mensung. He was hoping Haldayne could help.

Rebus sat in the lounge of the Balmoral Forte Grand — formerly the North British — and told staff he was waiting for a guest but he’d order anyway: coffee for two — decaffeinated — and cakes or biscuits or something.

‘Fruit scones, sir?’

‘Fine, whatever.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

Rebus was glad he was wearing one of his better suits. They’d made a good job of the hotel. Last time he’d had morning coffee here, it had been with Gill Templer, way back when they’d been ‘an item’. The walls had had cracks in them, and the whole place had seemed faded and slightly seedy.

Rebus knew the American as soon as he walked in. He was tall and exceptionally well groomed and wearing a cream-coloured Burberry raincoat. Haldayne had fair hair, so fine and thin you could see pink scalp beneath it. He was around forty, and wore glasses with tortoiseshell circular frames. His face was thin, his forehead bulbous and shiny.

‘Inspector Rebus?’ He shook Rebus’s hand, and Rebus motioned for him to sit.

‘Cold enough for you over here?’ Rebus asked.

‘I was brought up in Illinois.’ Haldayne slipped his coat off. ‘We got winters you wouldn’t believe.’ He shivered at the memory and chuckled again; it was becoming an annoying habit.

Rebus had an annoying habit too: he kept poking the tip of his tongue into the hole in his tooth and trying to suck the poison out. He was getting to like that little bore-hole.

‘Do you know a Dr Keene?’ he asked the American.

Haldayne made a sceptical mouth. ‘Care to give me a clue?’

‘He’s a dentist, and another of Derry Charters’ victims.’

Haldayne sat back in his comfortable chair. ‘Took me for five biggies. That still hurts; I’m a diplomat, not a millionaire.’

‘What do you do at the consulate?’

‘I have an industry remit. In some countries that would be a two-way process, but there aren’t too many Scottish companies thinking of setting up plants in the US, so I tend to look after American companies who’re thinking of setting up here. It’s not as busy as it was.’ He looked left and right. ‘Waiting staff are slow.’

‘I’ve already ordered. I hope you don’t mind.’ Haldayne shrugged. ‘How did you come to know Derry Charters?’

‘I was introduced to him at a party. Can’t recall now who did the introducing …’

‘Can you remember whose party?’

‘Oh, it was some Scottish Office thing, that’s why I was there.’

‘And Mr Charters?’

‘Well, he was a businessman. How much do you know about him before his bust?’

‘Practically nothing,’ Rebus lied, wondering what tack Haldayne might take.

‘He ran a few companies, and ran them profitably. But he was always looking to expand. I think he just got bored, simple as that. He liked to set things up, get projects running, but after that he lost interest and started looking for something new. He was good at what he did, though; that’s why I wasn’t overcautious when he asked me to be a backer.’

‘Did you know him well?’

‘Not really. When he was talking deals he was fine, but he wasn’t a social animal. I got the feeling normal polite conversation bored the hell out of him. He was a genuine product of the eighties, one of Lady Thatcher’s bulls.’

The tray arrived, with cafetiere and a plate of fruit scones with butter, jam and clotted cream.

‘Hey, this looks great, thank you,’ Haldayne said to the waiter. He immediately took over, putting the cups out, serving the coffee. While he was pouring, Rebus asked a question.

‘Ever heard of something or someone called Mensung?’

‘Run it by me again.’

‘Mensung.’

Haldayne shook his head, and handed Rebus a cup and saucer. He hadn’t spilled a drop, hadn’t even paused while pouring.

‘If you help American companies, Mr Haldayne, does that mean you have dealings with Scottish Enterprise?’

‘All the time.’

‘And Locate in Scotland?’

‘I’ve had dealings with them all, Inspector. Thing is, you’re just beginning to establish a working relationship, then the government changes everything: changes the name, the rules, the players. SDA becomes Scottish Enterprise, HIDB becomes HIE, and I’ve got to start again from scratch, building up contacts, letting people know who I am.’

‘It’s a tough life.’

‘But somebody’s got to do it, right?’ Haldayne spread cream on to half a scone. ‘I love these pastries,’ he confided, before taking a huge bite.

‘You’ve been here a while?’ Rebus asked.

‘Nine years, on and off. They did send me back to the States for a couple of years in the middle, but I wangled my way back over again. I love Scotland — my ancestors came from here.’

‘I heard a rumour once,’ Rebus said, ‘about a kind of Scottish mafia at the top of some US businesses, persuading people to locate in Scotland.’

Haldayne wiped cream from his mouth with a napkin. ‘It happens,’ he said. ‘What can I say? It’s not illegal.’

‘What would be illegal, Mr Haldayne?’

‘Bribes, money changing hands.’

‘Companies can set up here very cheaply, can’t they?’

‘Some areas, some types of plant, sure. A lot of grant money swilling around, some from the European Community, some from British Government coffers.’

‘There was the DeLorean scandal,’ Rebus said.

‘But the guy did have a sensational car.’

‘And he took the British taxpayer for millions.’

‘You’d still have paid those taxes, Inspector. If DeLorean hadn’t taken them, some other guy would.’ Haldayne shrugged again. His expressions, whether vocal or physical, were always slightly exaggerated, slightly more than you’d get from a Scot.

‘So the Scottish mafia story is true?’

‘I’d guess so. I’m being as open with you as I can.’

‘I appreciate it, sir.’

‘Hey, you’re the one holding those parking tickets at my head.’ Another chuckle. ‘What kind of coffee is this?’

‘Decaf.’

