Let It Bleed

30

Two low-built stone pillars marked the start of the long, snaking driveway. Rebus turned off the main road on to the gravel track and stopped the car. There were no signs, nothing at all to tell him this was the right turning. He looked at the map on the back of his invitation and decided it was. The very anonymity of the track seemed to fit with Sir lain Hunter. Either side of Rebus were open fields, but these soon gave way to dense woodland. Dry-stane dykes overgrown with moss separated the driveway from the trees.

Finally, after half a mile, he emerged from the shade into a bright expanse of tended lawn with greenhouses and a walled vegetable garden off. And directly in front of him stood a grey stone house in the Scots baronial style, boasting two turrets — probably ornamental — which started at the level of the first floor and tapered to slate-covered points above the roof-line. There were three cars — a Rover 800, Jaguar, and Maserati — parked on the clean pink gravel. Rebus stopped beside them and got out, trying not to be impressed. In the distance, a stream bisected the trim lawn, with a narrow humpbacked bridge across it. It reminded him of nothing so much as one of the fairways at St Andrews.

‘It’s a lovely view, isn’t it?’ The voice was Sir Iain’s. He was walking towards Rebus, leaning lightly on a carved walking-stick. At home, it would appear the brolly wasn’t necessary.

‘Just thinking I should have brought my three iron.’

‘Ah, you play golf?’

‘Only with a three iron.’

Hunter laughed and placed a hand on Rebus’s shoulder. ‘Find the place all right?’

‘No trouble.’

‘Good.’ Hunter was steering Rebus towards the house. ‘I thought we’d have a drink first, then do a spot of shooting and just have a light lunch.’

‘Shooting?’

‘I take it you’ve handled a gun, Inspector?’

‘I’ve handled a lot of things.’

‘I did wonder if we might try for pheasant or winter hare, but decided on clay pigeon.’

‘Well, it tastes nicer, doesn’t it?’

Sir Iain Hunter shook his head, amused. ‘There’s no telling what you’ll say next, Inspector.’

They entered a capacious hall with white marble floor and paintings on the walls: modern art, which surprised Rebus. A lot of the stuff looked ill at ease in a setting of wood panelling and fluted columns. A staircase with a wrought-iron balustrade climbed up the middle of the hall and peeled off to left and right.

‘In here,’ Hunter said. ‘Let me take your coat.’

Rebus slipped off his new raincoat and shrugged himself back into his sports jacket. He patted his tie flat and walked into the morning room.

A servant was dispensing drinks from a series of decanters on a trolley. So, Rebus thought, I was important enough to be met by the boss rather than the flunky. He stood there, not really looking at anyone, biding his time until Sir lain came back into the room.

‘Hello, John,’ someone said, walking towards him, hand held out. The man held a heavy crystal tumbler in his other hand, and looked slightly embarrassed. It wasn’t until Rebus had taken the man’s hand that he recognised him.

It was Allan Gunner, the deputy chief constable.

‘Do you know everyone?’ Gunner said, leading Rebus to the drinks trolley. Rebus’s first thought, after he’d recovered from the surprise, was: at least Gunner had the grace to look embarrassed. His second thought was: I’ve walked into this, fair and square.

The servant was waiting for Rebus’s order. He was a little stooped from a lifetime’s obsequiousness, and had a trying-to-please smile on his thin lips. He wore a tight little jacket of blue nylon, all its buttons done up. It probably helped with the stoop.

‘I’ll take a malt,’ Rebus said.

‘West Highland or Strathspey, sir?’

‘Strathspey, and no water.’

Another guest laughed. ‘Sir lain won’t allow water of any form near his whiskies.’ He held his cigar and glass in one hand so he could extend the other towards Rebus.

‘Colin Macrae,’ he said.

‘Sir Colin,’ Gunner added, ‘is Scottish Office Minister for Agriculture and the Environment.’

‘John Rebus,’ Rebus told the man.

Which left only two guests, both male, both involved in a muted discussion by the french windows. But Gunner was applying discreet pressure to Rebus’s arm, manoeuvring him away from the drinks trolley, where Sir Colin was ordering a top-up. They ended up beside a massive stone fireplace.

Gunner spoke in a fierce whisper. ‘I don’t know what you’re doing here — ’

‘Me neither.’

‘But while we’re in company, we’d better show a united front, especially in front of these characters.’

‘Agreed.’

‘So first-name terms, no formalities.’

‘Fair enough, sir.’

‘The name’s Allan.’

‘Allan.’

‘Ah,’ Hunter said, entering the room and pointing at them with his stick, ‘the same old story, everyone’s got a drink but the host.’

The servant poured without being asked. A telephone sounded in the hall, and he went to answer it, head bowed as he left the room.

‘Cheers,’ said Sir Iain. He motioned for Rebus to join him. ‘Met everyone?’

The couple from the window were coming back to replenish their glasses. Rebus nodded towards them.

‘Robbie,’ Sir Iain said, ‘come and meet Detective Inspector John Rebus. John, this is Robbie Mathieson.’

Mathieson shook Rebus’s hand. He was tall, well built, and had thick black hair and a black beard. The glasses he wore sported blue tints.

‘Pleased to meet you.’ His accent was slightly American.

‘PanoTech?’ Rebus guessed.

Mathieson nodded, a bit put out by the recognition, and Sir Iain looked interested that Rebus should know Mathieson. Sir Iain turned to Allan Gunner.

‘Chief Constable, is it a wonder the crime rate is falling and the detection rate rising when you can boast men of this calibre?’ He looked back to Rebus. ‘It’s almost uncanny.’

A game was being played, and Rebus didn’t know what it was. But he knew that his knowing who Mathieson was was part of it.

Gunner was correcting Sir Iain. ‘It’s Deputy Chief Constable.’

‘A slip of the tongue,’ Hunter said, with a wink to the general assembly. ‘Perhaps I was merely looking into the future. That’s what we civil servants are good at, you know. Dugald, your glass needs a top-up.’

Dugald held out his hand for a refill. Nobody had introduced him because nobody needed to. He was quiet, thoughtful, or maybe he just didn’t waste words. Hardly surprising, when everything he said might be taken down and passed to the media, who might use it in evidence against him. He couldn’t afford to trust those he did not know.

Certainly, he didn’t know Rebus, but Rebus knew him. He was Dugald Niven, the Right Honourable Dugald Niven.

He was Secretary of State for Scotland.

‘Let’s take our drinks through to the gun room,’ Sir Iain said, ‘and get everyone kitted out.’

Rebus poured and drank another half glass before following everyone out of the room.

It was barely above zero outside — ‘bracing’ and ‘fresh’ according to Sir Iain — and they were going to have a picnic. The provisions would be waiting for them at the clay-pigeon site. To get to the site itself necessitated a walk through the woods. In the gun room, they’d been fitted with green sportsmen’s jackets, sleeveless and thickly padded with cartridge-belt attached. They were handed a shotgun each, broken open for safety’s sake.

Rebus stayed to the rear of the party, and Gunner slowed down to join him.

‘So what are you doing here?’ Gunner asked.

‘I thought you’d know.’

‘Me?’

‘You’ve had me taken off an investigation.’

‘I’ve done no such thing.’

‘OK then, you requested I be taken off.’

Gunner tucked his shotgun more firmly under his arm. ‘What’s that got to do with you being here?’

‘I wish I knew. If you’re asking me to make an inspired guess …?’

‘Go on.’

‘Well, I’ve been brought here so you can work on me.’

‘What?’

‘You’re going to warn me off again, and I’ll be so impressed by the surroundings and the company, I’ll fall to my knees and plead forgiveness.’

Gunner gave him a blazing look. ‘That’s ridiculous.’

‘In that case, what are you doing here?’

‘I’m in the dark. First time I’ve been invited. Maybe Sir Iain wants to get to know me. He’s a canny diplomat, as well as being a manipulator.’ Gunner paused. ‘The chief constable will be retiring soon.’

‘Bit young for that, isn’t he?’

‘His wife’s ill, she needs looking after.’

‘So you’ll be promoted?’

‘I assume so.’

‘Always supposing you’re given a clean bill of health.’

‘What?’

‘By HMIC, for example. That kind of threat works both ways, Allan.’

Gunner narrowed his eyes. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Shug McAnally kills himself. I try to find out why. Turns out he’s recently been sharing a cell with a man called Charters. This despite the fact McAnally’s in for a sex attack. Only, none of the other inmates knows that.’

‘I still don’t see what you’re getting at.’

‘Yes you do. McAnally was Alister Flower’s grass. Flower worked under you on the case against Charters. McAnally was put in Charters’ cell to see what he could glean. Now, Flower hasn’t got the weight to set up something like that; it’d need someone more senior to have a word with Big Jim Flett — someone like yourself, sir.’ Gunner kept his eyes on the ground and said nothing. ‘And now,’ Rebus went on, ‘I’ve got the likes of Hunter warning me off, too.’

Gunner looked up at the knot of men ahead. They were picking their way over fallen branches and through stunted undergrowth between mature trees.

‘I want us to talk,’ he said.

‘Fine.’

‘But not here.’

Sir Iain had stopped and was gesturing. ‘Come on, slowcoaches! I’ve got one good leg and I’m still beating you.’ He waited for them to join him.

‘How much land have you got here, Sir lain?’ Gunner asked, suddenly the well-mannered guest.

‘A hundred and seventy acres, but don’t worry, we’re not walking all of it.’

Soon they broke out of the woods into a rutted field of stubble. By the side of the field was a track just wide enough for the vehicle that sat there, a venerable Land Rover the same olive green as their jackets. The servant was at the back of the vehicle, unpacking a large wicker hamper. There was another man halfway across the field, standing beside some apparatus Rebus took to be the clay-pigeon release.

Rebus ended up standing next to the Secretary of State. The man didn’t seem inclined to speak. Rebus wondered what he’d been discussing with Robbie Mathieson in the morning room. Rebus turned to Mathieson.

‘A friend of mine works for one of your suppliers.’

‘Oh?’ Mathieson didn’t sound particularly interested.

‘Deltona,’ Rebus said.

Mathieson’s beard moved in what might have been a smile. ‘Then I hope he didn’t have plans this weekend. I’ve been promised that plant will work all weekend. I’m due a big order from them by midweek. I wouldn’t want to have to find a new supplier.’

‘How’s the work on LABarum progressing?’ Mathieson stared at him, then fed cartridges into the shotgun’s double chamber. ‘It’s going pretty well,’ he said. ‘Can I ask how you know about it?’

Rebus shrugged. ‘Word gets around.’

‘Does it?’ Mathieson snapped shut the gun.

‘Actually, I came across a copy of your business plan in a council house in Stenhouse.’

‘What was it doing there?’ Mathieson seemed calm enough.

‘I haven’t the faintest idea,’ Rebus told him. ‘Someone had scrawled the word “Dalgety” on it.’ Mathieson flinched and dropped a cartridge.

‘Pull!’ Sir Iain called. A clay disc sprang into the air. There was an explosion, then another, and the disc shattered. Sir lain broke open his gun.

‘Damned good shot,’ commented Sir Colin Macrae.

‘You know, it’s unusual. Sir Iain’s Saturdays are normally corporate affairs, but today we’ve got two policemen.’ Mathieson looked like he wanted Rebus to tell him something, but Rebus didn’t know what.

‘Pull!’ More gunshots filled the air.

‘Not bad, Dugald, not bad!’

‘Tell me,’ Rebus asked Mathieson, ‘do you know a man called Derwood Charters?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘I’ve heard he helped finance PanoTech in the early days.’

Mathieson laughed. ‘You’re misinformed.’

‘Come on, Allan, you’re next!’

When Robbie Mathieson’s turn came, he missed the target with both barrels.

‘Not like you, Robbie,’ Sir lain laughed, glancing towards Rebus. He looked uncommonly pleased. Rebus felt he was being used; he still didn’t know why or how.

When his own turn came to shoot, he missed with both barrels. Sir lain insisted he try again straight away.

‘You’re a tyro,’ he said, ‘you need the practice. I’m sure we all missed a few in the beginning.’

This time, Rebus chipped a bit off the disc with his second shot.

‘See?’ said Sir Iain. ‘Now you’re getting the hang of it!’

Maybe he was at that.

Ears still ringing, Rebus joined the others at the Land Rover. There were flasks of Scotch broth, sandwiches in silver foil, hip-flasks of whisky and larger flasks of tea. Rebus’s sandwich was brown bread and smoked salmon. The salmon was sliced thick, and had been sprinkled with lemon juice and pepper. He took a small nip of whisky when the hip-flask came round, then drank two mugs of strong tea. With all the games he felt were going on, he wanted to clear his head. He wasn’t sure if he was a player, a counter, or the die. He’d been shown one thing, though — the game was dangerous, at stake his professional career, which was everything he lived for. Practically every man present had it within his power to push Rebus off the playing-board and off the force. He started to get angry: angry with himself for coming; angry with Sir Iain Hunter — so smug, so manipulative — for bringing him here. Rebus knew now that he hadn’t just been brought here so he could be warned off. He swallowed the anger down and held it in his gut. It was hotter than tea, stronger than whisky.

They were almost back at the house when Sir Iain gripped Rebus’s elbow and led him towards the greenhouses.

‘We’ll catch you up!’ he called to the others. Then, to Rebus, still holding him by the elbow: ‘Have a nice chat with Robbie Mathieson?’ Rebus shrugged off Sir Iain’s hand. ‘And with Allan Gunner too, I noticed.’

‘Why am I here?’

‘I admire your directness. You’re here because I want to know if you’ve decided.’

‘Decided what?’

‘To stop your investigation.’

‘Are you willing to tell me why you’re so interested?’

Sir Iain’s gaze hardened. ‘I’m willing to tell you one thing, if you’re willing to listen.’

They were standing in front of one of the long greenhouses. Looking through the misted windows, Rebus could see trestle tables and empty flower-pots and seed-trays, but there was nothing growing in there, nothing at all.

‘I’m listening,’ he said.

‘Then I’ll tell you that Scottish jobs are at risk.’

‘At risk from what?’

‘From you, Inspector, if you continue stumbling blindly around. Let it take its course, that’s what I’m saying.’

Rebus turned to him. ‘Let what take its course? You’re not telling me anything, how am I supposed to know what to do and what not to do?’

‘You know what to do,’ Hunter said calmly: ‘stop your little private investigation. If it goes any further, hundreds of jobs could disappear. Do you hear me? Hundreds. You wouldn’t want that on your conscience, I’m sure.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ Rebus said.

Hunter looked at him with something near pity. ‘Yes, you do, Inspector.’

He did, too. It was in Hunter’s voice, in the way his frame shivered when he spoke. He believed what he was saying, believed it with a passion. Hundreds of jobs.

Sir lain started to walk towards the house. Rebus followed, making sure he never caught up.

As agreed, Rebus and Gunner left the house separately but met up at a hotel in Auchterarder.

‘I don’t usually drink,’ Gunner confided, washing down two aspirin with an orange juice. They sat in a corner of the quiet lounge bar. For a Saturday, the main street was quiet. The shoppers would all be in Perth, keeping warm in department stores and superstores. The TV was showing Rio Bravo, John Wayne doing his John Wayne walk.

‘I don’t usually shoot,’ Rebus said.

‘So now we’ve both seen how the other half lives.’ Gunner put down his glass and took a deep breath. ‘Let’s get down to business. Whatever you think, Inspector, I wasn’t there to “scare you off”. I got my invite in the mail, same as you did. I’ve been thinking, and my conclusion is that Sir lain wanted to play us off against one another. Or perhaps he thought that my presence would serve to unnerve you.’

Rebus nodded agreement. ‘One other option,’ he added. ‘We were both there to scare someone else. Mathieson didn’t like it that policemen were present.’

‘What are they so worried about?’

‘Hunter told me it has to do with jobs.’

‘Jobs? What kind of jobs?’

Rebus shook his head. How far could he trust Gunner? The man was the first person who’d tried to take him out of the game. ‘Are you going to own up about McAnally?’

Gunner examined his fingernails. ‘You’re right in just about every detail. I had McAnally moved to Saughton and into Charters’ cell. Then he went and got cancer, and wasn’t getting any information out of Charters, so I arranged for his early release.’

‘And he went straight to Councillor Gillespie and blew his head off in front of him.’

‘I don’t know why he did that.’

‘Why was McAnally in Charters’ cell?’

‘To see if he could talk himself into Charters’ confidence. I wanted to see what Charters was hiding. I knew he was hiding something, but couldn’t think what to do about it until Flower suggested McAnally.’

‘And what is Charters hiding exactly?’

‘Money, what else? I don’t mean he’s hiding it literally, though perhaps he is. But back in the mid-eighties he was coining it, and we weren’t sure where the cash was coming from. He had about half a dozen companies — legit, as far as the Fraud Unit could tell — but they made more money than they should have.’

‘I thought that’s what Thatcherism was all about. Was one of his companies called Mensung?’

‘Yes.’

‘And were all his companies involved in retraining?’

‘That sort of thing. Their paperwork was so convoluted — positively labyrinthine — that even our specialists couldn’t find a clear path through it. They were all agreed on one thing. Derry Charters had a genius for muddying the water. You could track a company of his for months and not get to the bottom of its financial status.’

‘I’ve heard he helped finance PanoTech at one time.’

‘Who told you that?’

‘Is it true?’

‘I don’t think so. Did one of Charters’ investors tell you?’ Rebus nodded. ‘Probably a story he spun them. He could be very persuasive.’

‘But all this was eight, nine years ago.’

‘Yes, and since then he’s cleaned up his act, or had done until he burnt people’s fingers with Albavise.’

‘So why are you still chasing him over a piece of ancient history?’

‘A couple of reasons. One, I spent a lot of my time and effort in the Fraud Unit chasing him, without getting a result. It represents probably the only blot on my record. Two, our best guess when we investigated him was that he was fiddling millions.’ He had Rebus’s full attention. ‘Millions,’ he repeated. ‘And for me, that makes him worth the chase.’

‘Where did he fiddle these millions from?’

But Gunner just shrugged. Rebus was thoughtful for a moment. The bar was filling, and the TV had been switched over to show the football scores. Not that many games were being played: the pitches were dangerously hard.

‘I’ve read the case against him on Albavise. Any chance that I can see the other paperwork?’

Gunner studied him. ‘There’s a hell of a lot, and it’s in no particular order. You think you can spot something our financial gurus couldn’t?’

Rebus shrugged. ‘Just for my peace of mind. I’d like to talk to Charters, too.’

‘What?’

‘His cellmate’s committed suicide. It looks strange if nobody’s been near to ask him about McAnally’s state of mind prior to release. I mean, who’d know better than him?’

Gunner nodded. ‘Fair point.’

‘Speaking of McAnally, how much did you pay him?’

‘What?’

‘He was working for you, feeding you information, I’m assuming he was paid.’

‘He didn’t give us anything of relevance. We gave him a few pounds here and there, nothing more.’ Rebus was seeing Tresa McAnally’s flat in his mind: new door, new decor, new TV. ‘Does it matter?’

‘It did to Wee Shug,’ Rebus said quietly. Someone had given him the money, money he’d passed on to Tresa, almost like life insurance. Who did Wee Shug know with money apart from his cellmate?

Gunner finished his drink. ‘I wonder what Sir Iain will be up to tonight.’

‘The way he was tucking into the hooch, sleeping it off, I’d imagine. Does he drive to Edinburgh and back every day?’

‘He only uses Ruthie at weekends. When he’s at work, he has a flat in the New Town.’

‘Whereabouts exactly?’

‘Royal Circus, I think.’

Royal Circus, thought Rebus, where Haldayne collected some of his parking tickets. Life was just full of coincidences, if you happened to believe, as Rebus himself did not, in coincidence.

31

Early Sunday morning, a sleepy-eyed detective sergeant from Lothian & Borders Police Headquarters turned up at Rebus’s flat.

‘You’d better give me a hand,’ he said.

Rebus followed him down to where a patrol car idled kerbside. He peered in through the passenger side window.

‘Maybe we’d better hire a winch.’

It took them four trips to transfer the boxes from the car to Rebus’s living-room. Rebus put the binbags behind the sofa to make room on the floor.

‘Sign here,’ the DS said. He had a typed chitty: RECEIPT OF ALL CASE-NOTES (8 BOXES) CONCERNING DERWOOD CHAR _TERS. Rebus signed.

‘Date and time, too,’ said the DS.

‘You’ll be wanting a tip next,’ Rebus muttered.

‘If you’re offering.’

‘Well, here’s one for you: when lifting, bend your knees, not your back.’

He phoned Siobhan Clarke.

‘Why me?’ she said.

‘Because Brian Holmes has a home life.’

‘That could be construed as discrimination. When do you want me there?’

‘Say an hour.’

He tidied the living room a bit, depositing the bin bags in the hall and setting the file boxes in a row on the floor. Then he collected up all the dirty mugs, glasses and dishes and took them through to the kitchen. He emptied the coffee-jar and put it back under the radiator, and opened the living-room window an inch to air the place. The sun was out, showing that the windows hadn’t been cleaned since the autumn. Rebus decided enough was enough.

‘She’s coming here to work,’ he told himself, ‘not for a candlelit supper.’

They got two breaks, both late in the afternoon.

The first was a client’s name: Quinlon.

‘I’ve come across that name before,’ Rebus said. It took him a while to place it. ‘The civil servant, Rory McAllister, he mentioned someone called Quinlon; a building contractor. There’d been some shady business between the SDA and him — it was one of the things held against the SDA when they were deciding its fate.’ Rebus flipped back a page in the notes. ‘And Charters’ client happened to be a building contractor.’

‘So?’

‘So, somehow the media got to hear about the SDA and Quinlon, and that story helped sink the SDA. Who was going to gain by the SDA’s demise?’

‘Charters?’

‘Yes, because the financial slate was going to be wiped clean, and there’d be no possibility of a future investigation into where the SDA millions had gone.’

‘You think Charters grassed on his client?’

‘I wouldn’t put anything past him.’

The second break came soon after.

It was clear from the case-notes that the Fraud Unit had been focusing on Charters. When his ‘associates’ were mentioned, they were dismissed as fronts or moneymen. Nobody thought the directors had anything to do with whatever swindles Charters was perpetrating.

Which was why they weren’t mentioned often, and in the case of Mensung, not at all. But then Rebus picked up the photocopy of a letter sent by Charters to the SDA. The Mensung logo was at the top, together with the non-existent Leith Walk address — referred to as ‘Mensung House’. At the foot of the letter was the company’s registration number.

‘You couldn’t find Mensung in Companies House, right? ’

‘Right,’ said Clarke. ‘I had their archivist take a good look.’

‘Well, either they were registered, or this is a phony number.’

‘The records could have been mislaid.’

‘Now wouldn’t that be a coincidence.’ The final line of the sheet was blurred. Rebus peered at the row of names, the names of Mensung’s directors.

Because he knew what he was looking for, he could pick out the name Charters quite easily; the others were more difficult. It took real effort to decipher J Joseph Simpson’s name.

‘Figures,’ Rebus said. He wanted another word with Simpson anyway, but this explained why he’d lied about Mensung’s address: the company had been dodgy, under investigation, and Simpson had been a director. It wasn’t the kind of thing you wanted to publicise when you were still in business.

As for the third and last name …

‘Can you make that out?’ Rebus asked, passing the sheet to Siobhan Clarke.

‘Starts with an M,’ she suggested. ‘Murchieson?’

‘Murchieson?’

‘I don’t know, maybe Matthews, something like that.’

Rebus took the sheet back from her. Matthews … Murchieson … ‘Mathieson,’ he said, staring at the slewed writing. ‘Could it be Mathieson?’

She shrugged. ‘As in …?’

‘I met a man yesterday called Robbie Mathieson. He runs PanoTech.’

‘Silicon Glen’s homegrown success story?’

Rebus nodded. ‘We’ve all just been supplied with PanoTech computers, haven’t we?’

‘Everybody from the chief constable down.’

Which meant that Allan Gunner would have one, too. ‘Who do you suppose would decide something like that?’

‘Like what?’

‘Like which manufacturer was going to supply us?’

‘It would be the director of Corporate Services, wouldn’t it?’

‘But the DCC would have a say.’

‘Probably. Is it relevant?’

Rebus wondered. PanoTech put the computers together in Gyle Park West, and Gyle Part West was one of Councillor Gillespie’s files. Mensung was another. There was the story that Derry Charters had something to do with the early financing of PanoTech. And PanoTech’s boss just happened to be at Sir Iain Hunter’s, looking worried about something. And Allan Gunner was there too …

Wheels within wheels, he thought. Scotland was a machine, a big machine if you looked at it from the outside. But from the inside, it assumed a new form — small, intimate, not that many moving parts, and all of them interconnected quite intricately. Rebus knew he was still outside the machine, but he knew now that one reason why he’d been invited to the shooting party was that Sir Iain Hunter was inviting him in. They could make him part of the machine, a chip on the motherboard. All it took was friends in the right places.

After that, anything could happen.

They worked solidly till five-thirty.

‘I hope I’m being treated to dinner,’ Clarke said, stretching her spine.

‘Who’s taking you?’

‘You are,’ she said.

Rebus shook his head. ‘I’ve other plans tonight, sorry.’

‘Well, thanks a lot. I give up my precious Sunday to help you, and then you boot me out.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘Got a date?’

She was attempting a peculiarly Scottish tactic: being serious while pretending levity.

‘I’m working,’ Rebus said.

‘Working?’

‘I’ve got to talk to someone.’

‘Anyone I know?’

Rebus shook his head. ‘But don’t think I don’t appreciate your help.’ He saw her to the door.

When the bell rang two minutes later, he thought she must have forgotten something. But it wasn’t Siobhan Clarke standing on his doorstep. It was Gill Templer.

‘Mind if I come in?’ she said, walking past him.

‘I was just on my way out.’

‘This won’t take long. I tried phoning, but it was engaged all afternoon.’

‘I had it off the hook,’ Rebus said, following her into the living room. She looked at the boxes of documents.

‘I see you’re really taking your furlough seriously.’

‘Come on, Gill, it was foisted on me. You were there, remember.’

‘I remember. The chief super had been getting incredible flak; in his shoes, I’d have done the same thing.’

‘This isn’t sounding like a social call.’

‘That’s because it isn’t one. The Lord Provost is your latest victim. He called the chief super and said you’d been rude to him.’

‘Did he mention specifics?’

‘No.’

‘I didn’t think he would.’

‘The Farmer will probably call you in the morning himself. I’d imagine it’ll be an official reprimand, maybe even a suspension.’ She turned to him, her eyes blazing. ‘How could you do this to me?’

‘What?’

‘I’m your immediate superior! I’m in the post barely a week, and already you’ve caused the most unholy ructions. How do you think that makes me look?’

‘It’s got nothing to do with you.’

‘Yes it bloody well has! It’s got everything to do with me. You’re one of my officers. How am I supposed to work, to get a feel for the job, when all the chief super does is fret about what grenade you’re going to chuck next?’

Rebus nodded his understanding. ‘That’s what this is about. You’re pissed off because the Farmer’s not paying you enough attention. You want to create a good impression, and you’re not making any impression at all.’

‘Now you’re just twisting my words.’

‘Am I?’ He grabbed her by the arms. ‘Look me in the face and tell me that. Tell me I’m not right.’

She shrugged free of his grip. ‘John,’ she said, more calmly. ‘I came here to warn you. Tomorrow morning could spell the end of your career.’

‘You think I care about that?’ He tried to sound casual.

She took a step towards him. ‘Yes,’ she said quietly, ‘I think you do.’ Her green eyes seemed to bore into him. ‘I think, beneath it all, you’re scared.’

‘Scared?’ He smiled. ‘Of course I’m scared. I wouldn’t mind if it was some big hard bastard who had me cornered in an alley, or if some kind of contract was out on me. But this is worse, this scares me to death.’

‘Then drop it. Say you’re sorry to a few people, and come back to work.’

He smiled again. ‘It would be that easy, wouldn’t it? You’d do it.’

‘Yes, I would.’

‘Well, I’ll think about it.’

She tried to measure his sincerity, but it was like measuring haar.

32

Big Jim Flett was nowhere to be seen.

‘Even the Big Man has to take a few hours off here and there,’ his deputy said, leading Rebus down one of the corridors inside Saughton Jail.

‘I’m sure,’ Rebus said, even though he was sure the governor was avoiding him. He had lied to Rebus, and now Rebus knew it.

‘Derry doesn’t get many visitors,’ the deputy said. He was a brisk, nervous man, ruddy-faced and jacketless with his shirt-sleeves rolled up.

‘You know him then?’

‘We’ve had conversations.’

‘I was told he didn’t mix.’

‘That’s true, but I’ve always found him pleasant enough.’

‘He hasn’t tried to sell you anything, has he?’

The deputy laughed. ‘No, not yet. He’d make a damned good salesman though.’

‘What’s he like?’

‘Quiet for the most part, never gives us any trouble.’ They were nearing a metal door, beside which stood a warden. The warden unlocked the door and swung it open.

‘You’re sure you don’t want me to stay?’ the deputy asked Rebus. Rebus shook his head, but with a gracious smile. ‘Well, Munro here will take Derry back to his cell when you’re finished.’

‘Thanks again,’ Rebus said.

The door closed after him, the key rattling in its lock. Rebus was alone with Derwood Charters.

Charters was pacing the floor, arms folded, head bowed as if he was pondering some problem.

‘Do you play chess?’ Charters asked, without looking up.

‘No.’

‘Pity.’

Rebus looked around the room. There was a table, its legs bolted to the floor, and two chairs beside it. On one wall, a blackboard provided the room’s only hint of decoration.

‘Mind if I sit?’ Rebus said.

‘Make yourself comfortable.’ Charters smiled at his little joke. He continued to pace the floor, and Rebus studied him. Charters was in his mid-forties, tall and broad-shouldered. He was immaculately groomed, his hair parted just so, his face shiny and clean-shaven. His fingernails looked manicured.

‘Do you know what zugzwang means?’

‘Sounds German,’ Rebus said.

For the first time, Charters looked at him. ‘Of course it’s German. It’s a chess position. It’s when you’ve to play, only any move you make will spell disaster. Yet you’ve got to make a move. There was a chess puzzle in today’s paper, and I’m damned if I can solve it.’

‘The solution’s easy,’ Rebus said.

Charters stopped pacing. ‘What?’

‘Take up golf instead.’

Charters considered this, then smiled. He came and sat down opposite Rebus, folding his hands on the table. ‘May I see some identification?’

Rebus took out his warrant card. Charters examined it against the light, as though it might represent a particularly brilliant forgery.

‘On a Sunday night,’ he said, handing it back.

‘Pardon?’

‘I don’t get many visitors, let alone on a Sunday night. And a police officer at that.’

‘I’m here to ask you a few questions about Wee Shug McAnally.’

‘Ah yes, Hugh.’ McAnally probably hadn’t been called ‘Hugh’ by anyone apart from the minister at his christening and the judge who pronounced sentence on him. Charters seemed to read Rebus’s mind. ‘I respect a person’s name, Inspector. It’s all we bring into this world, and it’s all we take out of it. My own name is sometimes abbreviated to Derry. In here, that has earned me the nickname “the apprentice boy”.’

Charters’ voice — quiet, atonal — had a mesmeric quality, and once his eyes had fixed on Rebus’s, they never left them.

‘You know he committed suicide, Mr Charters?’

‘Very unfortunate.’

‘Suicides have to be investigated.’

‘I didn’t know that.’

‘Whether you know it or not, it happens to be the case. Tell me, did McAnally talk to you much?’

‘All the time. To be frank, it annoyed me. Even when I was trying to read, he’d be blethering on about nothing of consequence, just filling the cell with noise. As though there wasn’t enough noise in here already. At the start, I thought he’d been allotted my cell as some subtle form of punishment. You know, psychological torture.’

‘So what did he talk about? I’m assuming these were fairly one-sided affairs?’

‘They were soliloquys. As to the substance … he talked about his background, his wife — interminably about his wife; I feel I know her as well as her gynaecologist must. He spoke of his affairs with other women, which I didn’t believe for one second. And every time he finished a story, he’d ask me, plead with me, to tell him something about myself.’ Charters paused. ‘What do you make of that, Inspector? I mean, Hugh was obsessed with himself, and yet every now and then he’d suddenly stop and ask me something. Don’t you think that’s strange?’

Rebus ignored the question. ‘What was he in for?’

‘You see? You’ve avoided answering! That’s what I had to do twenty times a day.’

‘Are you going to answer?’

‘He told me it was for housebreaking.’

‘And I believe you’re inside for fraud, is that correct?’

‘Interesting,’ Charters mused, patting his fingers against his mouth. ‘Why would you ask me what Hugh was inside for?’

‘I just wondered,’ Rebus improvised, ‘if the two of you ever talked about it. I’m trying to build up a picture of him.’

‘To hazard a guess as to why he killed himself?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, obviously he killed himself because he was dying of cancer.’

‘Did he tell you that?’

Charters smiled again. ‘I’m only guessing.’

‘Well, you’re probably right, that’s probably why he did kill himself. What it doesn’t explain is the manner.’

‘You mean, why would he pick on a city councillor to witness his last rites?’ Rebus nodded. ‘Have you tried asking the councillor?’

‘Yes.’

‘And what did he say?’ Charters was trying to sound casually curious. Rebus stared at him.

‘Do you know the councillor?’ he asked.

‘Never met him.’

‘That’s not what I asked.’

Charters sat back and folded his arms. ‘Now you’re learning subtlety, Inspector. Our contest can only improve.’

‘It’s not a game of chess, Mr Charters.’

Charters looked penitent. ‘Of course not, I’m sorry.’

‘Do you know the councillor?’ Rebus repeated.

‘I read newspapers, Inspector, I keep up with events. So to a certain extent, yes, I know Councillor Gillespie.’

‘And does he know you?’

‘Why should he?’

It was Rebus’s turn to smile. Charters had used the word ‘subtlety’. Rebus was learning that he must needs be oblique.

‘You ran a company called Mensung, didn’t you?’

‘A long time ago, yes.’ Rebus noticed that though he was outwardly well groomed, Charters’ teeth were the colour of dead fish. ‘I like these tangents, Inspector. Your mind moves in mysterious ways. Difficult to zugzwang someone who plays so erratically. Why are you interested in a company I wound up seven years ago?’

‘I told a friend of mine I was coming to speak to you. He said he attended some retraining seminars held by Mensung on Corstorphine Road.’

The response seemed to satisfy Charters. ‘Which company did he work for?’

‘He didn’t say. He still works in electronics, for one of PanoTech’s subcontractors.’

‘Then maybe the seminars did him some good.’

Rebus nodded. ‘I heard a story that you helped finance PanoTech when the company was in its infancy.’

Charters raised an eyebrow. ‘Stories tend to become confused over time.’

‘You’d nothing to do with it then?’ Charters shook his head. ‘By the way, why did Mensung go bust?’

‘It didn’t “go bust” — I wound it up. I was bored with it, and couldn’t find anyone to buy me out.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m easily bored.’ He got up and started pacing the room again. ‘You know, Inspector, you told me you were here to ask a few questions about Hugh. We’ve strayed a long way from that particular topic, wouldn’t you say?’

Rebus stood up.

‘Going so soon?’

‘You’re enjoying yourself too much, Derry. This isn’t supposed to be fun. A man’s dead.’

Charters stopped pacing. ‘A man who was dying anyway. A man who chose his own route out. Luckier than most of us, I’d wager. If the doctors told me I had only a few agonising months to live, I think I’d go find myself a gun, too. But the world would look so unfair to my eyes — all those people so alive and vibrant around me, all those ill people being cured in hospitals — maybe I’d want a witness to the injustice of it all, someone representing authority in my eyes and the eyes of those around me. Maybe I’d want him to see my agony, to share in my horror. It would have to be an easy target though … and a councillor is such an easy target — accessible, public, approachable. I’d be making a point to the world. I would refuse to die in silence!’

The silence after Charters had finished was resonant. He had worked himself up to a pitch, and now calmed only slowly. There had been anger in his voice, and fervour, and conviction. His eyes were on Rebus’s. He’d make a damned good salesman.

‘I don’t buy it,’ Rebus said, going to the door.

‘Inspector.’ Rebus paused. ‘You called me “Derry” — that was a cheap shot. Apart from that, you did pretty well.’ He paced the floor again. ‘Hugh didn’t really talk about his wife that often. There was another woman … he described her so accurately, I could probably paint her for you even now. Her name was Maisie. He talked about her all the time. I think he loved her more than anyone in the world. Perhaps you should talk to her.’

‘I already have, Mr Charters.’

Rebus left the cell feeling that Charters had given a name to his own feelings about the investigation, Willie and Dixie, and life in general.

The word was zugzwang.

It was four a.m. when his phone rang. He came awake, but left it to ring. Four a.m., news just had to be bad. The caller persisted, and at last Rebus picked up the receiver.

‘Mr Rebus?’

A young voice, insolent, a bit drunk. Loud music and voices in the background: a party.

‘Yes?’

‘It’s Paul. Paul Duggan.’

‘Paul, nice of you to call.’

‘Is it late? I don’t have my watch on.’

‘It sounds like a great party, Paul. Give me the address and I’ll drop by with a few uniforms.’

‘Don’t be like that Mr Rebus. I bring glad tidings. I’ve found her.’

‘Kirstie Kennedy?’

‘Aye.’

‘Is she all right?’

‘Not bad for a junkie.’

‘Can I speak to her?’

‘Listen, she’s adamant she’s not going home. She says her stepmum’s a lunatic.’

‘I’d like to see her. There’s no question of her having to go home.’

‘I don’t know.’ Duggan sounded doubtful.

‘Paul, don’t hang up! Listen, would she talk to me if I paid her?’

‘Look, I’ll have a word with her. No promises, but I’ll have a word, see what she says.’

‘Just do me a favour. Phone in daylight next time.’

‘If you’re lucky, I might even phone when I’m sober.’

33

It was eight a.m. when his phone next rang.

‘Yes?’ he croaked, trying to find some saliva in his mouth.

‘John?’ It was the Farmer’s voice.

Here it comes, thought Rebus. ‘Morning, sir. What’s it to be — reprimand, suspension, or dismissal?’

‘Damn you, John. I had a hell of a weekend because of you.’

‘I’m sorry, sir. I never meant to get you into trouble.’

‘That’s your problem, Inspector — you’re selfish, no other word for it. I think you know damned well that these obsessions of yours end up damaging everyone around you, friend, foe and civilians alike.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘But it doesn’t bother you, does it?’ Rebus didn’t answer. The Farmer had obviously been preparing his speech for a while. ‘As long as your own personal morality is satisfied, that’s all that counts. Sod everybody else, isn’t that right?’

‘It feels that way sometimes, sir,’ Rebus said quietly.

‘Well, maybe you should consider that morality of yours, because it’s no code I’d want to live with.’

‘You don’t have to live with it, sir. I do.’

‘Well, you lead a charmed existence, that’s all I can say.’

Rebus frowned. ‘How do you mean?’

‘I’ve discussed things with the DCC. He said he’d apologise to the Lord Provost on your behalf. He also said he thought HMIC would be investigating F Troop instead of us.’

F Troop: meaning F Division, Livingston. ‘What are you saying, sir?’

‘I’m saying I want you back here. The holiday’s over. Report to my office this morning.’

‘I’ve a dentist’s appointment.’

‘Well, this afternoon then.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Look, John, have you and the DCC had any contact?’

‘I’ve been on holiday, sir.’

‘Yes, but all the same?’

‘Well, maybe I did bump into him by the pool …’

It was another grim day. No snow or ice, but a freezing wind and gusts of rain, the sky oppressively weighted with cloud. It was like the city was in a box, and someone had pushed the lid on too tightly.

Rebus’s second visit to Dr Keene wasn’t so traumatic. You could get used to anything. The tooth had drained nicely, and Keene did the root canal while Rebus concentrated on the photograph on the ceiling. He plotted Paul Duggan’s property portfolio. Maybe Duggan had a point: nobody was suggesting he was overcharging his ‘tenants’ — he was making a profit out of each house and flat, but nothing outrageous. And meantime, he was putting roofs over heads. Rebus knew there might needs be a trade-off: if he wanted to see Kirstie, Duggan might want Rebus to put in a good word come trial time. Always supposing it came to trial. The district council was about to be replaced with another body. Who knew what would be written off?