‘It’s not bad actually, but I do miss that caffeine rush. Waiter!’ A teenager trotted over. ‘Can I have a double espresso? Thank you.’ Haldayne turned back to Rebus. ‘So what’s the story here, Inspector? We don’t seem to be talking about Derry Charters any more.’

‘Just part of an ongoing inquiry, sir. I’m not at liberty to — ’

‘Well, that’s hardly fair, is it? Hardly British?’

‘You’re not in Britain now, Mr Haldayne.’

‘But I’ve told you mine, now you should tell me yours.’

Rebus saw that Haldayne was having a good deal of fun at his expense. Suddenly he didn’t know how much of Haldayne’s story to believe. Lies usually came gift-wrapped in a thin tissue of truth. Rebus knew he would have to examine the wrappings later.

‘Come on, Inspector,’ Haldayne persisted. ‘You’re checking up on Derry, this much I know. But he’s still serving time, right? So what has he done — set up some paper company from his cell?’

‘Paper company?’

‘You know, one that exists only on paper.’ Haldayne came to an abrupt stop and reached into his pocket for a handkerchief.

He’s stalling, thought Rebus. Why is he stalling? The espresso arrived, and Haldayne took a couple of appreciative mouthfuls, regaining his composure.

‘I came here in good faith, Inspector,’ he said at last. ‘I didn’t need to speak to a man who’s not here in his official capacity.’ Haldayne saw the look on Rebus’s face, and smiled. ‘I wanted to check that you were who you said you were. We US diplomats can’t be too careful these days. Your chief inspector told me you’re on official leave.’

Rebus took a bite from his scone, saying nothing.

‘For a man on leave, Inspector, you sure as hell look busy to me.’ Haldayne finished his cup of sludge. ‘I’d like to say it’s been a pleasure, but in fact it has been deeply frustrating.’ He started to push his arms back into the sleeves of his coat. ‘I don’t expect to be troubled by you again, Inspector. I sent a cheque off today to cover those parking fines. As far as I’m concerned, there’s no other reason for you to contact me.’

‘Who do you know who lives in Royal Circus?’

Haldayne was disconcerted by the question. ‘In the New Town?’

‘That’s the only Royal Circus I know.’

Haldayne made show of thinking about it. ‘Not a soul,’ he said brightly. ‘My superior might move in those kinds of circles, but not me.’

‘What kinds of circles?’

But Haldayne wasn’t about to answer that. He got to his feet and made a little formal bow from the waist. ‘I hope you don’t mind picking up the tab, Inspector.’ Then he turned and walked away.

Rebus let him go. He had plenty to think about, and plenty of coffee still to drink.

27

Rebus had two options: he could go home and wait for the Farmer or Gill to catch him; or he could go to St Leonard’s and get it done with. He chose the latter route.

He’d been in the building less than three minutes before the Farmer spotted him.

‘My office — now.’

Rebus noticed that the Farmer’s computer was up and running. It had taken over his desk. The photo of his family had been moved to the top of the filing-cabinet.

‘Getting to grips with it all right, sir?’ Rebus asked. But the Farmer was not to be deflected.

‘What the hell are you playing at? I ordered you to take a holiday!’

‘And I’m enjoying every minute, sir.’

‘Making a nuisance of yourself at a foreign consulate, that’s your idea of fun?’

‘I couldn’t afford to go abroad.’

‘The way you’re going, maybe you can’t afford not to.’

‘It was just a bit of unfinished business, sir.’

‘What sort of unfinished business?’

‘It’s not really a police matter, sir.’

The Farmer glowered at him. ‘I hope to God that’s the truth, Inspector.’

‘Cross my heart and hope to die, sir.’

‘You’re one step from an official reprimand, two steps from suspension.’

And three steps from heaven, Rebus thought. He told the Farmer he understood.

In the main office, he checked for messages. There were half a dozen, stuck on to the screen of his new PanoTech computer. Around him he could hear the soft clack-clack of muffled keyboards. He stared at his own console as if it was an unfriendly visitor. His reflection stared back at him.

Three of the messages were from Rory McAllister at the Scottish Office. Rebus picked up the telephone.

‘McAllister speaking.’

‘Mr McAllister, it’s John Rebus.’

‘Inspector, thanks for getting back to me.’ McAllister sounded relieved, but also edgy, not like himself.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Can we meet?’

‘Sure, but give me some idea — ’

‘Calton Cemetery at one o’clock.’ The phone went dead.

During the day, Calton Cemetery was more or less deserted. In summer, you’d get visitors looking for David Hume’s grave. The more knowledgeable or curious might seek out the resting places of the publisher Constable and David Allan the painter. There was a statue of Abraham Lincoln, too, if it hadn’t been sledgehammered by vandals.

At one o’clock on a crisp winter’s day, nobody was interested in headstones. Such, at least, was Rebus’s first impression as he walked through the cemetery gate. But then he saw that a gentleman was perusing the monuments, using a black rolled umbrella as a walking-cane. What hair he had mixed black with silver, and was slicked back from the forehead. His face and ears were red, maybe just from the cold, and he wore a black woollen overcoat, belted at the waist.

He saw Rebus, and gestured for him to join him. Rebus climbed the stone steps towards him.

‘Haven’t been here in years,’ the man said. His voice had been Scots once, before the inflexions and elisions had been milked out of it. ‘I take it you’re Rebus?’

Rebus studied the man. ‘That’s right.’

‘McAllister’s not coming. I’m a colleague of his.’

Close up, the man’s face was pockmarked and he had one slightly lazy eye. With his free hand, he played with the cashmere scarf tucked inside the collar of his coat.

‘What’s your name?’ Rebus asked. The man seemed both surprised and amused by the question’s bluntness.