Suddenly, something clicked in Rebus’s brain. He saw something he should have seen before. He was so busy thinking that he didn’t hear Dr Keene say that, while Rebus was there, he might as well start on the fillings …

There were no cheers, no banners or bunting as Rebus walked back into St Leonard’s and poured himself a cup of coffee.

‘A word to the wise,’ Siobhan Clarke said.

‘What?’

‘You’re pouring coffee down your tie.’

It was true: with his mouth still numb, he was dribbling. He went to the toilets and pulled out a clump of paper towels, soaked them in water and dabbed at his tie.

‘Here he is,’ said Flower, pushing open the door, ‘the proverbial bad penny.’

‘Don’t be so hard on yourself,’ Rebus retorted. Flower came to the sink and checked his hair in the mirror. ‘I see you managed to start a fire, then take credit for putting it out.’

Flower chuckled. ‘Word gets around, eh?’

‘Speaking of words that get around, I had a chat with someone about your snitch.’

‘Which one?’

‘Shug McAnally. We could all have been spared some grief if you’d told me at the start he was working for you.’

‘It’s not the sort of thing you can publicise. I mean,’ Flower looked around, ‘planting a snitch in somebody’s cell.’

‘You don’t mind telling me now though. Has the DCC had a word?’

‘He said you’d been asking.’ Flower looked unnaturally pleased with himself. Rebus could guess why.

‘You think you’re quids-in with the DCC, don’t you?’

‘Well, if it ever came out about McAnally, the DCC could get into trouble.’ Flower winked. ‘He needs to keep me sweet.’

‘What you mean is, you’ve got him either way. If the plan succeeded, it’d be because of you. If it went badly, it would need covering up — which would take your help. Gunner would still owe you. That’s why you’ve been blocking me: you didn’t want me getting to the DCC — he’s your little investment.’

Flower chuckled again, and tucked a stray hair back behind his ear. There was a sound of flushing from one of the two cubicles. Flower’s head jerked around, his mouth open, as the cubicle door opened and the Farmer came out.

This came as no surprise to Rebus: he’d seen the Farmer enter the toilets just before him.

‘Morning, sir,’ he said.

Flower didn’t say anything. The Farmer pointed at him. ‘My office, Inspector Flower, now!’ Then he opened the door and was gone. Flower turned on Rebus.

‘You knew! You bloody well knew!’

Rebus tossed the ball of sodden paper into the bin.

One-nil.

Someone was at the front desk asking for him, that was the message. But when Rebus got there, there was nobody about. Then he saw a figure outside, motioning to him. It was Paul Duggan. He was wearing his long black coat again, but it had a small tear in the sleeve, and a white smudge on one shoulder.

‘Nothing personal like,’ he said when Rebus joined him outside, ‘but I hate police stations.’

‘There’s a cafe across — ’

Duggan was shaking his head. ‘She’s waiting for us.’

‘Kirstie?’ Duggan nodded. ‘Where?’

‘Have you got a car?’

They went to Rebus’s car.

Duggan directed him down the Pleasance and right on Holyrood Road. This was a dispiriting part of town; all empty sites and disused warehouses. The Younger Universe was under construction, and was going to make everything all right again, if you believed the publicity. Rebus hoped it would succeed; he liked the symbolism: the USA had Disneyland, and Scotland gets a theme park built by a brewery. The theme park would be a neighbour to Holyrood Palace, the monarch’s Edinburgh residence. This, too, Rebus liked.

‘Where are we going?’

‘Just park by the palace gates.’

It was easy to park this time of year; in warmer seasons, the place was a log-jam of tourist coaches. A kid was at the locked gates, peering through them at the palace beyond.

‘Toot your horn,’ Duggan ordered. Rebus did so, to no effect.

‘She’s on another planet.’ Duggan wound down his window. ‘Hiy, Kirstie!’

Slowly the ‘kid’ turned, and Rebus saw a face older than the frame which supported it. Nobody had said Kirstie Kennedy would be so scrawny, so tiny. But as she walked towards the car her face was set like cement. Lipstick, eyeshadow and panstick provided her with a mask. She wore tight black jeans, accentuating her matchstick legs, and a long shapeless black jumper whose arms stretched down past her hands. Her hair was greasy, shoulderlength, tied back with a band. A spiky fringe, dyed blood-red, fell into her eyes. She was chewing gum. She pulled open the back door and climbed in.

‘Hello, Kirstie,’ Rebus said. ‘Where do you want to go?’

‘I want ice cream.’

Rebus thought of Luca’s, but it was too far. ‘Tollcross?’ he suggested.

Tollcross would do her.

They sat in the ice-cream parlour and she ordered the biggest concoction on the menu, plus a giant Coke. The place was quiet: an old couple, smoking and drinking frothy coffee; a harassed mother hissing at her two children who were arguing over bowls of garish ice cream.

Rebus had ordered coffee, Duggan orange juice and some apple pie with cream. Rebus remembered that he used to bring Sammy in here when she was a kid. He looked at the Lord Provost’s daughter and tried to remember she was seventeen.

‘Paul says you want a word.’ Her voice was polite in a way no attitude could hide. Rebus knew that her street diction, her low-class language, had been only recently learned.

‘How long have you been on the Bob Hope, Kirstie?’

‘You mean the Merry?’

Duggan looked at Rebus. ‘Merry Mac, crack,’ he explained.

‘Long enough,’ Kirstie answered.

‘Long enough to be tired of it?’

‘Long enough to know you never get tired of it.’ Her ice cream arrived: three different flavours with chocolate sauce, nuts, tinned peaches and wafers. The sight of it made Rebus’s teeth crackle.

‘Your dad’s been worried,’ he said.

‘So what?’

‘And your mum.’

Her sudden convulsion almost sent a mouthful of ice cream on to the table. ‘My mum died when I was five. What you mean is, “that woman who lives with my dad”.’

‘OK.’

‘Have you met her?’

‘No.’

‘She’s off her trolley, praise the Lord.’

‘So you don’t get on with her. Is that why you ran away?’

‘Does there have to be a reason?’

Rebus shrugged. ‘Only, most teenagers I know who run away, they go a bit further.’

‘You mean London? I didn’t like it. My pals are all up here.’

‘You mean pals like Willie and Dixie?’

She put the spoon back on her plate and started on the Coke. ‘I liked Willie. Dixie was a nutter, you never knew what he’d do next, but Willie was all right.’

‘You heard what they did?’

She nodded.

‘You left that wreath for them on the bridge, didn’t you?’

Another nod. She dipped her finger into the chocolate sauce. She was trying not to care, but there was still a core of sentiment buried in her brain, a precious nugget of guilt.

‘Was it your idea, Kirstie?’ She looked up at him. ‘It was, wasn’t it?’

She got to her feet. ‘I have to go to the toilet.’

Rebus snatched her wrist. ‘Why did you do it, Kirstie? Just for the money? Why did you take the LABarum plans from your father’s office?’

She shook free of his grip. ‘Let me go!’ She stumbled away from the table and ran to the toilets. Rebus sat back and started to light a cigarette.

‘No smoking,’ the waitress told him.

‘Can I get a beer?’

‘We’re not licensed.’

Rebus nicked his cigarette and put it back in the packet. He looked across the table at Paul Duggan.

‘You like her, don’t you?’ Rebus said.

Duggan said nothing. He was making circles in the cream with his spoon.

‘Remember I told you she’d left something in Willie’s bedroom? It was some papers stolen from her father. Do you have any idea why she took them?’

Duggan shook his head slowly but determinedly. ‘She’s … go easy on her, OK?’

‘Or what?’

‘Or she’ll run.’ Duggan paused. ‘Again.’

Eventually the toilet door opened and she walked back to the table, arms hanging in a lazy slouch. Rebus looked into her eyes and saw pupils shrunk to pinheads.

‘That was stupid.’

‘So what?’ she said, starting back into her ice cream. After two mouthfuls, she pushed the plate away.

‘The kidnap,’ Rebus said, ‘the ransom demand — it was all your idea, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘To get back at your stepmother?’

‘My dad.’

‘To get back at your dad?’

She nodded. ‘And everything he represents, the old bastard.’ She was much more together now, more confident. She didn’t care what she told him.

‘You know you committed an offence?’ Rebus asked.

‘I’d deny it in court. I’d deny it everywhere. Where’s the proof that it wasn’t just two wee boys with a daft scheme in their heads?’

‘There’s corroboration.’ Rebus glanced towards Duggan.

‘You think Paul would grass on me?’ She leaned into Duggan’s shoulder and stroked his face. ‘He wouldn’t do that.’

‘Not even if I offered him a deal on his slum landlord scam?’

Kirstie shook her head. ‘Paul wouldn’t hurt me. His mum likes me too much.’

‘Well, maybe I don’t need Paul. Maybe all I need is that LABarum document. It links you to Willie.’ He paused. ‘Did you write “Dalgety” on the last page?’ She nodded. ‘Why?’

‘It’s something I heard my dad say on the phone … when I was listening in. Dalgety sounded important, someone he was worried about.’

‘Dalgety’s a person then?’

‘Yes.’

‘Kirstie, why did you steal the LABarum plan?’

Her face creased in a sneer. ‘It’s my dad, don’t you see? If you look closely enough at it, if you read all the small print and between the lines, all you’ll find there is my dad’s face, smiling smugly back at you.’

‘Why is he smug?’

‘Because it’s going to make him a hero. And it’s all crooked. I heard him on the phone, they were talking about how to cover it all up. The whole fucking thing is just a lot of … a lot of … it’s all just so much skit!’

‘I can’t have language like that,’ the waitress warned. ‘There are children in here.’

‘Well, fuck them!’ Kirstie screeched, jumping to her feet. ‘Because they’re all fucked anyway, just like everybody else!’

‘I’ll have to ask you to leave.’

Rebus and Duggan were on their feet too.

‘Come on, Kirstie.’

‘That girl’s on drugs or something, I know it!’

Rebus threw money down on the table. Kirstie Kennedy’s legs had buckled, and Duggan was holding her upright.

‘Let’s get her into the car,’ Rebus said, knowing he should take her straight to St Leonard’s, angry with himself because he knew that’s the last thing he was going to do.

Instead, Duggan gave him directions back to where she was staying. It was a flat in Leith, in the maze of narrow roads behind Great Junction Street.

‘One of yours, is it?’ Rebus asked Duggan. But Duggan was busy stroking Kirstie’s forehead, even though she was asleep.

They walked her up the stairs, one on either side, arms around her back, her arms over their shoulders. Rebus could feel the swell of a small breast, and the thin rib-cage beneath.

‘You did say you wanted to see her,’ Duggan was saying, exculpating himself.

‘And I’ll want to see her again.’ He knew there was more she could tell him, more he needed to hear from her.

He was trying to figure out who or what was responsible for the deaths of Willie and Dixie. This weightless creature he carried? The lads themselves? The police for giving chase? The Lord Provost for agreeing to it all? Maybe even the stepmother for driving Kirstie away? Except that it hadn’t just been the stepmother, it had been some realisation about the Lord Provost himself …

Maybe it was the system, that same system Sammy so passionately attacked. A system that had failed Willie and Dixie as surely as it nurtured people like Sir lain Hunter and Robbie Mathieson. In nature, there had to be balance; as some rose, others fell or were pushed or made the leap for themselves.

Or maybe … just maybe it had been Rebus himself, for crawling from the wreckage still with the need to confront them … standing there in front of them, forcing them to choose. My obsession, he thought. My private morality. Maybe the Farmer was right …

‘Will you stay with her?’ he asked Duggan when they reached the top of the stairs.

Duggan nodded. Rebus knew she’d be all right. She had someone who’d look after her.

‘What about you?’ Duggan asked. ‘What are you going to do?’

But Rebus had released his hold on the body and was heading back downstairs.

He went into a dive he knew near the foot of Leith Walk. It had a burgundy linoleum floor and matching coloured walls, and was like staring into somebody’s throat.

‘Whisky,’ Rebus said. ‘A double.’

And when the whisky came, he drank it down in two gulps.

‘Know something?’ he said to the closest drinker. ‘A couple of days ago, I was eating wild smoked salmon and shooting clay-pigeons.’

‘Better that than the other way round, son,’ the elderly drinker said, adjusting the cap on his head.

That night, Mrs Cochrane came upstairs to tell him there was a small dark patch on her living-room ceiling. Rebus had forgotten to empty the coffee-jar. Water had soaked the bare floorboard beneath.

‘Wait till it’s dried out,’ he said by way of apology, ‘and I’ll touch up the paintwork.’

He’d been asleep in his chair, but now felt wide awake. It was half past eleven, too late to do anything. Then the telephone rang, and he picked it up.

‘I’m not interested,’ he said.

‘You’ll be interested in this.’

Rebus recognised the voice of DC Robert Burns. ‘Don’t tell me West End needs my help?’

‘We’re not that desperate. I just thought I’d do you a favour. Looks like we’ve got a murder.’

Rebus’s grip tightened on the receiver. ‘Anyone I know?’

‘Identification near the body suggests the name’s Thomas Gillespie.’

‘Councillor Gillespie?’

‘I haven’t told you the best part yet. He was found in a lane connecting Dundee Street to Dalry Road.’

Rebus tried to fix the geography. ‘Next to the cemetery?’

‘Yes. The lane’s called Coffin Walk.’

Coffin Walk climbed quite steeply from Dalry Road. It had the busy Western Approach Road on one side, Dalry Cemetery on the other. It was a narrow alley, well lit but long.

‘If someone stopped you halfway,’ Burns told Rebus, leading him down the lane, ‘there’d be no escape.’

‘But you’d see an attacker, wouldn’t you? There’s no place to hide.’

Burns nodded at the cemetery wall. ‘You could stand behind there, listen for someone coming, then jump over when they got close. It’s the perfect site for an ambush.’

‘You think that’s what this was?’

Burns shrugged. They were close to the body now. Police officers with torches were in the cemetery, looking for footprints and the murder weapon. The lane had been sealed off at both ends, and though there was a knot of policemen near the body, the only person actually next to it was the pathologist, Professor Gates. Gates was telling the photographer what to do, and DI Davidson was talking to the undertaker. Even in mufti — padded jacket and jeans rather than the black suit — an undertaker was recognisable.

‘So what happened?’ Rebus asked Burns.

‘Somebody came out of the Diggers, walked up Angle Park Terrace, looked down here, and saw the body. They thought it was a tramp sleeping rough. Well, there’s a night shelter on Gorgie Road, so the guy came down here to say so.’

‘Like a good citizen.’

‘He saw the blood, knew fine well what had happened, and called us.’

Rebus pointed to a wallet, which lay a couple of feet from the body. ‘That was lying there?’

‘Yep, driver’s licence, blood donor card …’

‘But no cash or credit cards?’

‘Cleaned out.’

‘And nobody saw the attack?’

‘My guess is, he hoofed it back over the wall.’

Professor Gates had finished his initial examination. ‘We can wrap this one up,’ he said.

But Rebus wanted a look first. Tom Gillespie lay in a protective foetal position. He hadn’t been dead when he dropped. He’d curled himself around the pain in his gut.

‘Stab wound,’ Professor Gates said. ‘The shock probably killed him.’

‘Has his widow been notified?’

‘Are you volunteering, John?’ Davidson said.

‘This isn’t my patch, remember.’

‘No, but you knew the deceased. Anything you want to tell us?’

Rebus shook his head. ‘I will ask a question though: what was he doing here? He lives in Marchmont, chances are he’d never even heard of Coffin Walk. God knows I hadn’t. So why was he here, where was he headed?’

‘Maybe the Diggers.’

The Diggers was actually the Athletic Arms pub, but got its nickname from the gravediggers who’d used it in the past.

‘Not much of a shortcut, is it?’

‘Not much,’ Davidson agreed. ‘Lots of questions, John.’

‘I know the way your mind works, Davidson. You think it’s a simple mugging gone wrong — assailant: unknown; motive: robbery.’

‘So let’s hear your theory.’

Rebus smiled. His head was full of theories. Maybe too many for his own good. ‘Give me a cigarette,’ he said.

‘Not at the locus, John,’ Davidson warned. Rebus looked at the body again. It was being bagged. A trip to the mortuary first, and then the funeral parlour, your last journeys in the world as predictable as your first.

‘I asked if you had a theory,’ Davidson said.

‘OK, OK.’ Rebus put his hands up in surrender. ‘Take me back to your nice warm police station, give me a cigarette, and I’ll tell you a story. Just don’t blame me if it doesn’t make sense.’

He would tell Davidson what he knew, which wasn’t half as much as he suspected.

Which itself wasn’t half as much as he feared.

34

Next morning, when DI Davidson went to the widow’s house, Rebus went with him.

The curtains were closed, reminding Rebus of the day of McAnally’s funeral, inside Tresa’s flat. The door was answered not by Mrs Gillespie but by Helena Profitt, dressed in circumspect black — skirt, tights and shoes — and a plain white blouse.

‘I came as soon as I heard,’ she said, leading them inside. She looked surprised to see Rebus. We must, he thought, stop meeting like this.

‘Two policemen to see you, Audrey,’ Miss Profitt said, opening the living-room door.

It was a big light room, with prominence given to the floor-to-ceiling bookcases which lined two walls. The TV didn’t look much used, and though there was a video machine, Rebus couldn’t see more than half a dozen tapes. At one end of the room was a huge desk covered in paperwork, and a small table supporting a telephone and fax machine. The room, it seemed to him, was little more than an extension of the office at the front of the house, making Rebus wonder about Gillespie’s family life or, more pertinently, the lack of it.

His widow sat on the sofa, legs tucked beneath her. She’d started to rise, but Davidson had waved her back down. She looked as if she hadn’t slept. There was an empty mug on the floor, and next to it a tiny brown bottle of tablets. Despite the central heating, Audrey Gillespie was trembling.

‘Shall I make some tea?’ Helena Profitt asked.

‘Not for us, thanks,’ Davidson said.

‘Well, I’ll leave you to it. Shall I pop back later, Audrey?’

‘Only if it’s not too much trouble.’

‘Of course not.’ Her eyes were red-rimmed from crying. Rebus saw through her act, saw she was as broken up as anyone. He followed her out of the room.

‘Could you wait in the kitchen? I’d like a quick word.’

She nodded hesitantly. Rebus went back into the living room and sat down next to Davidson.

‘Remember me, Mrs Gillespie?’ Davidson was saying. ‘We met last night.’

Davidson was good, better than a lot of coppers. It was a skill, handling other people’s grief, gauging what to say and how to say it, knowing how much they could take.

Audrey Gillespie nodded, then looked at Rebus. ‘And I know you, too, don’t I?’

‘I came to talk to your husband once.’ Rebus strived for the same tone Davidson had used.

‘Has the doctor seen you, Mrs Gillespie?’ Davidson asked.

‘He gave me pills to help me sleep. Ridiculous to think I could sleep.’

‘But you’re all right?’

‘I’m …’ She sought the words expected of her. ‘I’m coping, thank you.’

‘Do you feel up to answering a few more questions?’

She nodded, and Davidson relaxed a little. He brought out his notebook and consulted it.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘you said last night that your husband had gone out to visit a constituent — that was what he told you?’

‘Yes.’

‘But he didn’t say where he was meeting this constituent?’

‘No.’

‘Or the constituent’s name?’

‘No.’

‘Or what they were going to discuss?’

She shrugged, remembering. ‘We ate dinner at eight as usual — I’d done chicken casserole, Tom’s favourite. He had two helpings. After that, I thought he’d either work in his office — he always has work to do — or else read the paper. Instead, he said he had to go out.’

‘You’re surprised he ended up in Dalry?’

‘Very. We don’t know anyone in that part of town. Why would he lie to me?’

‘Well,’ Rebus put in, ‘he was hiding things from you, wasn’t he?’

‘What do you mean?’

Davidson gave Rebus a warning look, and Rebus softened his voice a little.

‘I mean, the day I came here you were busy shredding documents — sackfuls of them — in a shredder your husband hired specially.’

‘Yes, I remember. Tom said he was running out of space in the office. They were ancient history. As you can see, it’s pretty cramped with all the paperwork.’ She waved a hand around the room.

‘Mrs Gillespie,’ Rebus persisted, ‘your husband headed the Industrial Planning Committee — did the documents have anything to do with that?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘If they were ancient history, why bother to shred them, why not just chuck them out?’