‘My name’s Hunter.’ Something about the way he said this, and his whole bearing, told Rebus he wasn’t so much McAllister’s colleague as his superior.

‘Well, Mr Hunter, what can I do for you?’

‘I’m interested in your line of inquiry, Inspector.’

‘And what line is that, sir?’

‘You were asking certain questions of McAllister.’ A bus roared past, and Hunter raised his voice. ‘The line of those questions intrigues me.’

‘Why?’

‘Why? Because the Scottish Office likes to take an interest.’

‘In what exactly?’

The bus gone, Hunter lowered his voice again. ‘I’ll be succinct. I’d prefer it, Inspector, if you would discontinue your present line of inquiry. I don’t believe it germane.’

‘You’d prefer it?’

‘There may be a conflict of interests.’ Hunter lifted the walnut handle of his umbrella until it rested under his chin. ‘Of course, I’m a civil servant and you are a policeman: it’s not for me to interfere with your business.’

‘Good of you, I’m sure.’

‘But we are both, are we not, servants of the State?’ Hunter swung the umbrella at some leaves on the ground. ‘All I can say to you at this point, Inspector, is that your inquiries may well interfere with longstanding investigations we are pursuing.’

‘I didn’t know investigation was part of the Scottish Office’s remit, Mr Hunter. Unless you’re talking about an internal inquiry?’

‘You are a clever man, Inspector, and I appeal to your intellect.’

‘To be honest, sir, you don’t appeal to me at all.’

Hunter’s face darkened slightly. ‘Let’s not cross swords on this.’ He swung at more leaves.

‘Cooperation?’

Hunter considered this. ‘Not yet. I’m afraid. The affair is confidential. But later, definitely. Full cooperation. What do you say?’ He held out his hand. ‘A gentleman’s agreement.’

Rebus, knowing himself no gentleman, took the hand, just to put Hunter’s mind at rest. The older man didn’t look relieved, just quietly pleased that negotiations had been bloodless and — in his eyes — successful. He turned to leave.

‘I’ll call you when I’ve something I can say,’ he told Rebus.

‘Mr Hunter? Why did you get McAllister to phone me? Why not just call yourself?’

Hunter smiled with half his mouth. ‘What’s life without a little intrigue, Inspector?’ He negotiated the steps carefully, with a slight limp. Too proud to carry a cane, he used a brolly instead. Rebus waited half a minute, then walked quickly to the gate and peered along the street to the right. Hunter was walking along Waterloo Place as if he owned it. Rebus kept well behind him as he followed.

It was a short walk, only as far as the Reichstag: St Andrew’s House. Which, Rebus recalled, was where the most senior Scottish Office bureaucrats did their business. He recalled, too, that it was built on the site of the old Calton Gaol. Rebus walked past the sooty building and crossed the road. He stood outside the old Royal High School, putative HQ for any Scottish Assembly that might come along. It was mothballed, and a lone protestor had taken up residence outside, his banners arguing for devolution and a Scottish Parliament.

Rebus stared at St Andrew’s House for a couple of minutes, then walked back along Waterloo Place to where he’d illegally parked his car. It had received a ticket, but he could square that later. Over the years, he’d collected more tickets than Haldayne, a wheen more. Do as I say, he thought, not as I do. There had been other ‘fringe benefits’ along the way, too: cafes and restaurants where he ate for free, bars where his money was no good, a baker who’d slip him a dozen rolls. He wouldn’t call himself corrupt, but there were some out there who’d say he’d been bribed, or greased for a future bribe. There were those who’d say he’d been bought.

Do as I say, not as I do. And with that he tore up the parking ticket.

Back at his flat, Rebus got out all the information he had on the Scottish Office. He didn’t find the name Hunter anywhere. The documents were shy about naming names where civil servants were involved, though happy to trumpet the names of the incumbent Secretary of State, Minister of State, and Parliamentary Under-Secretaries, all of whom were either MPs or held seats in the House of Lords. As McAllister had explained, these were the temporary boys, the figureheads. When it came to the permanent force — the senior civil servants — Rebus found only silence and anonymity: modesty, he wondered, or discretion? Or maybe something else entirely.

He called Mairie Henderson at her home.

‘Got a story for me?’ she asked. ‘I could do with one.’

‘What do you know about the Scottish Office?’

‘I know a bit.’

‘Senior management?’

‘There may have been changes since I last looked. Phone the paper, talk to — who’d be best? Home Affairs or Parliament? — yes, Roddy McGurk, talk to him, say I gave you his name.’

‘Thanks, Mairie.’

‘And I’m serious about the story. Inspector …’

Rebus called the newspaper office and asked for Roddy McGurk. He was put through immediately.

‘Mr McGurk, I’m a friend of Mairie Henderson’s. She said maybe you could help me clarify something.’

‘Fire away.’ The voice was West Highland.

‘It’s an identity, actually. A man called Hunter, Scottish Office, late-fifties, uses an umbrella when really he should have a stick …’

McGurk was laughing. ‘Let me stop you there. You’re describing Sir lain Hunter.’

‘And who’s he when he’s at home?’

McGurk laughed again. ‘He is the Scottish Office. He’s the Permanent Under-Secretary, usually known as — ’

‘The Permanent Secretary,’ Rebus said, feeling queasy in his gut.

‘Policy initiator for the whole country. You might call him “Mr Scotland”.’

‘Not a very public figure though?’

‘He doesn’t need to be. In the words of the old song, he’s got the power.’

Rebus thanked McGurk and put the receiver down. He was trembling slightly. Mr Scotland … he’s got the power. He wondered what he’d got himself into.

Then the telephone rang.

‘I forgot to say …’ Mairie Henderson began.

‘Yes?’

‘Remember you asked if there was any dirt on Councillor Gillespie?’

‘Go on.’

‘Well, there wasn’t in my day, but I got talking yesterday to someone at BBC Scotland. You know I’m doing some radio stuff down at Queen Street? Anyway, it’s not really Gillespie, it’s about his wife.’

‘What about her?’

‘Word is, she’s involved with someone else.’

‘Having an affair, you mean?’

‘Yes.’

Rebus remembered his visit to the councillor’s home. There had seemed little love lost, but at the time he’d blamed other things.

‘Who’s her partner in crime?’

‘That I don’t know.’

‘So how does your source at the Beeb know?’

‘He didn’t say, it’s just some rumour he picked up when last in the City Chambers. The way it was told to him, he thinks maybe it’s another councillor.’

‘Well, let me know if you hear anything more. Bye, Mairie.’

Rebus put the phone down and tried to put his thoughts into some semblance of order. He stared at the bags of shredded paper, but they didn’t help. He ended up repeating a question to himself.

What have I got myself into?

28

Chief Inspector Frank Lauderdale was in an open ward of the Royal Infirmary, but his bed was in a corner by a window, with a view over the Meadows. He’d drawn the curtain between his own bed and his neighbour’s, affording some privacy. There was a vase of flowers on his bedside cabinet. They looked ready to expire in the hospital’s infernal heat.

‘You can almost see my flat from here,’ Rebus said, looking out of the window.

‘That’s been a constant source of comfort to me,’ Lauderdale said. ‘It’s taken you long enough to visit.’

‘I don’t like hospitals, Frank.’

‘Neither do I. You think I’m in here for the good of my health?’

They shared a smile, and Rebus examined the patient. ‘You look like shite, Frank.’

Lauderdale’s face looked like an infant had tried shaving it with a safety razor. There were dozens of nicks and scars where the windscreen had cut him. His eyes were bruised and swollen, and there were black ugly stitches on his nose. With all the plaster and bandages he sported, he looked like the joke patient from a comedy sketch.

‘How are the legs?’ Rebus asked.

‘Itchy.’

‘That’s supposed to be a good sign.’

‘Oh, I’ll walk again … so they say.’ Lauderdale smiled nervously. ‘Maybe I’ll have a limp or two.’

‘Two would be better,’ said Rebus. ‘They’d balance you up.’

‘Want to sign my stookie?’

Rebus looked at the plastercasts on Launderdale’s legs. They’d been signed by several visitors. ‘Which one?’

‘Take your pick.’

Rebus took a ballpoint pen from his pocket. It wasn’t easy to write on the coarse surface, but he did his best.

‘What does it say?’ Lauderdale asked, craning his neck.

‘“Clunk-click every trip.”’

Lauderdale lay back again. ‘What’s happened about those two?’

He meant Willie and Dixie. ‘Search me,’ said Rebus. ‘I’m on holiday.’

‘So I’d heard.’

‘Oh?’

‘Your new boss told me. Frankly, I have my doubts: if I know you, while you’re still in this city, you’ll always be working. How is she shaping up?’

He meant Gill Templer. Rebus nodded. ‘She’s doing fine.’ He wasn’t sure this was what Frank Lauderdale wanted to hear. He pulled a chair over to the bed and sat down. ‘I’ve got a problem actually, Frank.’

‘Of course you have, that’s why you’re here.’

‘It’s not the Lord Provost’s daughter …’

‘You haven’t found her yet?’

‘I’m getting closer. She did know those two in the car.’

‘I’d not heard that.’

Rebus shifted in the chair. ‘I haven’t exactly gone public with it.’

Lauderdale shook his head. ‘Christ, John …’

‘Like I say, she’s not my immediate problem. My problem is a small-time loser called Wee Shug McAnally.’

‘The one who gave himself a sawn-off haircut?’

‘Yes.’ Rebus ran his tongue over the hole in his tooth. ‘See, he shared a cell in Saughton with a fraudster called Derwood Charters. Wee Shug was moved from another jail, and just happened to end up in that cell.’ Rebus was staring hard at Lauderdale. ‘It also just happened that none of the other cons knew what McAnally was in for. It was rape, by the way. Of a minor. Now, Frank, what does all that tell you?’ Lauderdale said nothing. ‘What it tells me,’ Rebus went on, ‘is that there was collusion at the top to stop the other cons getting to know.’

‘Give me some water, will you?’

Rebus poured some for Lauderdale. ‘Why would anyone do that?’ Lauderdale asked, taking the beaker.

‘There could be a multitude of reasons. Let me try one on you: say McAnally was in there as a plant.’

Lauderdale took his time drinking the water. ‘A plant?’ he said at last.

‘Either to spy on Charters, or else to gain his trust. Now,’ Rebus pulled his chair closer, not that Lauderdale was going anywhere, ‘the reason Charters is inside is for fraud, and he was put inside by the Fraud Unit. Leading the investigation was Chief Superintendent Allan Gunner, now deputy chief constable. It so happens the DCC was the one who fixed me up with this lovely holiday. He threatened the Farmer with an HMIC inspection if I wasn’t reined in.’

‘He should have known better.’ Lauderdale paused. ‘But HMIC is an independent body, how could the DCC have control over their decisions?’

It was, Rebus conceded, a good point. The people who ran HMIC were civil servants rather than police officers.

‘Well, anyway,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘it was Gunner who applied the pressure, I’m sure it was.’

‘Other officers might have taken the hint, John.’