Audrey Gillespie got up and walked to the fireplace. Davidson gave Rebus an angry look.

‘Tom said they could fall into the wrong hands. Journalists, people like that. He said it was to do with confidentiality.’

‘Did you look at the files at all?’

‘I … I don’t remember.’ She was frantic now, her wet eyes everywhere but on the two policemen.

‘You weren’t curious?’

‘Look, I don’t see what any of this has to do with anything.’

Rebus walked over to her and took her hands in his. ‘It might have everything to do with your husband’s murder, Mrs Gillespie.’

‘Now, John,’ Davidson complained, ‘we don’t know …’

But Audrey Gillespie looked into Rebus’s eyes, and saw something there she could trust. She blinked away the tears. ‘He was very secretive,’ she said quietly, forcing herself to be calm. ‘I mean, about whatever it was he’d been working on. He’d been at it for months — for the best part of a year, actually. I used to curse the hours he put in. He told me it would be worth it, he said we should always focus on the long view. By that he meant he would one day be an MP, it was what he lived for.’

‘You’ve no inkling what this project of his was?’

She shook her head. ‘It was something he’d discovered while serving on the committee, and I know it was to do with accounting. I could work that much out from the kinds of things he was reading — balance sheets, profit-and-loss accounts … I trained as an accountant, something Tom sometimes forgot. I run a string of shops now, but I still handle the books. I could have helped him, but he always had to do everything for himself.’ She paused. ‘You know, the only reason he really needed me was my money. I’m sorry if that sounds heartless.’

‘Not at all,’ Davidson said.

‘Were these company accounts, Mrs Gillespie?’ Rebus persisted.

‘I think they must have been, the numbers involved: hundreds of millions of pounds.’

‘Hundreds of millions?’

So it wasn’t just Mensung, or even Charters’ empire. It was much bigger. Rebus thought of PanoTech, and then recalled that someone else had used the phrase ‘hundreds of millions’ … Rory McAllister, or someone like him.

‘Mrs Gillespie, could these figures have been to do with the SDA?’

‘I don’t know!’ She slumped back on to the sofa.

‘OK, John,’ Davidson said, ‘you’ve had your say.’

But Davidson might as well not have been there.

‘You see, Mrs Gillespie,’ Rebus said, sitting down beside her, ‘the thing is, someone tried to scare your husband, and it worked. They paid a man called McAnally to put the fear of God into him. I don’t know if they knew how far McAnally would go. McAnally confronted your husband, and I think gave him a message, a warning of some kind. Then McAnally killed himself, just to force the warning home. He was dying anyway, and he’d been paid handsomely. Your husband got scared, rightly so, and rented that shredder so he could destroy everything he’d been working on, all the evidence.’

‘Evidence of what?’ she asked.

‘Of something very big. Now, McAnally slipped up, he died too spectacularly, and that got me curious. I don’t think I’ve discovered even half what your husband knew, but that’s not the point. The point is, these people suspect either that your husband was helping me — maybe he’d given me his notes — or that he would talk to me eventually. Either way, they decided he was beyond scaring. They had to go a bit further.’

‘What you’re saying is that, if you’d left well alone, Tom might still be alive.’

Rebus bowed his head. ‘I accept what you’re saying, but I didn’t kill your husband.’ He paused. ‘I’d like to find out who did.’

‘What can I do to help?’

Rebus glanced towards Davidson. ‘You can start by telling us anything you think might help. And you could go through your husband’s papers; there might be some clue there.’

She thought for a moment. ‘Will I be in danger, too?’

Rebus laid a hand on hers. ‘Not at all, Mrs Gillespie. Look, is there no one Tom might have confided in?’

She started to shake her head. ‘No, wait … there is someone.’ Then she got up and left the room. Davidson was staring grimly at Rebus.

‘See,’ Rebus told him, ‘you’re great with the hearts and flowers, but weakness is there to be exploited.’

Davidson didn’t say a word.

Audrey Gillespie carried a desk diary into the room. ‘This is last year’s,’ she said, sitting down next to Rebus. ‘Tom began all this cloak-and-dagger stuff back in May, but it only really took off in October and November.’ She flipped to the pages for those months. Each day had its fill of meetings and engagements.

‘See?’ Mrs Gillespie said, pointing to a page. ‘These meetings here. Two this week ’ she flipped a couple of pages — ‘two the next ’ two more pages — ‘then three more.’

The meetings were just a series of times, plus the same two letters — CK. ‘Cameron Kennedy,’ Rebus said.

‘Yes.’

‘Who?’ Davidson asked. He’d come over to the sofa to look at the diary.

‘The Lord Provost,’ Mrs Gillespie explained. ‘They kept meeting for lunch. I remember because Tom had to have his suits dry cleaned; he had to look his smartest for the Lord Provost.’

‘He didn’t tell you why they were meeting so often?’ Rebus had taken the diary from her and was flipping through it. There were no meetings with ‘CK’ until October, after which they took place once a week at least.

‘Tom hinted there might be a good job in it come reorganisation. He’s in the same political party as the Lord Provost.’

‘This is interesting,’ Rebus said, sitting back, the better to peruse the diary.

Davidson had some questions to ask — the usual ones — so Rebus excused himself. He found Helena Profitt seated at the kitchen table, tugging at a lace handkerchief.

‘Terrible thing,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ said Rebus, sitting down opposite her. He thought of Charters’ ‘subtlety’, and the way Davidson had confronted the widow, and still he couldn’t find an easy way to ask what he wanted to ask. ‘Miss Profitt, this may not be the time …’ She looked at him. ‘But I was wondering if you knew … that is, if you had any suspicion that Mrs Gillespie and her husband …?’

‘You mean,’ she said softly, ‘what was their marriage like?’

‘Yes.’

Her face turned stony. ‘That’s despicable.’

‘This is a murder inquiry, Miss Profitt. I’m sorry if I’ve disturbed your sensibilities, but questions must be asked. The sooner I ask them, the sooner we may catch the killer.’

She thought that over. ‘You’re right. I suppose. But it’s still despicable.’

‘Was Mrs Gillespie having an affair?’

Helena Profitt didn’t say anything. She rose from the table and buttoned her coat.

‘All right,’ Rebus said, ‘what about the Lord Provost? Did Councillor Gillespie tell you why they kept meeting?’

‘Tom told me he had to brief him.’

‘What about?’

‘He didn’t say. Something to do with the Industry Committee, I expect. Is that all, Inspector?’

Rebus nodded, and Helena Profitt walked out of the kitchen. He heard the front door open and close. I handled that beautifully, he thought.

He got back to the living room just as Davidson was closing his notebook and thanking Audrey Gillespie for her time.

‘Not at all,’ the widow replied, polite to the last.

Rebus and Davidson sat in the car outside, talking things over. They were pulling away when Rebus saw another car cruising the street, seeking a parking space. It was a sporty Toyota the colour of ashes.

‘Stop for a second,’ Rebus said. He adjusted the rearview mirror so he could watch the Toyota manoeuvre into a space. Its door opened and Rory McAllister got out, looking anxious. He locked the car, tidied his hair, and side-stepped puddles on his way to Audrey Gillespie’s front door.

Rebus took Davidson to Arden Street and up the two flights to his flat.

‘Got something for you,’ he said, pointing to the binbags in the hall.

Davidson stared in amazement. ‘The shredded documents?’ Rebus nodded. ‘I won’t ask how you came by them.’

‘Mrs Gillespie isn’t going to kick up a fuss, especially if they help us find the killer.’

‘I’m thinking what a defence lawyer could do with them.’

‘I can think up a story between now and then.’

‘So what am I supposed to do with them?’

‘You’re heading a murder investigation, Davidson. The identities of whoever planned Gillespie’s murder are in there. So take them back to Torphichen Place and get a team working on reassembling the pages.’

‘I can’t see my boss going for it; we’re short-handed as it is. Can’t you take them to St Leonard’s?’

Rebus shook his head. ‘Know why? I don’t know who I can trust, and the last thing I want is for these bags to be conveniently mislaid. So: you tell no one what all this paper is, and you tell no one where you got it. When you’ve put together the jigsaw, I’ll bet you’ll have names and motives. Come on, I’ll help you load your car.’

‘Generous to a fault,’ said Davidson, picking up one of the bags.

They drove to the mortuary to talk with Professor Gates, but he was eating lunch in the university Staff Club, so they climbed up from the Cowgate to Chambers Street.

Rebus had been in the Staff Club before, and knew that if you looked like you belonged, you could breeze in. But the porter came out to stop them, so maybe they didn’t look the academic type. Rebus showed his ID, and that made everything all right again.

Gates was dining alone, a newspaper folded on the table beside his plate. A half-bottle of wine and a bottle of water stood in front of him.

‘What brings you here?’ he said as they sat down. ‘You’re not eating?’

‘No, thanks,’ Davidson said.

‘A drink maybe,’ Rebus prompted.

‘I can recommend the water,’ Gates said, protecting his wine.

They decided on beer, which the waitress would bring from the bar.

‘What can I do for you?’ the pathologist asked, dissecting a last floury potato.

‘Just wondered if you’d anything for us.’

‘On last night’s stabbing? Give me a chance, will you? Have you located the murder weapon?’

‘No,’ Davidson admitted. ‘We didn’t find any footprints either. The ground in the cemetery was frozen.’

‘Well, it was a long-bladed knife, serrated by the look of the skin around the wound. And that’s about as much as I can say for now. The victim had tried to protect himself, there were defence nicks on the hands. Plus he’d been eating something greasy. There was grease on his fingers.’

Rebus looked at Davidson. ‘Did you find any wrappings near the body?’

‘Nothing fresh. What’s your point?’

‘Gillespie ate a big meal at eight — chicken casserole, two helpings. Do you think he ate it with his fingers?’

‘Probably not.’

‘So how come less than three hours later he decides to visit a chip shop?’ Rebus turned to the pathologist. ‘When you look at stomach contents, I’m willing to bet you won’t find anything but chicken casserole.’

‘I did think,’ the pathologist said, ‘that it was odd. I mean, most people would wipe their fingers afterwards. But this grease or lard, it was quite solid.’

Which told Rebus everything he needed to know.

35

It was still lunchtime when Rebus walked into the chip shop on Easter Road, and two men in jackets and ties queued behind a teenager in a thin parka with the stuffing bursting from its seams: Rebus waited at the back of the queue, and smiled and waved towards the server, who didn’t return the greeting.

Finally it was Rebus’s turn. ‘Hello, Gerry.’ Gerry Dip wiped the work surface where some sauce had spilt. ‘Remember me?’

‘What do you want?’

Rebus leaned over the counter. ‘I want to know where you were last night between the hours of nine p.m. and eleven, and it better be the alibi to end them all.’

‘What for?’ Gerry Dip said.

Rebus just smiled. ‘Come on, let’s go for a ride.’

‘I can’t. I’m here on my own.’

‘Then switch everything off and we’ll lock the door after us, maybe put up a sign saying “Other fish to fry”.’

Gerry Dip bent down as if reaching for a switch, and then flicked something across the counter at Rebus. It was a battered fish, straight out of the fat. Rebus ducked and it flew over his head, fat spattering him. Gerry Dip was on the move, shouldering open the door to the kitchen. Rebus ran around the counter and followed. In the kitchen, Dip had hauled a sack of potatoes on to its side and was already halfway out the back door. Rebus stumbled over the potatoes, dived and just missed Dip’s ankles. He clambered to his feet and ran outside, finding himself in an alley. To his left was a dead end. To his right, Gerry Dip, running for it, the white apron flapping around his knees.

‘Stop him!’ Rebus yelled.

Davidson didn’t need telling twice. He was waiting at the mouth of the alley, hands in pockets like a casual onlooker. But as Dip ran past, he flung out an arm and caught him in the throat. Dip flew back like he was attached by elastic to the ground. His hands went to his throat and he started gagging.

‘You could have crushed his windpipe,’ Rebus said, but not in a nasty sort of way.

At four p.m., with Gerry Dip still maintaining his vow of silence in the interview room, Rebus went for a drive.

Gerry was an old hand: he knew how to play the game called Helping Police With Their Inquiries. He’d keep quiet, with or without a solicitor. All he’d said so far was that this was harassment, and that he wanted to talk to someone from SWEEP. It would take more than Rebus’s gut feeling to convict him of murder. There must needs be evidence. Rebus had explained to Davidson the complex series of connections which had brought Gerry Dip to mind. Now it was up to Davidson to convince his superiors that there was due cause for the granting of a search warrant for Gerry Dip’s digs and the chip shop itself. The chip shop’s owner had already explained that Gerry hadn’t had a shift the previous night. Rebus saw it all clearly. A meeting arranged, Gillespie turning up, Gerry Dip surprising him, Gillespie trying to defend himself from the attack, grabbing at Dip’s greasy shirt or jacket …

One thing nagged: Gerry Dip alone couldn’t have lured Gillespie into the trap. There must have been someone else, someone he trusted, someone he wanted to meet …

The Right Honourable Cameron McLeod Kennedy, JP, had a detached bungalow in what would have tried calling itself Corstorphine had South Gyle not taken off. The houses were descendants of the boxy bungalows on Queensferry Road. There weren’t many cars parked roadside; most of the bungalows boasted a garage, or at the very least a car-port. Rebus parked outside the Lord Provost’s home. The door was open before he had reached the garden gate. The Lord Provost stood in the doorway, his wife a little behind him.

‘You were so mysterious on the phone,’ Kennedy said, shaking Rebus’s hand. ‘Is there any news?’

‘The Lord will do as He sees fit,’ his wife burst out, the voice booming from her heavy frame. The Lord Provost ushered her back indoors and led Rebus to the front sitting room.

‘I’ve seen her,’ Rebus said.

‘Where is she?’ Mrs Kennedy snapped. Rebus studied her. She had wide unblinking eyes and small pudgy hands which she’d rolled into fists. Her hair had been coaxed into an untidy bun, and her cheeks blazed. Rebus guessed at West Highland stock; it wasn’t a wild stab in the dark to say she’d had a religious upbringing. For zeal, some of the Wee Frees could beat any Muslim Fundamentalists.

‘She’s safe, Mrs Kennedy.’

‘I know that! I’ve prayed for her, of course she’s safe. I’ve been praying for her soul.’

‘Beth, please …’

‘I’ve prayed harder than I’ve ever prayed in my life.’ Rebus looked around the room. The furniture had been positioned with exact precision on the carpet, and the ornaments looked like the distances between them had been calibrated by a professional. Net curtains covered the two small windows. There were photos of young children, but none of anyone aged twelve or over. Hard to imagine a teenager passing her evenings here.

‘Inspector,’ Cameron Kennedy said, ‘I haven’t asked you if you’d like something to drink.’

Rebus guessed that alcohol would not be on the list. ‘No, thanks.’

‘We’ve ginger cordial left from New Year,’ Mrs Kennedy barked.

‘Thanks, but no. The thing is, sir, I’m not here primarily about your daughter. I’d like to talk to you about Tom Gillespie.’

‘Terrible business,’ the Lord Provost said.

‘May the good Lord take his soul unto Him in heaven,’ his wife added.

‘I wonder,’ Rebus said pointedly, ‘if we might have a word in private.’

Kennedy looked to his wife, who didn’t look like moving. Finally, with a sniff, she turned and left. Rebus heard a radio come on through the wall.

‘A terrible business,’ the Lord Provost repeated, sitting down and gesturing for Rebus to do the same.

‘But it didn’t come altogether as a surprise, did it?’

The Lord Provost looked up. ‘Of course it did!’

‘You knew the councillor was playing with fire.’

‘Did I?’

‘There’d already been that one attempt to scare him off,’ Rebus smiled. ‘I know what Gillespie was on to, and I know he approached you with the information, and made frequent progress reports thereafter.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘Your little lunchtime meetings, we’ve records of them. He knew you’d be interested. For one thing, you’re the Lord Provost. For another, his findings related directly to Gyle Park West, which is in your ward. I don’t know what Gillespie’s idea was. If I were being charitable, I’d say he was working in the public interest and would eventually have gone public with his findings. But really, I think he was trying to pressure you into helping further his career. It could be that his findings would never have come to light, but somebody couldn’t be sure of that. Somebody tried scaring him, then decided to murder him instead.’

The Lord Provost sprang to his feet. ‘You surely don’t think I killed him?’

‘I’m pretty sure I could convince my colleagues that you’re a prime suspect. You’d have to explain the secret meetings and everything else.’

The Lord Provost’s eyes narrowed, his eyebrows meeting in the middle. ‘What is it you want?’

‘I want you to tell me all about it.’

‘You say you already know.’

‘But I’ve yet to hear anyone say the words.’

The Lord Provost considered, then shook his head.

‘Does that mean,’ Rebus said, ‘that your ward is more important than your own reputation?’

‘I can’t say anything.’

‘Because PanoTech’s involved?’

Kennedy’s face contracted as if he’d been punched. ‘It’s got nothing to do with PanoTech. That company is one of the largest employers in Lothian. We need it, Inspector.’

‘If it has nothing to do with PanoTech, does it still have to do with Robbie Mathieson?’

‘I can’t say anything.’

‘Who’s Dalgety? Why does he scare you so much? Kirstie told me she heard you talking about him with someone. And when you saw she’d written his name on the LABarum plan, you suddenly didn’t want her found.’

‘I’ve told you, I’m saying nothing!’

‘In that case,’ Rebus said, ‘I won’t trouble you any further.’ He stood up. ‘I’m sure you’ve got plenty to keep you busy, such as writing your speech of resignation.’ He walked to the door.

‘Inspector …’ Rebus turned. ‘About Kirstie … as she all right?’

Rebus walked back into the room. ‘Would you like to see her?’ The Lord Provost seemed in two minds. Weakness was there to be exploited. ‘I could bring her here, but it would have to be a trade.’

‘You don’t “trade” with an innocent life!’

‘Not so innocent, sir. I could think up half a dozen charges against your daughter, and between you and me I’d be failing in my duty if I didn’t apprehend her and put her in a cell.’

The Lord Provost turned away and walked to the window. ‘You know, Inspector, I’m no virgin, believe me. You want dirty tricks, underhand tactics, there’s a lot you can learn from politics, even at district level … especially at district level.’ Kennedy paused. ‘You say you can bring her here?’

‘I think so.’

‘Then do it.’

‘And we’ll have a little chat, you and me? You’ll tell me what I want to know?’

The Lord Provost turned to face him. ‘I’ll tell you,’ he said, his face ashen.

They shook hands on it, and the Lord Provost saw him to the door. Somewhere behind them in the bungalow, Mrs Kennedy was singing a hymn.

So all Rebus had to do now was persuade Kirstie Kennedy that east or west, home was still the best.

Rebus went to her flat first, but there was no one home. He tried a couple of the drop-in centres, including the one behind Waverley — no joy — then started on the burger bars on Princes Street before driving back to Leith and visiting three pubs where pushers and users were known to meet. Nothing. He took a breather in a bar where he was less likely to get himself stabbed, then went to have a word with the few chilled prostitutes plying their trade near the Inner Harbour. One of them thought she recognised the description, but she could have been lying: it was warmer in his car than outside.

Then Rebus remembered something Kirstie had said, about how Paul’s mum liked her. So he drove to Paul’s parents’ address. Duggan was embarrassed to see him, but his mother, a tiny, kindly woman, invited Rebus in.

‘No night to be yacking on the doorstep.’

It was a tidy little flat just off Abbeyhill. Duggan gave Rebus a warning look as he led him, at his mother’s insistence, into the living room. Duggan’s dad was there, smoking a pipe and reading the paper. He stood up to shake Rebus’s hand. He was small, like his wife. So here was the arch criminal, Paul Duggan, in his lair.

‘Paul’s not in any trouble, I hope,’ the father asked, teeth grinning around the stem of his pipe.

‘Not at all, Mr Duggan, I’m just looking for a friend of Paul’s.’

‘Well, Paul will help if he can, won’t you, Paul?’

‘Aye, sure,’ Paul Duggan mumbled.

‘It’s Kirstie,’ Rebus said.

‘Kirstie?’ Mr Duggan said. ‘That name’s familiar.’

‘Maybe Paul’s brought her back here once or twice, Mr Duggan.’