‘Not me. Now, on that initial investigation of Charters were at least two officers of my acquaintance: yourself and Alister Flower. And Flower’s been warning me off, too. Which makes for a nice little circle, don’t you think, Frank?’

‘Why come to me?’

‘Maybe because you’re the only person I can try. Maybe because, despite myself, I almost trust you. I mean, you’re a schemer, a chancer, and you’d like the Farmer’s office. But at heart you’re a copper.’ Rebus paused. ‘Same as me. So come on, Frank, tell me about McAnally.’

‘I can’t.’ Lauderdale saw the look on Rebus’s face. ‘I can’t, because there’s nothing to tell. You’re right, I did work on the Albavise inquiry, but that’s as far as it goes. I know this, though: if you’re crossing not only Flower but the likes of the DCC and Big Jim Flett, then you’d better watch out.’

‘I think it goes further than that even,’ Rebus confided. ‘The Scottish Office, maybe even MPs or ministers.’

‘Christ, John,’ Lauderdale whispered.

Rebus stood up. ‘So maybe as you’re packing your bags to go home, they’ll be wheeling me in to take your place.’

‘Don’t joke about it.’

‘Who said I was joking?’

‘And don’t tell me any more. The less I know the better.’

‘For you or for me?’

Lauderdale sat up as best he could. ‘Let it go,’ he advised. ‘For once in your dunder-headed life, just walk away.’

Rebus put the chair back where he’d found it. ‘I can’t do that, Frank.’ He pushed his tongue into the hole again. The poison hadn’t all drained yet.

‘Take care of yourself,’ he told Lauderdale.

‘That should probably be my line.’

Rebus was halfway down the ward when he heard Lauderdale calling for him. He walked back to the bed. Lauderdale had propped himself up and was staring out of the window.

‘Flower,’ he said, not turning to look at Rebus.

‘What about him, Frank?’

‘McAnally was Flower’s eyes and ears.’

‘His snitch?’

Lauderdale nodded, eyes still on the window.

‘I appreciate this,’ said Rebus, turning away again.

‘I hope you do, John,’ Frank Lauderdale said quietly.

There was an envelope lying on the hall carpet. The post had already been; this had been delivered by hand: no stamp, just his name in blue ink. There was an embossed official crest on the sealed flap — the lion and the unicorn holding a shield between them. Rebus knew it was the Scottish Office crest. He flexed the envelope in his hands. It was thin and light, yet fairly solid. Leaving it on the arm of the chair, he went to the kitchen and added tap-water to a glass of whisky. He found a knife in the drawer, and took both glass and knife back through to the chair. He took a mouthful of whisky before slitting open the envelope.

It was a white card, an invitation, elaborate black embossed script with a gold border.

Sir lain Hunter

requests the pleasure of your company

Saturday 4 March

Ruthie Estate Twelve Noon Perthshire

Rebus’s name had been added in blue ink at the top of the card. There was no RSVP, just an address, and no telephone number. Rebus turned the card over and saw that it bore a printed map showing the location of the estate, about halfway between Perth and Auchterarder. Saturday was only two days off.

Rebus carried the invitation to his mantelpiece and leaned it against the otherwise bare wall. The only estate he’d ever been to before was the housing kind. He didn’t suppose Ruthie Estate would be very like those at all.

Rebus was still wondering if he’d go or not when he set out for his evening session at the Ox.

Dr Klasser wasn’t there. He’d telephoned to say he’d be very late, if he made it at all. The barman placed Rebus’s pint in front of him, just as Salty Dougary walked in.

‘It’s bitter out there,’ Dougary said.

‘But it’s called eighty-shilling in here. Go on, Jon, pour the man his poison.’

Dougary eased himself on to the barstool next to Rebus. ‘I’ve got something for you.’

‘What?’

‘Remember you asked me about Mensung?’

Yes, Rebus remembered. He’d asked Rory McAllister too, only McAllister had been warned off; Rebus doubted he’d ever hear from him again.

‘What about it?’

‘I’ve remembered what it was,’ Dougary said matter-of-factly. His drink had appeared, and he ordered some crisps.

‘So what is it?’ Rebus asked.

‘Salt and vinegar, Jon,’ Dougary told the barman. The volume on the TV was being turned up for some sports report. Dougary turned to Rebus. ‘It was a company.’ He took a mouthful of beer. ‘And a packet of ready salted,’ he told the barman.

‘Did you say a company?’

‘Eh?’ Dougary’s attention was already turning towards the TV. Rebus hauled him off the stool and out of the door, into the chill, dark street. Traffic rumbled past on Castle Street.

‘It’s freezing out here!’ Dougary protested.

‘Just tell me.’ Dougary looked longingly towards the pub door. ‘Tell me here,’ Rebus persisted.

‘Remember when I worked for that semiconductor company?’

‘It was called Mensung?’

‘It wasn’t called any such thing. But it had this policy of trying to retrain workers it turfed out.’

‘So?’

‘So I was a turfee, and there was this agency, outplacement sort of thing. The agency ran seminars, or was supposed to. It was supposed to have all these fancy retraining schemes and programmes, half of which never materialised. That bunch of cowboys was called Mensung.’

‘Is it still around?’

Dougary shrugged. ‘I’ve been laid off twice since, and never come across it again.’

‘Where was it based?’

‘By the Playhouse, top of Leith Walk.’

‘Do you still have any information on it, anything in writing?’

Dougary stared at him. ‘I’d have to check with my secretary.’ The irony was so heavy, you could hear it fall.

Rebus smiled. ‘Stupid question, Donny. Sorry.’

‘Can I go back in now?’

‘Sure.’