‘Well, Inspector, he does sometimes bring a girlfriend back — but not for hanky-panky, mind you.’ He winked. ‘We keep an eye on him.’

The two men shared a laugh. Paul Duggan was shrinking almost visibly, bowed over on the sofa, hands between his legs. The years were peeling off him like paper from a damp wall.

‘I haven’t seen her,’ he told Rebus.

‘Since when?’

‘Since the time we took her home.’

‘Any idea where she could be?’

Mr Duggan removed the pipe from his mouth. ‘I’m sure Paul would tell you if he could, Inspector.’

‘Have you tried the flat?’ Paul asked. Rebus nodded.

‘She’s not in your bedroom, is she, Paul?’

Duggan twitched, and his father sat forward in the chair. ‘Now, Inspector,’ he said, trying for another grin. Trying too hard.

‘Where’s your wife, Mr Duggan?’

Rebus got up and walked into the hall. Mrs Duggan was about to sneak Kirstie Kennedy out the front door.

‘Bring her through here instead, Mrs Duggan,’ Rebus said.

So they all sat in the living room, and the Duggans explained everything.

‘See, we know who Kirstie is’, Mrs Duggan said, ‘and she’s told us why she ran away, and I can’t say I blame her.’ The Lord Provost’s daughter sat next to her on the sofa, staring into the fire, and Mrs Duggan ran her hand through Kirstie’s hair. ‘Kirstie’s got a problem with drugs, she accepts that and so do we. We thought if she was going to fight it, she better move in here for a wee while, get right away from all the … from the people who live that sort of life.’

‘Is that right, Kirstie? Are you kicking it?’

She nodded, suppressing a shiver. Mrs Duggan put an arm around her. ‘Sweats and shivers,’ she said. ‘Mr Leitch told us to expect them.’ She turned to Rebus. ‘He works at the Waverley drop-in.’ Rebus nodded. ‘He told us all about cold turkey.’ She turned her attention back to the girl. ‘Cold turkey, Kirstie, like on Boxing Day, eh?’

Kirstie snuggled deeper into Mrs Duggan’s side, like she was a child again and Mrs Duggan her mother … Yes, thought Rebus, the mother she’s been denied. And here was a willing substitute.

‘See,’ Mr Duggan said, ‘we’re afraid you’ve come to take her away. She doesn’t want to go home.’

‘She doesn’t have to go home, Mr Duggan. The drugs apart, she’s done nothing wrong.’ Paul and Kirstie looked at him, and saw he wasn’t going to mention the hoax kidnap. ‘But the thing is,’ Rebus said, his eyes holding Kirstie’s, ‘I need a favour. I’ve seen your stepmother, and I don’t blame you for not wanting to see her … But what about your father? Would it hurt you to talk to him for five minutes, just to let him see you’re all right?’

There was a long silence. Mrs Duggan whispered something in Kirstie’s ear.

‘I don’t suppose so,’ Kirstie said at last. ‘Just now? Tonight?’

Rebus shook his head. ‘Tomorrow will be fine.’

‘I might be worse tomorrow.’

‘I’ll take that chance. Just one other thing: last time we met, you were telling me why you took that document from your dad’s office.’

She nodded. ‘I heard him talking on the telephone. He was talking about covering something up, some scandal. I heard him mention LABarum. He’d always told me I had to follow his example, but he turned out to be just like all the others — a liar, a cheat, a coward.’ She was bursting into tears. ‘He let me down again. So I grabbed that … whatever it was. I saw it was about LABarum.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Maybe I just wanted him to know I knew. It’s all rotten, all of it.’

Mrs Duggan was still trying to quiet her as Rebus left the flat.

Back home, Rebus got the feeling the phone had just stopped ringing. Two minutes later, with the Stones softly on the hi-fi, it rang again. He’d been sitting with the whisky bottle in his lap, wondering if he could resist, wondering why he bothered.

‘Yes?’

‘It’s Davidson.’

‘Still at the station?’

‘That I am. Gerry’s still not talking.’

‘Have you offered him a deal?’

‘Not yet. We’re holding him on a charge of assault, naming you as the injured party.’

‘I’ll never get the grease off that jacket. What about the search warrant?’

‘We got it. I’m just waiting for Burns to get back. Hold on, here he comes.’ Davidson put his hand over the mouthpiece. Rebus unscrewed the bottle with his free hand, but couldn’t find a glass. Davidson came back on the line. ‘It’s a result. Two credit cards, Access and Visa, in the name of Thomas Gillespie, hidden under the mattress.’

‘So now will you go for a deal?’

‘I’ll talk to his solicitor.’

‘We don’t just want Dip, remember. We want whoever ordered the hit.’

‘Sure, John.’ There wasn’t what Rebus would call fervour in Davidson’s voice. ‘Now the bad news.’

‘Listen, I’m serious — we want the paymaster!’

‘And I’m serious about it being bad news.’

Rebus quietened. ‘OK, what is it?’

‘You told me to check if Charters had had any visitors since you saw him Sunday night. Well, he had one the next morning, and then again today. She’s a regular apparently.’

‘Yes?’

‘Her name’s Samantha Rebus. Now, John, it may be nothing at all. I mean, she’s visited other prisoners too, and we know she works for SWEEP. It could just be that she ’

But John Rebus was already on his way.

‘I don’t see what the big deal is,’ Sammy said.

‘What?’

‘I don’t see what’s the big deal.’

He’d been so steamed up, he’d rung Patience’s doorbell twice before remembering the unpleasantness surrounding his last visit. But Sammy opened the door.

‘Grab your coat,’ he hissed, ‘tell Patience it’s a friend and you’re going out.’

They’d gone to a hotel just around the corner from the flat. The bar was almost deserted, just the barmaid and one regular at the corner of the bar, the hatch open so there was no barrier between them. Rebus and Sammy took their drinks to the furthest corner.

‘The big deal is,’ he said, ‘you smuggled something out of jail for him.’

‘Just a letter.’

She calmly sipped her tequila and orange. Fathers and daughters, Rebus thought. He pictured the Lord Provost and Kirstie. You knew they had to make choices, and nobody in life made the right choices all the time. Daughters never grew up; in their fathers’ eyes, all they did was become women.

‘I’ve done it before,’ Sammy was saying. ‘You know the warders read all the mail before it goes out? They censor it and leer over it and … and I think it’s revolting.’ She paused. ‘They can get very sniffy about gay love letters.’

‘Charters told you he was gay?’

‘He hinted at it: “a very special friend”, he said.’

Rebus shook his head. ‘Gerry Dip’s special, all right. He’s absolutely choice. Did you take the note to his flat?’

‘The only address Derwood had was the chip shop.’

‘And did you read the note?’

‘Of course not.’

‘A sealed envelope?’ She nodded. ‘Quite a fat envelope?’

She thought about it. ‘Yes,’ she said.

‘That’s because it was full of money.’

‘What have I done?’ Her face was reddening, her voice rising. ‘Broken some lousy prison rule, that’s all.’

‘I wish it were,’ Rebus said quietly.

She quietened. ‘What then?’

He couldn’t tell her. He couldn’t do that to her … But it would all come out eventually, wouldn’t it?

‘Sammy,’ he said, ‘I think Charters paid Gerry Dip to kill a man. That envelope you delivered contained instructions and payment.’

Her face lost all its lovely colour. ‘What?’ The way she said it turned Rebus’s gut liquid. She tried picking up her drink, but spilt it, then retched into her cupped hands. Rebus got a handerkerchief out of his pocket and handed it over.

‘You’re trying to scare me,’ she said, ‘that’s all. You don’t like my job and you’re trying to scare me off!’

‘Sammy, please …’

She got to her feet, spilling the rest of her drink over his trousers. He followed her to the door, watched by barmaid and customer, and called after her. But she was running: down the steps on to the pavement, and then along to the corner and around it, back into Oxford Terrace.

‘Sammy!’

He watched her run, watched her until she’d disappeared.

‘Shite!’

A drunk, walking past, wished him a belated happy new year. Rebus told the man where he could stick it.

36

As arranged, Rebus drove to South Gyle next morning. He parked his car around the corner from the Lord Provost’s house, then went and rang the doorbell. The Lord Provost himself opened the door, and looked to left and right as if expecting her to be there.

‘We’ll have to go for a little drive,’ Rebus informed him.

Then a figure came storming along the passage behind Cameron Kennedy and brushed him aside.

‘Where is she?’ Mrs Kennedy’s voice trembled with emotion, her nostrils flaring. ‘Where’s the lost lamb?’ She turned to her husband. ‘You said he’d bring her!’

The Lord Provost looked at Rebus, who said nothing. ‘I have to go with Inspector Rebus, Beth.’

‘I’ll fetch my coat,’ Mrs Kennedy said.

‘No, Beth.’ The Lord Provost laid a hand on her arm. ‘Best I go alone.’

An argument started. Rebus turned and walked back towards the gate. The Lord Provost came after him.

‘Don’t you want a coat?’ Rebus asked.

‘I’ll be fine.’

His wife was calling to them from the door. “‘Thy will be blyther in heiven owre ae sinner at repents nor owre ninetie-nine saunts at need nae repentance.”’

‘She’s learned the New Testament in Scots,’ the Lord Provost explained. ‘She knows it backwards.’ It didn’t sound like a boast.

Kirstie was sitting in the back seat of Rebus’s car. Beside her was Paul Duggan. She’d had a bath, and her hair had been washed and rearranged. She was wearing clothes Mrs Duggan had bought for her — styles parents thought teenagers liked. You’d take her for a normal, sulky, shoulder-bechipped teenager, nothing more — if it wasn’t for the vomiting fits and the muscle spasms, the bolts of lightning through her bones.

Kennedy gasped when he saw her.

‘I said I’d bring her,’ Rebus told him. ‘Now get in.’

The Lord Provost’s face was like chiselled stone as they drove towards the Forth Bridges, the same route Rebus had taken that night with Lauderdale. He told himself he’d chosen the meeting place because it was nearby, open and private. But he thought maybe he had a deeper motive.

They came off the A90 and went three-quarters round the roundabout, then headed towards the Moat House Hotel, whose huge, desolate car park overlooked the Forth. At this time of day, this time of year, the car park was deserted save for a Ford Capri which looked as if it had been abandoned after a joyride. Rebus stopped the car and turned off the ignition.

‘This is where we get out,’ he told Paul Duggan.

Duggan squeezed Kirstie’s hand. ‘Will you be all right?’ he asked her.

‘I’ll be fine,’ she said coolly, watching her father in the rearview mirror, just as he was watching her.

So Rebus and Duggan got out.

Rebus walked across the tarmac and stood at the furthest edge. You got a great view of both bridges, and of the Fife coast beyond. You also took a beating from the wind, which blew from all directions. Rebus rode with it, swaying a little from the ankles. With his head tucked into his overcoat, he managed to light a cigarette at the sixth attempt. The smell of butane caused momentary nausea.

Paul Duggan was a little way off, resting one arm on a dull metal pay-view telescope. Rebus left him alone and just stared at the scenery. The clouds crawled past, looking as if they’d been hurt in too many bar room brawls. Beneath them, Fife was a slab of grey-green pavement.

Paul Duggan had finally arrived beside him. ‘Thinking about Willie and Dixie?’ he suggested. Rebus glanced at him but said nothing.

‘I’m not just a pretty face, Inspector.’

‘I was thinking that they got me into this. Their suicide. They got me thinking about things … asking myself questions. When McAnally killed himself, I was interested enough to want to know why.’ He smiled. ‘You don’t know what I’m talking about.’

Duggan just shrugged. ‘I’m listening though.’ There was silence between them for a while. Duggan scuffed his toes against the kerb. ‘See this trouble I’m in, with the police and council and that …?’

‘You think I can help?’

‘I don’t know.’

It was strange that Kirstie should have run away from one smothering household only to end up in another, but Rebus thought he knew the reason why. After the deaths of Willie and Dixie, she’d disintegrated. To her, they had represented ‘real life’, a life well away from her father and his political conspiracies. Willie and Dixie had been the other side of the coin, a side she’d come to like, maybe even admire. And she’d killed them, after which she’d spiralled downwards until she realised she needed shelter and comfort, or she too might die. Paul Duggan had been there for her, and so had his parents.

‘You know,’ Rebus said, thinking aloud, ‘I think I know why she scrawled “Dalgety” on that document. If her father had paid the ransom — maybe even if he hadn’t — she was planning to send the LABarum plan back to him. It was a warning, a message that she knew something, and that he should leave her alone if he didn’t want her to reveal it to the world.’

‘Never mind Kirstie for the moment, what about me?’

‘Everybody’s got to pay, Paul,’ Rebus said, not looking at him. ‘That’s the way it works.’

‘Aye, right,’ Duggan said dismissively. ‘And if I was some rich bastard that had been to Fettes, I’d have to pay too, is that right? I’d be treated the same as an Oxgangs drop-out? Come on, Inspector, Kirstie’s told me the way it works, the whole system.’

He turned and shuffled away.

He had a point, one Rebus would happily concede, only he had other things to think about right now. The wind had finished his cigarette in double-quick time, so he lit another. Duggan was over at the abandoned car, peering in. He tried a door, opened it, and got in. Shelter accomplished. Some people said the weather made the Scots: long drear periods punctuated by short bursts of enlightenment and cheer. There was almost certainly something to the theory. It was hard to believe this winter would end, yet he knew that it would: knew, but almost didn’t believe. A matter of faith, as the old priest would say, or maybe the reverse of faith. Rebus hadn’t been to church in a while, and missed his conversations with Father Leary. But he didn’t miss the church, or even the Church. Leary would have no problem with suicide, in either concept or practice: it was a great sin, full stop. Assisted suicide, too, was a sin, every bit as heinous.

But when Rebus’s mother had been ill that last time, she’d begged his father for release. And one day, young John had walked in and had seen his father on the edge of her bed. She was asleep, her chest making awful, liquid sounds, and his father sat there with a pillow in his hands … looking at that pillow, then up at his son, asking to be told what to do.

Rebus knew if he hadn’t walked in, his father might have done it, might have put her out of her misery.

Instead of which, she lingered for weeks.

He turned away from the Forth and found his vision blurred. He angled his head upwards, swallowing back the tears, and walked over to the abandoned car. Inside, Paul Duggan was crying.

‘They were my friends, too,’ he bawled. ‘And her stupid plan killed them! And yet I can’t hate her for it … can’t even get angry with her.’

Rebus put a hand on Duggan’s shoulder.

‘Nobody killed them,’ he said quietly. ‘They chose for themselves.’

The two of them sat there for a while, out of the wind, in shelter that wasn’t theirs.

Afterwards, Rebus drove them back into town. The teenagers in the back were both pink-eyed from crying; the two men in the front were not. He didn’t feel proud of the fact. He drove past the turn-off to Kennedy’s estate, and the Lord Provost still said nothing. Eventually, Rebus pulled the car on to the kerb outside Duggan’s Abbeyhill home.

‘Where are we?’ Kennedy asked.

‘Kirstie’s staying with some nice people,’ Rebus explained.

The Lord Provost turned to his daughter. ‘You’re not coming home?’

‘Not yet,’ she said, as if each word was costing her something.

‘You said you’d bring her back.’

‘I didn’t say she’d stay,’ Rebus said. ‘Kirstie’s got to decide if and when.’

She was already getting out of the car, as was Duggan. On the pavement, she doubled over and dry-heaved, spitting up foamy saliva.

‘Something’s wrong with her,’ Kennedy said. He made to open his door, but Rebus pulled the car abruptly off the kerb and into traffic.

‘You know what’s wrong with her,’ he said. ‘Now she’s coming off, and I think she’ll be all right.’

‘You infer,’ Kennedy said coldly, ‘that she wouldn’t be “all right” at home.’

‘What do you think?’ Rebus said, and he left it at that.

‘Where are we going?’

‘One good thing about Edinburgh, Lord Provost — there’s always a quiet spot nearby. You and me are going to have a talk. At least, you’ll be talking, I’ll be listening.’

He directed them around the base of Salisbury Crags and up to a car park near the summit of Arthur’s Seat. There were a few cars already there, parents and children out braving the gale. They would probably call it ‘blowing away the cobwebs’.

But Rebus and the Lord Provost stayed in the car, and the Lord Provost did the talking — that had been their bargain, after all. And afterwards, with the silence between them like an extra seat, Rebus drove the Lord Provost home.

There was a man at the top of the hill. He was mending a wall.

Rebus followed the line of the dry-stane dyke, climbing slowly. He was between Edinburgh and Carlops, in the foothills of the Pentland range. There was no escape from the wind and the cold up here, but Rebus was sweating as he neared the top. The man saw him coming, but didn’t stop working. He had three piles of stones close to him, varying in sizes and shapes. He would pick one up, feel it, study it, then either put it back in the pile or else add it to the wall. And with a fresh stone placed in the wall, a new challenge presented itself, and he had to study his mounds of stones all over again. Rebus stopped to catch his breath, and watched the man. It was the most painstaking work imaginable, and at the end of it the wall would be held together by nothing more than the artful arrangement of its constituent parts.

‘It must be a dying craft,’ Rebus said, having gained the summit.

‘Why do you say that?’ The man seemed amused.

Rebus shrugged. ‘Electric fences, barbed wire; not many farmers depend on dry-stane dykes.’ He paused. ‘Or dry-stane dykers, come to that.’

The man turned to look at him. He was ruddy-cheeked with a thick red beard and fair hair turning grey at the temples. He wore a baggy Aran sweater and green combat jacket, cord trousers and black boots. He wasn’t wearing gloves, and kept blowing on his hands.

‘I need to keep them bare,’ he explained. ‘I feel the stones better that way.’

‘Is your name Dalgety?’

‘Aidan Dalgety, at your service.’

‘Mr Dalgety, I’m Detective Inspector Rebus.’

‘Is that right?’

‘You don’t sound surprised.’

‘In a job like this, you don’t get many visitors. That’s one of the things I like about it. But since I started this wall, it’s been like a main thoroughfare rather than a deserted hillside.’

‘I know Councillor Gillespie visited you.’

‘Several times.’

‘He’s dead.’

‘I know.’

‘And that’s why you’re not surprised to see a detective?’

Dalgety smiled to himself and judged another stone, turning it in his hand, weighing it in his palm, feeling for its centre of gravity. He placed it on the wall, then thought better of it and moved it to another spot. The process took a couple of minutes.

Rebus looked back the way he’d come, following the wall down to the by-road where he’d parked his car. ‘Tell me, how many stones go into a wall like this?’

‘Tens of thousands,’ Dalgety said. ‘You could spend years counting them. Men took years building them.’

‘It’s a far cry from computers.’

‘Do you think so? Maybe it is. But then again, maybe there’s some connection.’

‘I understand you were Robbie Mathieson’s partner, back in the early days of PanoTech.’

‘It wasn’t called PanoTech in my day. The name belongs to Robbie.’

‘But the early designs … the early work was yours?’

‘Maybe it was.’ Dalgety tossed a stone from one pile to another.

‘That’s what I hear. He ran the company, but you designed the circuits. Your ideas made the company work.’ Dalgety didn’t say anything. ‘And then he bought you out.’

‘And then he bought me out,’ Dalgety echoed.

‘Is that the way it happened?’

‘It happened just the way I told it to the councillor. I had a … I’d been working too hard for too long. I had a breakdown. And when I came out of it, the company wasn’t mine any longer. Robbie had kissed me goodbye. And all the designs were his, too. The whole company was his. Dalmat, we were called — Dalgety and Mathieson. That was the first thing he changed.’ Dalgety was weighing another stone.

‘How did he find the money to buy you out? I take it you were bought out?’

‘Oh yes, it was all above board. He had some money invested somewhere: it paid a handsome profit and he used it to buy my share.’ He paused. ‘That’s what the lawyers told me afterwards. I didn’t remember any of it — discussions, signing the papers, none of it.’

‘You must have been bitter.’

Dalgety laughted. ‘I had another breakdown. They put me in a private nursing home. That took care of a lot of the pay-off money. When I came out, I didn’t want anything to do with the industry, or any industry like it. End of story.’

‘PanoTech’s grown since.’

‘Robbie Mathieson is good at what he does. Do you know about him?’ Rebus shook his head. ‘His family moved to the States when Robbie was eighteen. He joined one of the big boys, IBM or Hewlett Packard, someone like that. The company had operations in Europe, and Robbie was posted here. He liked Scotland. I was working on my own at the time, designing stuff, messing about with ideas, most of them impractical. We met, got to like one another, and he told me he was resigning and starting up his own computer business right here. He persuaded me along with him. We had a couple of good years …’ Dalgety seemed to have forgotten about the stone he was holding. The wind was hurting Rebus’s ears, but he didn’t let it show.

‘I’m not telling you the whole truth,’ Aidan Dalgety said at last. ‘I was an alcoholic; or, at least, I was on the verge of becoming one. I think that’s why Robbie wanted rid of me. Seemed to me afterwards that he must have been planning it for a while. I signed away the rights to a couple of components which went on to make PanoTech a lot of money.’ He took a deep breath. ‘But that was then and this is now.’

‘This money Mathieson used to buy you out, where did it come from again?’

‘There was a man called Derwood Charters. He got to know Robbie early on. I think he wanted to become company secretary, something like that. He had a lot of money-making schemes. Or should I say scams. Robbie told me about a couple of them. Charters would set up paper companies and then screw grants from all over the place — local authority, SDA, European Community. He had a genius for that sort of thing. I think he must have wangled development money for PanoTech somewhere down the line — the company grew so fast so quickly.’

‘And you’ve never said anything about any of this?’

‘Why should I? Good luck to them.’

‘But Mathieson practically robbed you!’

‘And now he keeps a lot of people in employment. I’m not such a high price to pay for an outcome like that.’

Rebus sat down on the cold earth, his back against the wall, and ran his hands over his head.

‘You know,’ Dalgety said. ‘I still take an interest in the industry. I don’t mean to, but I do. Thirty-five per cent of all the PCs manufactured in Europe are manufactured here, twenty-four per cent of all semi-conductors. Two million computers a year come out of IBM’s Greenock plant — that includes their world supply of screens and every IBM computer sold in Europe.’ He was laughing. ‘Fifty thousand people in the industry, and it’s growing. The Japanese come here because productivity’s so high — can you believe that?’ He stopped laughing abruptly. ‘But the root system’s shallow, Inspector. We’re big in hardware, but we need software, too, and we need to start sourcing — we source only fifteen per cent of all our components. We’re an assembly line. Maybe PanoTech can change that.’ He shrugged. ‘Good luck to them.’

‘So why did you talk to Gillespie?’

‘Maybe to get it off my chest.’ He examined the stone in his hand a final time, then threw it far into the distance. ‘Maybe because nothing I say can make any difference. No investigation of PanoTech is going to get very far.’

‘The councillor found that out.’ Aidan Dalgety looked at him, but said nothing. ‘You’re not scared?’

‘No,’ Dalgety used both hands to lift a larger rock on to the wall. ‘I’m not scared at all. This wall will be here after I’m gone, whether I live to be a hundred or drop dead tomorrow.’ He patted the wall with his hands. ‘I know what lasts.’

Rebus got to his feet. ‘Well, thanks for talking to me.’

‘No problem. I get bored sometimes just talking to the wall.’ He was laughing again as Rebus headed downhill. ‘You know that old saying about walls having ears …?’

It was a day for open spaces. In the late afternoon, Rebus walked in the Botanic Gardens with Sir lain Hunter.

‘I like this place,’ Sir lain said, striding gamely with his rolled umbrella across the grass towards Inverleith House. ‘Of course, it’s lost something since they moved the Gallery of Modern Art. What do you think?’

‘I think you’re stalling.’

Sir lain smiled. ‘I’ve conducted meetings here before, Inspector. It’s my open-air office. I choose the Botanies for some meetings precisely because they are so open. No chance of being overheard.’ He stopped, looking around. The city centre was a panorama before them. ‘Marvellous view,’ he said.

‘Nobody’s listening in on us, if that’s what you’re worried about.’

‘Well, the thought had crossed my mind. Nowhere is safe in this age of electronic eavesdropping.’

‘I don’t need to bug conversations,’ Rebus said. ‘I’ve got Gillespie’s files.’

‘Poor Councillor Gillespie.’

‘Yes, poor Councillor Gillespie, lured to an alley and then stabbed in the guts by an ex-con hired by Derwood Charters, just as Charters paid McAnally to put a scare into Gillespie. I don’t suppose he knew how far Wee Shug would go, what he’d do … He went too far.’

‘And brought you scurrying to the scene, Inspector. Yes, perhaps that was a mistake. Well, I’m going to trust you. I’m going to assume you’re not recording this little tete-a-tete.’ Sir lain tucked his cashmere scarf a little tighter around his neck. ‘Now, why did you want to meet?’

‘Because you’re at the centre of it all.’

‘Can you prove that?’

‘Like I say, I’ve got — ’

‘Yes, yes, you’ve got Gillespie’s files, but what do they prove?’

‘You should know. The Lord Provost told you everything Gillespie told him. They prove that Charters’ various companies existed only as shells for the most part. The front company was legit, but the others … well, if anyone decided to check, Charters would rent short-term office space, pay someone to take in mail addressed to Mensung House … that sort of thing. And I’m assuming he had someone at the Scottish Office tipping him off about any forthcoming investigations — he couldn’t have run his scams so well for so long without help. How am I doing so far?’

Sir lain was admiring the view. ‘Wild inaccuracies compounded by conjecture.’

‘Charters had sleeping partners. See, once the fake companies were running, he could apply for grants and other incentives, but to get the companies going in the first place required cash, working capital, and that’s where the sleeping partners came in. He could guarantee a huge return on investment, provided the grant money came through. He was a wizard at playing the system, running rings around it. He made quick money for a lot of people, including Robbie Mathieson. I’m sure Mathieson wouldn’t want anyone to know that the early money for PanoTech came from ripping off SDA and European Community schemes.

‘Then there’s Haldayne at the US Consulate. He’d met Charters socially, and was keen to make money. As an aside, I’d guess that once he was involved, you were able to pressure Haldayne into helping persuade American companies to move here. Same goes for Robbie Mathieson — he had US connections in the computer industry.’

‘That’s slanderous,’ Sir lain remarked, his smile unimpeachable.

‘Well, Haldayne’s been to your Royal Circus pied-a-terre plenty of times — we’ve got the parking tickets. You must have had something to talk about. Charters couldn’t have got away with it, not to the same extent, without a network of friends and people he bribed. Civil servants predominantly. I’ve been asking around, Sir lain. Eight years ago, you weren’t nearly so high up the pecking order. But then you started a string of successes bringing new business into Scotland, and you started your ascent. And Ruthie Estate must have cost a bit. I wonder, did you buy that in the past eight years?

‘The whole thing worked brilliantly for a long time. Companies came and went, and sometimes their registration documents disappeared with them. Then the SDA became Scottish Enterprise, accounting procedures changed, and nobody was going to be looking back at old projects financed by a dead organisation. But Charters couldn’t stop, and one time he got sloppy, and was caught early on. He pled guilty, protecting his friends and making sure nothing would come out at a trial, and then Gillespie caught a glimpse of something, and it got him wondering. He started digging, and word got back to Charters.’ Rebus paused. ‘You told me once that you liked a bit of intrigue: how am I doing?’

Sir lain just shrugged, looking bemused.

‘Well,’ said Rebus, ‘I’m just getting to the best bit. Now, who passed the word back to Charters? Because whoever did is partly to blame for Gillespie’s eventual murder. Gillespie had told his story to the Lord Provost — only natural that he’d tell somebody — but he never guessed the Lord Provost would go straight to Mathieson and tell him. But what else was he going to do? Mathieson is the biggest employer in his ward; the Lord Provost thought he’d warn him what was coming.’

‘You think Mathieson told Charters?’

‘Possibly. It could have been any of you.’

‘Us?’

‘You’re in it up to your cashmere scarf.’

‘Careful what you say, Inspector. Be very careful.’

‘Why? So I don’t get a knife in the guts?’

Hunter’s cheeks coloured. ‘That was …’ He swallowed back the rest.

‘Charters’ doing?’ Rebus guessed. ‘Well, someone had to tell Charters in the first place, and they did so knowing he’d do something about it, something they were scared to do themselves.’

Sir Iain’s eyes were watering, but it was from the breeze, not contrition.

‘What are you going to do, Inspector?’

‘I’m going to nail as many of you as I can.’

Finally Hunter turned to him. ‘Do you recall what I said to you that day on my estate? Jobs are at risk, lives are at risk.’ He sounded grotesquely sincere.

‘It’s all just policy to you, isn’t it?’ Rebus said. ‘No right and wrong, legal and illegal, no fair and corrupt, just politics.’

‘Listen to yourself, man,’ Sir lain Hunter spat. ‘Who are you, some Old Testament prophet? What gives you the right to hold the scales?’ He dug the tip of his umbrella into the ground, and waited for his breathing to ease. ‘If you’d look into your heart, you’d see we’re not on opposite sides.’

‘But we are,’ Rebus said determinedly.

‘If this ever became public, there’d be more than a scandal — there’d be a crisis. Trust would be lost, overseas investors and corporations would turn away from Scotland. Don’t tell me you want that.’

Rebus thought of Aidan Dalgety, busying himself with an endless wall — his only answer to frustration and anger. ‘None of it’s worth a single human life,’ he said quietly.

‘I think it is,’ Hunter said. ‘I really do think it is.’

Rebus turned to walk away.

‘Inspector? I’d like you to talk with some people.’

It was the invitation Rebus had been waiting for. ‘When?’

‘Tonight if at all possible. I’ll phone you with the details.’

‘I’ll be at St Leonard’s till six,’ Rebus said, leaving the old man to his view.

But Rebus couldn’t face the police station, so went home instead.

And found, slowly but with growing confidence, that his flat had been broken into in his absence. It was a clean, meticulous job. There were no signs of forced entry, nothing had been taken, almost nothing looked out of place. But his books had been moved. He had them in what looked like unplanned towers, but were actually the order in which he’d bought them and intended to read them. One of the towers had been knocked over and put back up again out of order. His drawers had been closed, too, though he always left them open. And his record collection had been rifled — as if he could hide sacks of shredded paper inside album sleeves …

He sat down with a glass of whisky and tried not to think any thoughts. If he thought, he might not act. He might drop out, like Dalgety, and let them get on with it. He loathed Sir lain Hunter for the way he used people. But then Paul Duggan used people too, if it came down to it. Kirstie, too, had used and abused her friends. Everybody used someone. The difference was, Sir Iain and his kind had everything — heart, soul, silver and gold — only nobody knew it, never even gave it a thought.

What was more, probably nobody cared.

His phone rang at seven.

‘I did try St Leonard’s,’ Sir Iain said. ‘They told me you’d not been back this afternoon.’

‘Don’t worry, your friends had left before I got back.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Nothing, forget it. But hear this: Gillespie’s files are in a safe place, and I mean safe.’

‘You’re not making much sense, Inspector.’

‘Is that for the benefit of anyone listening in?’

‘I only called to remind you of our meeting. Nine tonight, would that suit?’

‘Let me just check my social calendar.’

‘You know Gyle Park West?’

‘I know it.’

‘The PanoTech factory. You’ll be expected at nine.’

37

PanoTech had won awards for the design of its Gyle Park West factory, with its automated shopfloor delivery system (a series of robot fork-lifts on a network of rails), and its bulbous shape with optimised interior light. The reception area was chrome and grey metal with a black rubberised floor.

There was a security guard on the desk, but Rebus was expected. As he walked through the automatic doors, an automatic voice telling him he was entering a ‘Positively No Smoking Zone’, he saw Sir Iain Hunter standing by a display case. There was a sheet over the case, but Sir Iain had lifted it, the better to inspect the model beneath.

‘The new LABarum building,’ he explained. ‘They’ll start construction in the spring.’ He turned to Rebus. ‘New jobs, Inspector.’

‘And another feather in your cap. What’ll it be this time — Lord Hunter of Ruthie?’

Sir Iain’s smile evaporated. ‘They’re waiting for us in the boardroom.’

They took a bright elevator to the third and top floor, and emerged into a compact hallway with three doors off. Sir lain pressed four numbers on a wall console, and pushed open one of the doors. Inside, three men were waiting, standing by the window. A light airplane was taking off from Turnhouse, so close you could almost see the exhausted executives inside.

Rebus looked at Haldayne first, then at J Joseph Simpson, and finally at Robbie Mathieson. ‘The gang’s all here,’ he commented.

‘That’s a cheap shot.’ Mathieson came forward to take Rebus’s hand. He was wearing an expensive suit, but showed he’d put aside the day’s cares by having shed his tie and undone the top button of his shirt.

‘Good of you to come,’ he told Rebus, with what some people would have taken for sincerity.

‘Good of you to ask me,’ Rebus said, playing the game.

Mathieson waved a hand around the room. It had cream walls, some blown-up photos of computer chips, and a dozen framed awards for export, industry and achievement. There was a large oval table placed centrally, black like the floor. ‘I have this place swept for bugs once a week, Inspector. Industrial espionage is a constant threat. Unfortunately, this meeting was arranged at short notice …’

‘So?’

‘So I don’t have any of the relevant devices to hand. How can I be sure you’re not bugged?’

‘What do you want me to do?’

Mathieson tried to look embarrassed. It was just an act. ‘I’d like you to remove your clothes.’

‘Nobody said it was going to be that sort of party.’

Mathieson smiled, but angled his head, expecting compliance.

‘Anyone want to join me?’ Rebus said, removing his jacket.

Sir Iain Hunter laughed.

Rebus studied the four men as he stripped. Simpson looked the most ill at ease; probably because he was the least of the group. Haldayne had seated himself at the table and was toying with a fat chrome pen, as if already bored with proceedings. Mathieson stood by the window, averting his eyes from the disrobing. But Sir Iain stood fast and watched.

Rebus got down to underpants and socks.

‘Thank you,’ Mathieson said. ‘Please get dressed again, and I apologise for putting you through that.’ He was using his business voice, deep and confident, the American burr touched with Scots inflexions. ‘Let’s all sit down.’

Simpson hadn’t even reached his chair before he started blurting out that he didn’t know what he was doing here, it was all such a long time ago …

‘You’re here, Joe,’ Mathieson reminded him firmly, ‘because you broke the law of the land. We all did.’

Then he turned to Rebus.

‘Inspector, a long time ago, almost in another age, we all profited from enterprises set up and run by Derwood Charters. Now, the question in court would be: did we know at the time that those profits were being made by fraudulent means?’ He shrugged. ‘That’s a question for the lawyers, and you know how lawyers can be, especially with questions of corporate law. They might take years and several million pounds to come to their conclusions. A lot of time, a lot of money …’ He opened his palms wide, a showman with his spiel. ‘And for what? The fact of the matter is, some of those profits — illicitly gained — went to build this very factory, bringing jobs to hundreds, with spin-off benefits creating and sustaining hundreds, maybe thousands more. Including, as you told me yourself, a friend of yours. Now, in law, none of this would count for anything — quite rightly so. The law is a stern mistress, that’s what they say.’ A little smile. ‘But the law, I would argue, isn’t everything. There are considerations of a moral, ethical and economic order.’ He raised a finger to stress the point, then touched it to his lips. ‘Moral law, Inspector, is something else again. If bad money is used to good purpose, can it really be called bad money? If a child stole some apples, then went on to be a life-saving surgeon, would any court convict him of the original theft?’

Mathieson had prepared his lines well. Rebus tried not to listen, but his ears were working too well. Mathieson seemed to sense a change in him, and got up to walk around the table.

‘Now, Inspector, if you want to drag up ancient history, you must do so, but the consequences will rest on your conscience. They sure as hell won’t be on mine.’

Rebus wondered if it was possible that Mathieson had compiled a dossier on him, had people watch him, talk to acquaintances. No, those methods would not have told the essential truths, they wouldn’t have revealed the man to whom Mathieson was appealing so subtly and cleverly. It had to be more than that. It had to be instinct.

‘A murder has been committed,’ Rebus said.

Mathieson had been expecting this argument. ‘Not with the knowledge of anyone in this room,’ he said.

‘You’re saying it was Charters alone?’

Mathieson nodded, stroking his beard. Rebus wondered if he’d grown it in memory of Aidan Dalgety. ‘Derwood has most to lose,’ he was explaining. ‘He’s been in prison all these years, and if you make public what you know, he’ll stay there.’

‘But Gillespie was set up by someone he knew. He wouldn’t have been in that alley otherwise.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because he was scared.’

‘Then who was it?’ Mathieson asked.

‘I would guess Sir Iain,’ Rebus said. Four pairs of eyes fixed the Permanent Secretary. ‘Maybe Charters himself will tell us. As you say, he’s got most to lose. He might be all too willing to bargain down any extension to his sentence.’

‘This is preposterous,’ Hunter said, thumping the floor with his cane.

‘Is it?’ Rebus said. ‘You like guns, Sir lain. You’ve got a whole room full of shotguns. What if I checked them against the records? Would they all be there, or would one be missing — the one you passed on to Shug McAnally?’ Rebus turned to Mathieson. ‘I want him. I want him tonight. The rest of you, maybe later.’

‘Hold on,’ Haldayne interrupted, ‘what evidence do you have? We’ve told you we don’t know any — ’

‘Save your defence, Mr Haldayne. I know Sir Iain’s been controlling you all these years.’

Mathieson was shaking his head slowly. ‘It would be very unfortunate indeed if any of this leaked out. If you arrest Sir Iain, you’ll precipitate a media circus as well as political questions. Why can’t you just charge Charters?’

‘Because then you’d all be getting away with it.’

Mathieson looked frustrated. ‘Inspector, understand one thing: I don’t care about Sir lain, I don’t care about anyone here tonight — including myself, if it comes down to it.’ His voice was rising the way it must have at other boardroom meetings, propelling him towards victory. ‘What I care about — more deeply than you would ever understand or believe — is PanoTech.’ Now the voice fell away. ‘LABarum will be a major expansion, Inspector. A new factory, new R and D unit, meaning more suppliers, contractors, a huge injection of hard cash and confidence into the local economy. But more than that, LABarum will be Europe’s Microsoft — Scotland will be producing its own software to install in the computers it manufactures.’

‘No wonder everyone wants you kept sweet.’

‘And you’re going to put all that in jeopardy over something that happened eight years ago and hurt no one at the time; no one but the taxpayer, who wouldn’t have known anyway how his or her money was being spent. A few million was a drop in the ocean, hardly even a ripple. Do you have any idea the scale of fraud being perpetrated in mainland Europe? A non-existent training scheme for airline pilots in Naples netted seventeen million pounds. Farm products and animals are shipped to and fro across borders, netting a subsidy every time. The EC has paid a billion pounds to have vineyards destroyed, yet there are more vines every year. The Greeks lop a branch off a vine and stick it in the ground so they’ll be paid for two. I repeat, a few million hurt no one.’

‘It hurt Aidan Dalgety.’

‘Aidan hurt himself. You didn’t know him then. He was becoming so erratic, he could have dragged the company down with him.’

‘It’s hurt other people since.’ Rebus thought of Kirstie, finding out her father was no icon. He thought of her plan, a plan they all thought they could get away with because her father wasn’t going to get his daughter back — they’d been bartering for the LABarum document, and for Kirstie’s knowledge of the whole affair … And Willie and Dixie had died.

‘I accept,’ Mathieson was saying, ‘that a man died. Derwood’s gone crazy, that’s what it comes down to.’

‘There’s one other consideration,’ said Sir Iain, who’d had time to recover. ‘As Mr Haldayne will acknowledge, two more US companies have seen the benefits of locating their European operations in Lothian. If my name, or Mr Haldayne’s, were to be bandied about …’ Hunter gave a modest shrug.

‘Well,’ Rebus said, ‘this is turning into a harder sell than a Costa del Sol time-share.’ He turned to Simpson. ‘What about you, Joe?’

Simpson nearly slid from his chair. ‘What about me?’

‘Do you have any properties to bargain with in this little game of moral “Monopoly”, or have you just picked up the Go-To-Jail card?’

‘I can’t go to jail! All I did was provide an accommodation address. It’s not illegal!’

‘Then why are you here?’ Rebus looked to Mathieson, whose lips twitched.

‘An offering,’ he said.

‘Hear that, Joe?’

Simpson had heard. He rose trembling to his feet.

‘You could always testify against them,’ Rebus told him.

‘With what?’ Haldayne said.