‘Is anything wrong?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘You called me Donny instead of Salty.’

‘It’s your name, isn’t it?’

‘I suppose it is,’ said Dougary, pushing open the door.

29

One of the reasons Rebus drank was to put him to sleep.

He had trouble sleeping when sober. He’d stare into the darkness, willing it to form shapes so that he might better understand it. He’d try to make sense of life — his early disastrous Army years; his failed marriage; his failings as father, friend, lover — and end up in tears. And if he did eventually stumble into sober sleep, there would be troubled dreams, dreams about ageing and dying, decay and blight. The dark took on shapes in his dreams, but he daren’t look at them. He’d run blindly instead, sometimes bumping into them, feeling the darkness mould itself around him.

Drunk, his sleep was dreamless, or seemed that way on waking. He might be drenched in sweat, but he wouldn’t be shaking. So he always tried to have a few drinks last thing at night, usually in his chair — and since he was already comfortable, what was the point of getting up and going through to the bedroom?

He was in the chair, dead to the world, when the buzzer sounded. He sat up and switched on the lamp, then blinked his eyes open to check his watch. It was one-thirty. He staggered into the hall like he was learning to walk, and unhooked the intercom.

‘Hello?’

‘It’s Patience.’

‘Patience?’ Without thinking, he buzzed her up, then went back into the living room to put on his trousers. When he got back to the door, she had almost reached his landing. She walked slowly, with purpose. Her head was bowed, eyes on the steps, not looking at him. Her hair was unbrushed.

‘What’s happened?’

She stood directly in front of him, and he could see how angry she was. She was so angry, she was preternaturally calm.

‘I was lying in bed,’ she said quietly, ‘and I don’t know what happened … I suddenly saw it.’

‘What?’

‘You know Lucky’s dead?’

‘Yes, I’m sorry.’

She nodded to herself. ‘Well, thanks for being there for me, I appreciate that. I was thinking, that’s pretty cold-hearted, even for him. Sammy told me she’d told you. I wondered why you hadn’t been in touch, and then I remembered. Stupid of me to forget. You were there on Sunday. You were sitting right next to the conservatory door.’ Her voice grew even quieter. ‘You locked Lucky out.’

‘Patience, I — ’

‘Didn’t you?’

‘Look, it’s late, why don’t — ’

‘Didn’t you?’

‘Christ, I don’t know … all right, yes, if it makes you feel any better.’ He rubbed a hand over his face. ‘Yes, the racket he was making was driving me mental, so I locked the flap and then forgot. I’m sorry.’

She had opened the shoulder bag and was lifting out a smaller plastic bag. ‘This is for you.’ And as he put out a hand to take the bag, she slapped him hard on the left cheek. Then she turned and started downstairs.

‘Patience!’

She didn’t even pause. She just kept on going. He held up the bag, then opened it and looked inside.

It was just some bits and pieces, that was all.

Bits and pieces of Lucky the cat.

In the morning, he took the bag out to the back garden.

The garden was actually a shared drying-green, with a flower border tended by Mrs Cochrane on the floor below Rebus. Just inside the back door of the tenement was a padlocked walk-in cupboard. It was communal storage space, only Rebus didn’t have anything he wanted communally stored. But he unlocked the door and lifted out the spade which had belonged to dear departed Mr Cochrane.

He sat the plastic bag down next to the flower border, looked around and up at the windows to see nobody was watching, then raised the shovel.

When it hit soil, he felt the collision all the way from his wrists to his spine. He tried again, and chipped away a sliver of frozen earth. He stooped to pick up his prize. It was like toffee, frozen toffee.

‘Jesus,’ he said, trying again. He could see his breath in the air. In the tenement across the back, someone making breakfast had come to their kitchen window. It wasn’t daylight yet, but Rebus knew they could see him clearly enough.

It was all the exposure he needed to convince him he should give up.

Instead, he drove to the Cowgate, parked the car, and carried the bag with him into the City Mortuary.

‘Inspector,’ one of the staff said. ‘What can we do for you today?’

Rebus handed over the bag, said thank you, and left.

He’d arranged to meet Holmes and Clarke in a trendy cafe near the university, but the place hadn’t opened for the day, so they walked along to Nicolson Street and found a clean, well-lit coffee shop.

He asked them how things were at St Leonard’s. They reckoned they were still under close scrutiny, but they could cope.

‘Good,’ he said, ‘because I’ve got something else I want you to do for me. I want to know about a company. It probably no longer exists, but it was around in ’86-‘87.’

‘A limited company?’

‘No idea.’

‘Directors?’

Rebus just shrugged. ‘About all I can tell you is that it was called Mensung.’

Clarke and Holmes looked at one another. ‘The councillor’s file?’ they said as one.

‘It was a retraining company, not a very good one apparently. It had premises at the top of Leith Walk, next to the Playhouse. I want you to check Companies House, any registers you can find, any lists of retraining companies in Scotland.’ He nodded to the waitress that they were ready to order. ‘Now don’t stint yourselves,’ he told them. ‘Believe me, you’re going to earn this meal.’

He checked Leith Walk himself.

Next to the Playhouse was a pub, and then a newsagent’s, but between them was a door, not quite shut. There were a couple of business plaques on the wall outside, and spaces where other plaques had been removed. Rebus pushed open the door, noting that it was none too steady on its hinges, and entered an unlit hallway smelling worse than many a bar’s convenience. The stone steps up were deeply worn, the walls decorated with graffiti.