‘Mr Haldayne has a point, Inspector.’ Mathieson was sitting down again, in his big chief executive chair at the end of the table. Tables without corners were supposed to make everyone equal, but Mathieson’s chair was a leather throne. He looked and sounded completely unruffled by events thus far, while Rebus felt as if his head would explode.

Hundreds of jobs, spin-offs; happy, smiling faces. People like Salty Dougary, pride restored, given another chance. Did Rebus have the gall to think he could pronounce sentence on the future of people like that? People who wouldn’t care who got away with what, so long as they had a pay-cheque at the end of the month?

Gillespie had died, but Rebus knew these men hadn’t killed him, not directly. At the same time he hated them, hated their confidence and their indifference, hated their certainty that what they did was ‘for the good’. They knew the way the world worked; they knew who — or, rather, what — was in charge. It wasn’t the police or the politicians, it wasn’t anyone stupid enough to place themselves in the front line. It was secret, quiet men who got on with their work the world over, bribing where necessary, breaking the rules, but quietly, in the name of ‘progress’, in the name of the ‘system’.

Shug McAnally was dead, but no one was grieving: Tresa was spending his money, and having a good time with Maisie Finch. Audrey Gillespie, too, might start enjoying life for the first time in years, maybe with her lover. A man had died — cruelly and in terror — but he was all there was on Rebus’s side of the balance sheet. And on the other was everything else.

‘Well, Inspector?’ Mathieson could see something in Rebus’s eyes — a red light that had changed to amber. He rose from the throne. ‘Let’s have a drink.’

Rebus hadn’t noticed that the far wall was a series of recessed cupboards, their doors flush and handleless. Mathieson pushed the edge of one door and it opened automatically.

‘I hope malt whisky’s all right for everyone,’ Mathieson said, as lightly as if they’d just finished a few rubbers of bridge.

‘You don’t have a drop of gin?’ Joe Simpson squawked.

‘You’re right, Joe, I don’t.’

‘Then I’ll take whisky.’

‘Yes, Joe, you will.’

‘Inspector,’ Haldayne said in reasoned tones, ‘we’re in your hands. It’s your decision now.’

‘Let the man have a drink first,’ Mathieson chided.

Sir lain was staring levelly at Rebus, his mouth a moral pout. There was a line from a song stuck in Rebus’s head, just when he least needed it: you can’t always get what you want, but if you try some time, you’ll find you get what you need’.

I need a drink, he thought. And Robbie Mathieson — caring, smiling — brought him one.

‘You’re all right anyway,’ Rebus told Haldayne. ‘You’ll have diplomatic immunity, the Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free Card.’

Haldayne snorted his porcine laugh. ‘I’m also the only one here who lost five grand to Derwood Charters over Albavise.’

‘And you should have stayed out of it,’ Sir Iain snarled.

‘Hey,’ Haldayne said, light glinting from his glasses, ‘it worked in the past, didn’t it?’

‘You know, Inspector,’ Mathieson said, rising above all this, ‘any other policeman, any other public official, I might have been tempted to try offering a financial incentive.’

They all shut up to listen. Rebus sipped from his crystal tumbler.

‘But with you,’ Mathieson went on, ‘I think that might have the opposite effect from the one intended.’

‘And how much cash would I be worth to you, Mr Mathieson?’

‘To me, nothing. But if it were a question of saving PanoTech … Well, it wouldn’t be a matter of actual cash, of course. Cash is messy, and you wouldn’t want any problems with the Inland Revenue.’

‘Perish the thought.’

‘But a new house with its own grounds, a trust fund for a daughter, shares in a company which is going to do extraordinarily well in the next few years … And then there are less tangible rewards — but no less valuable for that: friends in the right places, help when needed, a word in the right ear come promotion time …’ Mathieson’s voice died away as he handed out the final drink — a very mean whisky for Joe Simpson — and took one for himself. He stood behind his throne, a plane droning in the night sky behind him.

‘A little bit of bribery, eh?’ Rebus commented.

Sir Iain Hunter sat forward. He looked like he was losing patience fast. He tapped his stick on the floor as he spoke. ‘Is it wrong,’ he said, ‘to bribe rich foreign companies to come to a depressed region? I’d say, Inspector, that morally speaking, anyone who did that would be in the right.’

‘Blackmail’s blackmail,’ Rebus said.

‘I disagree.’

‘And tell me, is nobody lining their own pockets?’

Sir lain savoured his whisky. ‘There must needs be incentives,’ he said drily.

Rebus laughed. He felt a little looser after the drink. ‘Exactly. And all this love of country and duty to the workers stuff is just so much shite. Tell me, why did you bring the DCC and me together that day?’

Sir lain twisted in his chair. ‘I saw how dangerous Charters had become. I wanted him stopped, but my position would not allow me to … I felt it best to point you in the right direction rather than leading you there.’

Rebus laughed again. ‘You old fraud. We were there to put the wind up Mathieson, to stop him even thinking about talking.’ He turned to Mathieson. ‘You were sweating like a pig in the killing pen.’ Then back to Sir lain. ‘You used us the same way Charters used McAnally. And you’ve blackmailed Haldayne into helping bring firms here. What is it, is corruption part of the job description?’

Hunter said nothing. He was too angry to speak.

‘Answer me this. Charters had a client called Quinlon, a building contractor who’d made money illicitly through a deal with someone in the SDA. Charters shopped Quinlon to the authorities so they’d think more seriously about closing down the SDA. Now, you all knew Charters back then, didn’t you? You all knew that if the SDA disappeared, all accounts would be closed and the various frauds would remain undiscovered. So did you know about Quinlon?’ He looked at Sir Iain. ‘Did Charters maybe come to you with the story, and leave you to see that the right people heard about it?’

‘This is sheer paranoia,’ Sir Iain said. ‘I refuse to discuss it.’

‘OK, let’s try this — Charters made a couple of million through his paper companies. Enough to make a stint in jail worth while. That’s why he pled guilty. And when he gets out, the money’s waiting for him. You all know that, and you’re not going to do a thing about it. You know he’s a murderer, too, but you’ve kept quiet about that as well.’

‘Inspector,’ Haldayne said, ‘we’re not leeches.’

‘I know that — leeches are medicinal. You know something?’ He was talking to all of them now. ‘Tom Gillespie said something to me. He told me I was making a mistake. At the time, I took it as a threat, but it wasn’t — it was the literal truth. I thought because he had something to hide it must be something illicit. I was wrong about him all down the line; all he was was scared. He was terrified. Those last days of his life, all he felt was fear.’ And dear God, Rebus knew what that felt like.

‘Nobody’s mourning him!’ Sir Iain snapped.

Rebus turned to him. ‘Now how do you know that?’

‘What?’

‘He’s got a widow: you don’t think she’s in mourning?’

Sir lain studied the handle of his cane. ‘I forgot,’ he said.

‘No, you didn’t,’ Rebus said quietly.

‘So, what’s it to be, Inspector?’ Mathieson himself was beginning to look impatient. He knew he had won the argument, but might still lose the fight. He had his glass half raised, ready for a toast if Rebus gave the right answer, the answer everybody wanted. ‘Just remember, if you want it, there’s a place for you.’

Rebus was still staring at Sir Iain Hunter. He finished his whisky in one go and put the glass down. With his hands on the table, he pushed himself upright out of the chair.

‘Here’s my answer, Mr Mathieson,’ he said.

He walked out without saying another word.

38

Because he hadn’t decided.

His pride wouldn’t let him kowtow to people like Hunter and Mathieson — they were men, not gods. And he hated people putting one over on him, which was exactly what would be happening if he gave in. But … but … He kept seeing those hundreds of faceless workers, driving to work in their new cars, or signing on in a sweltering dole office. One man’s life against thousands … It wasn’t fair, it shouldn’t be down to him to decide.

Well, what was stopping him taking it elsewhere? He drove into town along Corstorphine Road, past the office suite used by Mensung, and decided to drop into Torphichen Place. Davidson probably wouldn’t be there at this hour, but he could find out what was happening with Gillespie’s files.

The duty desk officer let him through the door. Rebus walked along the silent hall and up the stairs. The only person in the CID room was Rab Burns.

‘Hiya, John, what brings you here? The urbane conversation? The ersatz coffee?’

‘Bags of rubbish, to be precise.’

‘Eh?’

So Rebus explained, and Burns shook his head. ‘I don’t know anything about them.’

‘Maybe they were locked away at close of play.’

‘They’d be in the cupboard. Hold on, I’ll fetch the key.’ But there was nothing in the cupboard. ‘You don’t suppose they could have been thrown out by mistake?’

A shiver went across Rebus’s shoulders. ‘Mind if I use your phone?’ He punched in Davidson’s number and waited until the detective answered. ‘It’s me, where are the files?’

‘John, I was going to call you.’

‘Where are the files?’

‘Orders, John.’

‘What?’

‘They were requisitioned. I was going to tell you in the morning.’

‘Who was it?’

Davidson was a long time answering. ‘The DCC’s office.’

Rebus slammed down the receiver. Allan bloody Gunner! ‘Any idea of the DCC’s home number, Rab?’

‘Oh aye, we’re close friends like.’

Rebus’s look shut him up. They found the number on the Emergency roster. Rebus rang and waited and waited. A woman picked up the receiver. There was laughter in the background. A party, maybe a dinner party.

‘Mr Gunner, please.’

‘Who shall I say?’

‘Walt Disney.’

‘Pardon?’

Rebus was shaking with anger. ‘Just get him.’

A full minute later, Gunner lifted the receiver. ‘Who is this?’

‘It’s Rebus. What the fuck are you playing at?’

‘How dare you speak to me like that!’ The words were hissed, Gunner not wanting his guests in the other room to hear.

‘All right then. With respect, sir, what the fuck are you playing at?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The Gillespie files, where are they?’

‘In the incinerator.’

And Gunner cut the connection. Rebus tried again, but the line was busy — the receiver had been left off the hook. Rebus grabbed the Emergency roster from Burns and looked down it for Gunner’s address.

‘You can borrow my computer if you like,’ Burns said.

‘What for?’

‘To write your letter of resignation.’

‘Rab,’ Rebus said to him, ‘you stole that line from me.’

Rebus gave the bell a good long ring. Gunner didn’t look surprised as he unlocked the door.

‘Come into the study,’ he said angrily.

As Rebus followed him, he heard the sounds of the dinner party. Instead of following Gunner into the study, he walked to a closed door and opened it.

‘Evening,’ he said. ‘Sorry to drag the host away, we’ll only be a minute.’

Then he smiled at the guests, closed the door again, and went into the study. Around the table had been seated the Lord Provost and his wife, the chief constable and his wife, and Gunner’s wife. There were two other place settings, one for Gunner himself.

‘Sir lain couldn’t make it then?’ Rebus guessed.

Gunner closed the study door. ‘He’ll be joining us for coffee.’

‘Cosy.’

‘Look, Rebus — ’

‘I had a little think on the way here, and something occurred to me. Here it is. McAnally wasn’t in Charters’ cell to get to the bottom of anything; he was there so you could be sure Charters was keeping his mouth shut. And you got proof of that, because Charters paid McAnally to scare off the councillor. It was a cover-up from the beginning, whether Flower knew that’s how you were playing it or not. You wanted the whole thing kept hidden, and now that you’ve burnt those papers, that’s the way it’ll stay.’

‘That’s up to you.’

Rebus shook his head. ‘No, I’m worthless. It’s up to people like you, and you’re not going to do a damned thing. You’re going to remain Hunter’s puppet, all the way to chief constable.’

The doorbell rang again, and Gunner walked out, returning with Sir Iain Hunter.

‘Well, Inspector,’ Hunter said, removing his topcoat, ‘you do seem to pop up everywhere.’ He slipped a hand into his pocket and pulled out a cassette. ‘It’s all there,’ he said, handing it to Gunner.

Rebus felt the floor move beneath him. ‘You were bugged?’ he said.

Hunter smiled. ‘Thank God he didn’t make us all strip.’

Rebus nodded. ‘I begin to get it.’

‘Sir Iain,’ Gunner said, ‘has been gathering evidence of an embarrassing scandal.’

‘A scandal,’ Rebus added, ‘that will conveniently lack one important name. I should’ve known the Scottish Office was involved from the start. I can’t see a prison governor, especially one like Big Jim Flett, covering up McAnally’s record on the say-so of the police alone. But the DCC backed up by the Permanent Secretary … well, that would be a different story. After all, the Scottish Office pulls the purse-strings.’ His eyes fixed on Hunter. ‘And a lot of other strings besides.’

‘Inspector Rebus,’ Hunter said coolly, ‘it is a fact of life that you simply can’t have the Permanent Secretary mixed up in anything unsavoury. For the good of the country, he must be protected.’

‘Even if he’s in it up to his eyeballs?’

‘Even then.’

‘This stinks,’ Rebus said. ‘What’s the tape? An insurance policy?’

‘I’m preparing a file,’ Gunner said. ‘Unofficially, and to be kept under lock and key.’

‘And if anything should happen to leak out in future …?’

‘The file will show,’ said Hunter, ‘that Charters and others acted unlawfully.’

‘To the extent of murder?’ Hunter nodded. ‘What about Mathieson? Will he be implicated?’ Rebus smiled. ‘Sorry, daft question. Of course he will. You’d sell everything to the court to save your own neck, you — ’

‘Hypocrite?’ Hunter suggested. ‘Hypocrisy is acceptable if it is for the public good.’

‘You know,’ Gunner added, ‘I could have you booted off the force.’

‘I’d fight you all the way.’

Gunner smiled. ‘I know you would.’

Hunter touched Gunner’s arm. ‘We’ve kept your guests waiting long enough, Allan.’

Gunner’s eyes were still on Rebus. ‘Under normal circumstances, you’d be welcome to join us.’

‘I wouldn’t join you if you were coming apart at the seams.’

‘The stories I hear,’ Gunner said, ‘it’s you that’s been coming apart at the seams.’

‘Bear something in mind, Inspector,’ Hunter said, examining his cane. ‘You were at that meeting, too. You’re on the tape, listening to men confess their part in illegal acts. I didn’t hear you caution them, I didn’t hear you do anything much. If questions should ever be asked, they’ll be asked of you along with everyone else.’

‘I’ll see you to the door,’ the chief constable-in-waiting told Rebus.

39

John Rebus did what he had to do — went on a forty-eight-hour bender.

It wasn’t difficult in Edinburgh. Even in winter, without the benefit of extended summer opening hours, if you paced things right you could drink round the clock. It was all down to permutations of late-licence restaurants, casinos, and early-opening bars. You could always drink at home, of course, but that wasn’t what a bender was about. You could hardly do your bender justice when the only person around to listen to your stories was your own sour self.

Rebus didn’t worry about missing work. He’d been on benders before, after losing cases he’d tried desperately to win. Always he did it with the blessing of his superiors, who might even chip in towards expenses. He thought maybe he’d phoned the Farmer from some pub along the way, and maybe the Farmer had said something about Allan Gunner having okayed things. Hard to tell though, hard to remember.

Still harder to forget.

He’d grab an hour’s sleep, then be awake a couple of minutes at most before the knot was in his guts, reminding him of things he’d far rather forget.

Towards the close of the first day, he was in a bar on Lothian Road, and noticed Maisie and Tresa there, having a good time to themselves. They were at a table, and Rebus was at the bar. Pairs of men kept accosting them — to no avail. Then Maisie saw Rebus and got up, weaving towards him.

‘I see the period of mourning’s over,’ Rebus said.

She smiled. ‘Ach, Wee Shug was all right.’

‘Why don’t you tell me about it?’

Her eyes were only half open, heavy-lidded. ‘See,’ she began, ‘it wasn’t him I wanted, it was Tresa.’ She lit a cigarette for herself, using the onyx and gold lighter. ‘He came to see me the day he topped himself, told me what he was going to do. He gave me this lighter. Maybe he was looking for sympathy, or someone to talk him out of it. Daft bastard: he was doing just what I wanted. I wanted Tresa. I love her, really I do.’

Rebus remembered something she’d told him before, about Wee Shug: ‘He deserved what he got.’ He realised now that she hadn’t meant it vindictively; she’d meant he deserved whatever he was paid. She’d stuck him in prison, and he’d still come back to her, telling his story …

‘Was it rape?’ Rebus asked.

She shrugged. ‘Not really.’

He sucked on his cigarette. ‘Did you scream?’

Now she laughed. ‘The neighbours thought I did. They wanted to have heard it, otherwise there’d be no guilt. We Scots need a bit of guilt, don’t we? It gets us through the day.’

Then she planted a kiss on his cheek, and stood back to gaze at him, before making her way back to where Tresa McAnally sat waiting for her.

She was right about the guilt, he thought. But there was more to it — the neighbours hadn’t done anything at the time, and that was typically Edinburgh. People would rather not know, even if there was nothing there — they didn’t want to be told that their body (or their country) was rotten with cancer, but nor did they want to be told that it wasn’t. And in the end they just sat there, zugzwanged, while the likes of Charters and Sir lain Hunter got on with another game entirely.

In the middle of the second day, in the same rancid clothes as the day before, wreathed in a fug of nicotine and whisky, and in possession of a hangover he was trying to drink away, he met Kirstie Kennedy. Maybe it was halfway down Leith Walk, or at the top of Easter Road. She was shorter than him, and wanted to whisper in his ear. She didn’t need to stand on tiptoe to do it — he stooped under the weight of his skull and shoulders.

‘You should get straight,’ she told him. ‘Killing yourself’s no answer.’

He recalled her words later, when more or less seated on a bench in what purported to be a bar on Dalry Road. It had the dimensions and atmosphere of a bonded warehouse. He had just been speaking to the old thin man, the one who liked American history. Rebus had started to give him a history lesson which didn’t have much to do with Hopalong Cassidy, and the man shuffled off to another part of the bar, where Tartan Shoelaces stood protectively close to his erring wife Morag. Rebus had stood them all a couple of drinks when he’d come in.

Some young turks were playing pool, and Rebus tried to concentrate on their game, but found himself yawning noisily.

‘Not keeping you up, are we, pal?’ one of the players snarled.

‘Cut it out,’ the barmaid called to them. ‘He’s polis.’

‘He’s guttered, that’s what he is. Plain mortal.’

And then Kirstie’s words came back to him. You should get straight. Killing yourself’s no answer. Well, it depended what the question was. Get straight … straight, as in even. Someone sat down next to him. He tried turning his head to look at them.

‘Found you at last.’

‘Sammy?’

‘I got a phone call from somebody called Kirstie. She said she was worried.’

‘I’m fine. Nothing wrong with me.’

‘You’re a mess. What’s happened?’

‘The system, that’s what’s happened. You were right, Sammy. And I knew you were right, all the time I was saying you were wrong.’

She smiled at him. ‘Well, you were right, too. I shouldn’t have smuggled that note out for Derwood Charters.’

‘Don’t worry about it. Gerry Dip isn’t talking. We’ll pin him for the credit cards if nothing else. There’ll be no mention of Charters at the trial. You won’t be involved.’

‘But I am involved.’

Rebus shook his head. ‘Just keep your mouth quiet, that’s what everyone else is doing. Nothing’s going to happen.’

‘Is that what this is about?’

Rebus straightened his back. He didn’t like Sammy seeing him like this; that thought had only just struck him.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘whether you can put this behind you or not is down to you and your conscience. That’s what I’m saying.’ He got to his feet. ‘I’m going to clean up.’

He made it to the toilets. He didn’t want the pool players coming in for a ‘Dairy Discussion’, so wedged the door shut with paper towels while he stuck his head under the cold tap. He dried himself off, then was copiously sick into the bowl. Unjamming the door, he walked back into the bar.

‘Feeling better?’ Sammy asked him.

‘Ninety-five per cent to go,’ Rebus told her, taking her hand in his.

Who could he go to?

The Lord Advocate? Hardly: he was probably on pheasant-shooting terms with Hunter. He was the Establishment, and the Establishment would be protected at all costs. The chief constable? But he was retiring, and wouldn’t want anything to tarnish his last few months in office. The media perhaps, Mairie Henderson? It was the story of the year, except there was no proof. It would be the word of an embittered policeman against … well, everybody.

He’d spent time steeping in the bath at home, then showering. Sammy had made him drink a couple of litres of orange juice, and about a packet of ‘Resolve’.