On the first floor, he was met by two solid doors, one with a card pinned to it saying Combined Knitwear, the other with a much older-looking nameplate: J Joseph Simpson Associates. Rebus climbed to the second floor, but the doors here were anonymous and heavily padlocked. He went back down to the first floor and knocked on the door of Simpson Associates, then pushed the door open.

He was in a hallway, much like his own flat’s. Rooms led off, and there was a Reception sign pointing into one of them. The door was already open, so Rebus walked in. Seated behind desk and typewriter, an elderly man was on the telephone. Rebus was not totally surprised to see a male secretary, but he’d never come across such a superannuated one. Paperwork slewed across desk, chairs, and the carpet.

The man looked startled by Rebus’s entry, and slammed the phone down.

‘Sorry to interrupt,’ Rebus said.

‘Quite all right, quite all right.’ The man made show of gathering up some of the sheets of paper. ‘Now, what can I do for you, sir?’

The man reminded Rebus of Charles Laughton. He was rotund, with several chins, and had puffy, worried eyes with blotched shiny skin. He wore a suit which had been in fashion forty years before, including waistcoat and watch-chain. It struck Rebus for a moment that he would pass for Sir Iain Hunter’s bloated and seedy elder brother.

Rebus showed his ID. ‘Inspector Rebus, sir. I’m interested in a company that used to have its offices here.’

‘Here?’

‘In this building. About eight years ago, were you here then?’

‘Most certainly.’

‘The company was called Mensung.’

‘Curious name.’ The man repeated it silently a few times. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I can’t say I’ve heard of it.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Completely sure.’

‘Maybe if I could have a word with your employer?’

The man smiled. ‘I am my employer. Joe Simpson at your service.’

‘I’m sorry, Mr Simpson.’

‘You thought I was the secretary?’ Simpson looked amused. ‘Well, I suppose I am at that. My last secretary left after only two days. Hopeless, these girls the agency sends. It’s all hours with them, don’t ever try to get them to stay a minute later than five o’clock.’ He shook his head.

‘You don’t know who your secretary was eight years ago, Mr Simpson?’

Joe Simpson wagged a finger. ‘You think her memory might be better than my own, but you’d be wrong. Besides, I’ve no idea. There have been so many women at this desk.’ He shook his head again.

‘So, Mr Simpson, eight years ago, what companies were there in this building?’

‘Well, there was mine, of course, and then there was Capital Yarns.’

‘Now Combined Knitwear?’

‘The woman who ran Capital Yarns left in 1989. The place was empty the best part of a year, then a computer showroom opened — that lasted all of three months. The place was empty again until Mrs Burnett arrived. She’s Combined Knitwear.’

‘What about upstairs?’

‘Oh, years back those were offices. Now they’re just stockrooms, have been for a decade or more.’

Rebus was at a dead end, as surely as if he’d stayed on the floor above. He tried Simpson with the name Mensung again, spelt it for him, wrote it down, and all the old man did was twitch his head and say definitely and positively ‘no’. So Rebus thanked him and went back out on to the landing, resting against the banister. These small tenement businesses, there were a lot of them in Edinburgh. Small, shifting and anonymous, he didn’t see how they ever made money. It struck him that he didn’t even know what J Joseph Simpson Associates did. But he was willing to bet there were no associates, perhaps never had been.

He was about to leave when the door of Combined Knitwear opened and two women stepped out. They glanced towards him before continuing their conversation. One of the women wore a coat and carried two bulging plastic bags, which didn’t seem heavy. Wool, Rebus surmised. The other woman wore a knitted two-piece, red and black check, and a string of pearls. A pair of glasses hung by a string around her neck. She was petite, trim, probably Rebus’s age.

‘Well, thanks again,’ she said to the departing customer. Then to Rebus: ‘Can I help?’

‘Mrs Burnett?’

‘Yes.’ She sounded uneasy.

‘Inspector Rebus.’ Again he showed his ID.

‘Is it a break-in? Those stockrooms could have steel doors, they’d still find a way in.’

‘No, it’s not a break-in.’

‘Oh.’ She looked at him. ‘Look, I’m about to put the kettle on, do you fancy a cup?’

Rebus accepted her offer with pleasure.

Combined Knitwear’s premises were laid out like Joe Simpson’s: four rooms leading off a narrow hallway. One room served as an office. Mrs Burnett was in there at the sink, filling a kettle. Rebus looked into the other rooms. Wool. Lots and lots of wool. Deep shelves had been installed to display the stuff. There were boxes of knitting patterns, a Perspex case filled with pairs of needles. The walls and doors were decorated with blown-up photos from the fronts of various knitting patterns. Smiling, untroubled men. Women who looked like models from fifteen or twenty years ago. From a series of dowel-rods on one wall hung skeins of thick white wool. Rebus liked the smell of the place. It reminded him of his mother, and all his aunties and their friends. His mother used to tell him off for using her knitting needles as drumsticks.

He turned and saw that Mrs Burnett was standing in the doorway.

‘You looked very peaceful there for a minute,’ she said.

‘I felt it.’

‘Tea’s about ready.’

‘Do you happen to know what Mr Simpson next door does?’

She laughed lightly. ‘I’ve been wondering that for years.’

‘Years?’

‘Did he tell you I was a newcomer? He doesn’t remember me, but I used to work here when it was Capital Yarns. It wasn’t my business, I was staff. But when I decided to set up for myself, and saw that this place was available — well, I couldn’t help myself.’ She sighed. ‘Sentiment, Inspector. Nostalgia — never be swayed by it. Not too many customers are willing to make the trek from Princes Street. I’d be better off somewhere more central.’

Rebus recalled the story of how IBM had come to set up in Greenock: nostalgia again, but on a grand scale.

He followed Mrs Burnett through to the office. ‘So were you working here eight years ago? Around 1986 or ’87?’

She poured water into two mugs. ‘Oh yes.’

‘Was there an outfit here at that time called Mensung?’

‘Mensonge?’

He spelt it for her.

‘No,’ she said, ‘by that time there was just Mr Simpson and Capital Yarns. You’re sure it was this address?’ Rebus nodded, watching her dip the tea-bags. ‘Milk and sugar?’

‘Just milk, please.’ She handed him the cup. ‘Thanks. Why did you use that pronunciation just now?’

‘Mensonge?’

‘Yes. It sounds French.’

‘It is French. It means lie.’

‘What?’

‘As in falsehood, fib, untruth. Is there something wrong with the tea, Inspector?’

‘No, nothing at all, Mrs Burnett. The tea’s fine. Just fine.’

To make absolutely sure, Rebus asked in the newsagent’s. The owner, who had run the place eighteen years, shook his head. Then Rebus had a word with the letting agency, who confirmed that there was no record of any company called Mensung ever renting office-space at the address.

‘Can you tell me who owns the property?’ Rebus asked. ‘Just out of interest.’

The woman wasn’t sure she could. Rebus stressed again that his inquiries were part of a police investigation, and she gave in.

‘The owner’s name,’ she said, ‘is a Mr J Simpson. As an individual, Mr Simpson rents space to Simpson Associates, Combined Knitwear, and a Mr Albert Costello.’

‘Costello?’

‘The newsagent next door,’ the letting agent said.

‘Nothing so far,’ Brian Holmes said over a lunchtime drink. ‘No record the company ever existed.’

Rebus chewed on his last piece of bridie. ‘I’m beginning to think it didn’t. Where’s Siobhan, by the way?’

‘At the gym.’

‘What’s a gym?’

Brian Holmes smiled at that. He’d put on weight this past year or so, and now sported a dough-ring stomach and the beginnings of beer jowls. Perks of the job, some people said.

‘I thought you worked out some lunchtimes?’ he said.

‘Haven’t done it for ages.’

But Rebus went swimming that afternoon, managing twenty thoughtful lengths, after which he had to sit in his cubicle for a while. That was the problem with exercise: it wasn’t any fun. None of the fit and active people he saw around him seemed any happier than anyone else. No point exercising to elongate your life, when you weren’t getting any more out of life than any other poor sod. He made up for the swimming by arriving early at the Ox, waiting to have a word with Salty Dougary, but Dougary didn’t come, and Rebus decided to break the rules.

He’d visit Dougary at his home.

Dougary was divorced and rented the top floor of a sizeable house not a conversion-kick away from Murrayfield Stadium. He couldn’t have looked more surprised to see Rebus if he’d found him servicing his ex-wife on the doorstep.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘I need a word, Salty.’

‘I didn’t feel like a drink tonight. Our boss is driving us like slaves, a big order with the deadline approaching, and Mathieson screaming down the telephone.’

‘Mathieson?’

‘Head honcho at PanoTech. You should see the way our boss — ’

‘Salty? Sorry to bring it up, but it’s freezing out here.’

Dougary stepped aside to let Rebus in. ‘I’ll warn you,’ he said, ‘the place is a midden.’

Certainly, Rebus thought, it was no advert for the bachelor life.

‘Have you run out of binbags or something?’

‘I never seem to get time to clean up. Want a beer?’

‘Thanks.’ Rebus lifted pizza boxes, crisp bags and a couple of empty cans off the sofa and sat down. Salty came back with a couple of cans and handed one over.

‘So what’s the emergency?’

Rebus sipped froth from the top of the can. ‘You said Mensung was at the top of Leith Walk.’ Dougary nodded. ‘Next to a newsagent’s?’ Another nod. ‘Well, I took a look this morning, and nobody’s heard of them.’

‘So?’

‘So, are you sure that’s where they were?’

‘That was the address on their letter-heading.’

‘You’re sure you wouldn’t have any of their letters lying around?’ Rebus scanned the room. His meaning was clear: you seem to hang on to everything else.

‘Everything got chucked when Fiona and me split up. I mean everything. Letters, photos, I even lost my birth certificate. See, John, I never actually went to see Mensung at that address. The courses I did, they were held at a place on Corstorphine Road.’

‘Do you remember the number?’

Dougary nodded. ‘One-six-five Corstorphine Road. See, it’s the date Fiona and me got married, sixteen-five, that’s how I remember.’ His face turned wistful. ‘Two chips soldered together on the motherboard of life.’

Rebus tried to remember when he and Rhona had married. He thought it was probably June or July, but that was as much as he could recall.

First thing next morning, he drove along Corstorphine Road looking for number 165. Rebus didn’t exactly know what a paper-chase was, but this was beginning to feel like one. The American, Haldayne, had mentioned paper companies, and Rebus felt he was chasing one now, something no more substantial than the sum of its letter-heading. His visit to Corstorphine Road seemed to confirm it.

The present occupants of the office suite told him that back in ‘86 and ’87 the premises had been under a short let, sometimes for only days at a time. But there were no records of the actual occupants at that time. The suites had changed ownership several times since.

‘Thanks for your help,’ Rebus said.

Dead end, he thought. Dead company. He’d have to get Councillor Gillespie to talk to him, there was no other course left open. It was either that, or drop it altogether. That, after all, was what everyone wanted, but then he’d never been a crowd pleaser. He’d never played to the gallery.

He’d talk to Councillor Tom Gillespie. But after the weekend. And meantime, he had some fast shopping to do. New clothes. For some reason, he wanted new clothes to wear to Sir Iain’s.