‘I can’t forget what I did,’ she told him quietly.

‘Maybe you got my guilt complex along with my genes,’ he told her.

After Sammy had gone back to Patience’s, Rebus had called Gill Templer. He needed advice, he told her. They arranged to meet at her health club. She had a sauna and massage booked; they could talk in the bar after that.

There was a view from the bar’s first-floor window down on to a quiet New Town street. All around Rebus sat healthy people, tanned and smiling with good teeth and trim confidence. He knew he fitted in like a paedophile in a classroom. He had trashed his bender clothes, just trashed them, and was wearing the gear he’d bought for the trip to Sir Iain’s.

Gill came in and nodded towards him, then went to the bar and bought herself something non-alcoholic. Her skin glowed as she came over to his table. ‘You look rough,’ she said.

‘You should have seen me earlier. You could have sanded doors with me.’

She picked a sliver of orange out of her glass and sucked on it. ‘So what’s the big mystery?’

He told her the whole story. She started to look uncomfortable halfway through, the look changing by degrees to simple bemusement.

‘I’ll take another orange juice, if you’re buying,’ she said when he’d finished.

She needed time to think, so Rebus didn’t hurry the barman. But when he came back to the table, she still didn’t have anything to say.

‘See, Gill, what I need is the nod on a search warrant, so I can go into Gunner’s house and seize the file and the tape. We could get one from a JP — there are enough councillors left to choose from.’

Her face darkened. ‘Why me?’ she said.

‘Why not?’

‘How good do you think I’d come out of this? Do you think anyone would forget that I was the one who’d helped you?’

‘For Christ’s sake, Gill.’

Her voice softened. She stared into her drink. ‘Sorry I’m letting you down, John.’

‘They could crucify me if they wanted to.’

She stared at him. ‘They don’t want to. You don’t know, do you? You really don’t know.’

‘Know what?’

‘You’re going to be promoted to chief inspector. There’s an opening in Galashiels. It came down to the chief super from the DCC.’ She smiled. ‘You’re trying to arrange a search warrant for his house, and he’s busy giving you a hike up. How’s that going to look in court?’

‘It’s true,’ Chief Superintendent Watson confirmed.

Rebus was in the Farmer’s office, but not sitting. He couldn’t sit, couldn’t even stand at ease.

‘I don’t want it, I won’t accept it. That’s allowed, isn’t it?’

The Farmer made a pained face. ‘If you refuse, it’s a snub no one will forget. You might never get a second chance.’

‘I don’t mind snubbing Allan Gunner.’

‘John, Gunner didn’t recommend you for promotion, I did.’

‘What?’

‘Several months back.’

‘You did?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, it’s a damned coincidence Gunner’s held off making a decision until now. Whose idea was Galashiels?’

‘It happens to be an opening.’

‘It happens to be in the middle of nowhere. I can see they’d need a chief inspector down there, what with the farming vendettas and the Saturday night punch-up.’

‘For once in your life, John, go easy on yourself, do yourself a favour. Stop beating yourself up like you’re the Salvation Army drum. Just …’ The Farmer shrugged.

‘Drums don’t beat themselves,’ Rebus said. He was staring at the Farmer’s computer, not listening any more. And then he started to smile, and looked at the Farmer. ‘OK,’ he said, ‘tell Gunner I’ll take it.’

‘Good.’

But the Farmer wasn’t as pleased as he’d expected he’d be. There was something going on, some motive he couldn’t fathom. It was so bloody typical of Rebus to make him feel like a win was a draw, a draw a defeat.

‘And, John,’ he said, standing up, stretching out his hand, ‘congratulations.’

Rebus stared at the hand but didn’t take it. ‘I didn’t say I was accepting the promotion, sir, I just said to tell Gunner I was.’

And with that he left the Farmer’s office.

Flower was on night-shift again.

Rebus didn’t know why or how Flower got so many night-shifts. Maybe because at night he was more likely to see a spot of trouble. Rebus looked like trouble as he strode towards his adversary’s desk, dragging a chair over and sitting astride it.

‘Done any good fire-raising lately?’

Flower just sneered.

‘Some good it did you,’ Rebus went on.

‘What?’

‘I don’t mean setting the bin on fire. I mean letting the DCC use your man McAnally like that. Whose idea was it to put him in Charters’ cell?’

‘What’s it to you?’

‘Humour me.’ Rebus offered Flower a cigarette. Flower took it warily, and even then laid it to one side.

‘All right,’ he said, ‘it was the DCC’s.’

‘That’s what I figured. And you went along with it. I mean, who wouldn’t? It meant the DCC owed you a favour — very handy that. But it didn’t work out.’

‘You’ve lost me.’

‘I mean, the DCC had a hidden agenda. He wanted to use your man to make sure Charters wasn’t talking, because some people on the outside were getting sweaty. Charters was protecting certain people, people like the head of PanoTech, and the Permanent Secretary at the Scottish Office. But a local councillor had started sniffing. Eventually, he would have talked to Charters — maybe he already had. That worried people, they needed to know how safe they were. As it turned out, Charters knew about the councillor and paid McAnally to give him a fright.’

‘Shite.’

‘Is it? Well, no matter.’ Rebus sucked on his cigarette. He’d got Flower thinking, but that process might take weeks. ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘your friend the DCC, he didn’t even get you Lauderdale’s job. Didn’t that make you think?’

‘It was too soon. It would have looked suspicious.’

Rebus laughed, further discomfiting Flower. ‘Is that what he told you?’

‘Never you mind.’

‘Well, bonny lad, I’ve got news for you — the DCC’s just offered me promotion to chief inspector.’

‘Away to hell.’

Rebus just shrugged. Flower picked up the cigarette he’d been given and lit it. Then he called the Farmer at home. They had a bruising conversation during which Flower brought up everything from his years in the force (three more than Rebus) to his charitable works. When he finally put the phone down, he was shaking.

‘Know who you should phone now?’ Rebus suggested. ‘Your pal Allan Gunner. Ask him why me instead of you. Know what he’ll say? Well, he might not say it, but it’s the truth. He’s promoting me because I’m dangerous to him. I’m too dangerous for the usual demotion, so instead he’s offering a bribe. And you’re being left behind because he can afford to ignore you. That’s a simple fact.’

‘Why are you telling me this?’ Flower hissed.

‘Believe me, it’s not just for the thrill of seeing you squirm.’

‘Why then?’

Rebus leaned forward. ‘How,’ he asked confidentially, ‘would you like my promotion?’ Flower just sneered. It hurt Rebus to say what he was saying, but he tried not to let that show. He would sacrifice this and much more for a single, risky shot at his quarry. Above all, though, he wouldn’t tell Flower about the move to Galashiels that went along with it … ‘I mean it,’ he said.

Flower saw with deep amazement that he did. ‘What do I have to do?’

40

Winter mornings could sap you of good intentions and foolhardy schemes. Rebus and Flower wanted to be in their separate beds, tucked beneath a nice heavy woman, but instead were sitting in Rebus’s car, across the street from Allan Gunner’s house. It was still dark. A milk van passed, and a bread van, and a few bleak souls on their way to catch the first bus of the day.

‘So this is morning,’ Flower said.

‘Not a pretty sight, is it?’

‘You think this will work?’

‘Have faith.’ Rebus looked towards the house. ‘He’s up.’

Flower peered out through the windscreen. A light had come on upstairs in the Gunner household.

‘We’ll give him five minutes,’ said Rebus.

But only two minutes later, the downstairs lights came on.

‘Could be the wife,’ Flower suggested, ‘cooking a hearty breakfast for her deserving husband.’

‘Have you ever heard the phrase “New Man”?’

‘It’s a shop, isn’t it? What do you reckon, a couple more minutes? Let him get his feet under the breakfast table?’

‘My legs are blocks of ice,’ Rebus said, opening the car door. ‘Let’s do it now.’

They rang the doorbell, and heard Gunner’s voice calling, ‘I’ll get it!’ Then the door opened, revealing the deputy chief constable in shirt but not yet necktie or cufflinks, a mug of coffee in his hand. He took a step back into the hall.

‘What the hell are you doing here?’

‘Canvassing for the Natural Law Party,’ Rebus said, stepping into the centrally heated house.

Gunner ran upstairs to have a word with his wife, and Rebus and Flower walked uninvited into the kitchen. Smoke was pouring from the electric grill. Flower lifted the grill-pan out and blew on the cremated bread. ‘New Man, eh?’

Rebus switched the kettle back on and lifted two mugs from the draining-board. He was unscrewing the lid from the coffee-jar when Gunner returned. Gunner snatched the jar from him.

‘Christ, you’ve got some gall.’ He switched the kettle off. ‘Why are you here?’ He checked his watch, saw he hadn’t put it on yet, and glanced instead at the wall-clock. ‘Half a minute, then you’re on your way.’

‘We want the file you’ve compiled,’ Rebus said, ‘and the tape Sir lain made. I think that’ll do for now.’

Gunner looked to Flower. ‘He’s roped you in, eh? You must be mad. I could have you both up before the chief constable.’

‘We’d like nothing better,’ Flower said. He threw the remains of the toast into the bin. ‘You lied to me.’

‘If we don’t get the file and the tape,’ Rebus said, ‘we take it further anyway. We’re going to kick up such a stink, you’ll think your drains have backed up. It’ll be everywhere, believe me. There won’t be enough clothes-pegs to go round.’

‘You are mad. I’m not going to give you anything.’

‘We’ll start with the chief constable and the newspapers.’

Gunner folded his arms. ‘Be my guests. You’ve just dug yourselves a very deep hole.’

‘Holes have their uses,’ Rebus said, ‘when the bullets start to fly.’

‘Get out!’ Gunner snarled.

They got out.

‘Think we were too obliging?’ Flower muttered as they walked back down the path. ‘We could have been harder on him.’

‘It went fine. It’s down to him now. Is he watching?’ Flower glanced back. ‘Bedroom window.’

‘Right.’

They walked to Rebus’s car, got in and drove off.

A hundred yards along the road, Rebus stopped long enough to let Flower out. Flower’s own car was parked there, and he got into it quickly. Rebus checked in his rearview, but Gunner hadn’t come out of the house to check their departure, not on a morning like this. He drove on, went around the block, and ended up on the other side of Gunner’s house.

They daren’t trust to police frequencies, so had borrowed a couple of on-line cellular phones from a dealer who’d owed Rebus a favour. Rebus’s phone rang, and he picked it up.

‘Any sign of him?’ Flower said.

‘Not yet.’

‘Maybe he’s on the mark-two toast.’

‘I don’t think he’ll have much of an appetite.’

It was five minutes more before Rebus heard a door bang shut. Then Gunner’s gate opened. His Rover 800 was directly outside, and he unlocked it, got in, and started the engine.

‘Bingo,’ said Rebus.

‘Has he anything with him?’

‘A briefcase.’

‘Well, here’s hoping.’

Rebus had parked away from the street-lighting, and was careful not to start his engine until Gunner was already on the move. Smoke billowed from his exhaust, hanging in the sub-zero air. Gunner’s back windscreen was frosted over, and he hadn’t taken time to scrape it.

‘Fall in behind me,’ Rebus told Flower, just before passing his stationary car.

Soon they joined a slow-moving stream of commuter traffic heading into town. The Rover’s rear de-mister had taken care of the frost. When they came to a section of dual carriageway, Flower overtook Rebus.

‘Where’s he headed?’

‘Not to work,’ Rebus said. ‘Not this way.’

They’d discussed routes he might take, places he might go. Princes Street hadn’t figured in their calculations. There was light in the sky now, a deep bruise hanging over the Castle and the Old Town. Rebus’s heater wasn’t working properly — it only did that in the summer — and he curled his toes inside his shoes.

‘He’s signalling,’ Flower said. ‘Turning left on to Waverley Bridge. Maybe he’s got a train to catch.’

Rebus thought he knew. ‘No, but he’s headed for the station.’

A long line of black taxis crept up from the subterranean concourse of Waverley Station, waiting their turn to take the commuters to business appointments and power breakfasts. They headed past the taxis, down the steep slope until they were underground. Gunner drove past the pick-up/drop-off point, and looked for a moment as if he was going to head up the exit ramp and back on to Waverley Bridge. But he took a left instead, and found a parking bay towards the back of the station.

‘Find yourself a space,’ Rebus told Flower, ‘and follow on foot.’

‘What if he sees me?’

‘Get on to the platform, walk down it.’

‘What if he goes on to the platform?’

‘He hasn’t come here for the trains. Hey, and take your phone with you.’

Rebus parked and headed round the other side of the concourse, anti-clockwise to Gunner’s clockwise. He managed a light jog, as if he was fighting a tight schedule. He walked down a platform towards the rear of the station, the telephone up to his face, as much for camouflage as anything.

‘Oh, yes,’ Flower said. And then Rebus was in position. In the distance, he could see Flower, and halfway between them Allan Gunner. He was where Rebus had guessed he’d be — at the Left Luggage counter. Rebus stood half-hidden by a billboard advertising industrial space to let. The irony wasn’t lost on him as he watched Gunner hand over the briefcase and accept a ticket. When Gunner headed back the way he’d come, Rebus came from around the advertising hoarding and walked briskly towards Left Luggage, just in time to see the employee place the case on a rack right at the front.

‘Well?’ Flower said.

‘Let him go.’

‘Is it there?’

‘Sweet as a nut, Flower. Sweet as a nut.’

Rico Briggs took some persuading.

Between them, in their many and various ways, Rebus and Flower were expert at the art of persuasion. Well, hadn’t they panicked — persuaded — Gunner into getting rid of the evidence? If he’d had time to think, if it hadn’t been early morning, he might have thought of a better hiding place. Left Luggage was a stop-gap — he just didn’t want the stuff in his house. Rebus had read him just right, and in fact a Left Luggage office wasn’t bad, not as a stop-gap.

Rebus and Flower took turns keeping the office under surveillance. Surveillance was easy in a railway station: there were so many people just hanging around. They didn’t want Gunner coming back and lifting the case without them knowing, though Rebus’s guess was that it would stay there overnight. Gunner would work the day like any other, then go home and think about it, maybe make a few telephone calls — calls he wouldn’t want to make from his own office. With the briefcase and its contents out of the way, he’d feel more confident. He’d want to use that time to think things through.

So the briefcase would be there overnight.

Rebus called Rico and got him to come down to the station. They met in the bar. Rebus had already consumed too much coffee and junk food, and the smell of stale alcohol in the bar almost did for him. The bar smelt the way bars always did at the start of a new day’s business — of the previous day, of accumulation; too much smoke and spilt beer.

‘Pint of lager,’ Rico told the barman. The barman tried not to stare too hard at his customer’s tattooed cheeks. Rico gave them a brisk rub while his drink was poured. When he saw there was a gaming machine in the bar, he walked over to it and fed in some coins. Rebus paid for the drink and carried it over to Rico. He had his cellphone in his free hand. I look like a businessman on the way down, he thought.

Maybe he was, at that.

Rebus explained the situation to Rico while Rico played the machine. When Rico ran out of coins, Rebus gave him more. Then his cellphone beeped.

‘What does he say?’ Flower asked.

‘So far, he says no.’

‘Let me talk to him.’

So Rebus relieved Flower. He let twenty minutes pass, then phoned the bar.

‘Well?’

‘He’s just about cleaned me out of money,’ Flower reported. And in the end it was the gaming machine that was the real persuader. It persuaded Rico to borrow money from Flower — real money — and suddenly Rico owed the policeman twenty pounds.

For the promise of more money, and a clean slate on his debt, Rico said he’d meet them at one in the morning.

Which was only thirteen hours away …

Rebus and Flower spent the rest of the day watching Left Luggage, reading newspapers and magazines purchased from the station stall, eating overpriced sandwiches, drinking weak coffee, and generally learning a lot about the life of a mainline railway station.

The security cameras bothered Rebus, so he paid a visit to ScotRail’s security office and spoke to the staff, on the pretext of alerting them to a gang of pickpockets just up from Newcastle. It was warm in the security chief’s office, and the man was ex-CID, friendly. They traded stories, Rebus asked for a tour. Which was how he saw everything would be all right. The camera trained on Left Luggage was hazy, distant: they’d see anyone going in, but they wouldn’t get a good description. This was very much to Rico’s advantage.

Besides, no one watched after midnight. The camera would record, but that was all.

The station was locked overnight, but still open at one o’clock. There were weird night trains to deal with, freight-haulers, a sleeper bound for London. Rebus thought he’d probably caught something, he kept shivering at his core. He didn’t think it could just be nerves.

True to his word, but ten minutes late, Rico turned up.

‘I brought some balaclavas,’ he said.

‘We won’t need them.’ Rebus explained about the cameras. They’d taken their cars into Cockburn Street, parked them there. They had a quick discussion as they walked down Platform One towards Left Luggage. Rico had checked the office out earlier, and now carried the tools he needed, tiny picklocks which reminded Rebus of dental instruments. Instinctively, his tongue sought the hole, but there was no hole there, Dr Keene had seen to that.

It took Rico a very long minute, but at last they were in.

With the shutters down, the place was in utter darkness, but Rebus had a couple of torches and handed one to Flower.

‘Keep listening at the door, Rico,’ he ordered. Then they went to work.

There wasn’t much luggage to choose from, and the briefcase was just where Rebus knew it would be. Locked, but that didn’t matter. He lifted it up and walked to the door.

‘Here, Rico, see what you can do with this.’

He stood with his torch pointed at the case, while Rico brought out his picklocks. Flower, meantime, was moving luggage around, switching tags.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ Rebus hissed.

‘Maximising confusion.’

‘Well stop it. Put everything back. We don’t want anyone knowing we’ve been in here.’

Rico made a clucking sound with his tongue. They switched the torches off and stood very still in the darkness, listening. Slow footsteps, coming nearer. A whistled pop tune. Rico rested his weight against the door. Someone tried the door, pushing it a couple of times. Then the shutters jumped a quarter-inch and fell back, then jumped again. If someone shone a torch through the crack, they’d see Flower standing not three feet from them like the last dummy in the shop window. The shutters clattered down again. The footsteps moved away.

Rebus started breathing again.

‘I’m glad I thought to wear my brown underwear,’ Rico whispered. Rebus shone the light back down on to the briefcase, and Rico tried the locks. They flipped open against his fingers.

Rebus lifted the lid of the case. Inside was a single fat document file and an audio cassette. Rebus lifted both out and instructed Rico to lock the case again.

‘Is that it?’ Flower said.

It took Rebus half a paragraph to be sure, then he smiled and nodded. He placed the evidence in a carrier-bag, put the case back on its shelf, and wiped it clean with the sleeve of his jacket. Rico was looking around at the other bags and cases.

‘No way,’ Rebus said, coming to wipe the door where Rico had held it shut. ‘And don’t even think of coming back here on your own, understand?’

They relocked the door behind them, and walked up the slope just before the gates were closed for the night.

41

Rebus couldn’t sleep.

He sat in his chair smoking a cigarette, reading the file the DCC had prepared — maybe ‘crafted’ was a better word. He’d done a good job of making it look so thorough while leaving so much out. He played part of the tape, using headphones so he could turn the volume up. Sir Iain was right about one thing — any lawyer listening to the tape would think that the police officer present hadn’t done very much. Rebus found that his hand was shaking. He hadn’t had a drink all day, and didn’t especially want one now. He was just a bit scared, that was all. He wasn’t sure he had enough, even now … especially now.

Then he thought of something, something he’d almost persuaded himself to forget, and reached for the phonebook, finding the page, running his finger down the names, then along to a particular address. A flat on Dublin Street.

It was past three o’clock when Rebus got there, the streets dead, not even any taxis rippling over the setts. Rebus pressed the buzzer and waited, then pressed it again. Then a third time, keeping his finger on it this time.

The intercom crackled into life. ‘What? What?’

‘Mr McAllister?’ Rebus inquired, as if it was the middle of the day.

‘Yes?’

‘It’s Inspector Rebus. If you’re alone, I’d like to come up for a word.’

Rory McAllister was half dressed and less than half awake. He was on his own.

Rebus walked around the spacious living room, admiring the ornaments and books, while McAllister made them both a cup of coffee.

Then they sat down opposite one another. McAllister rubbed at his eyes and yawned.

‘So what is it, Inspector?’

Rebus put his mug down on the polished wooden floor. ‘Well, it’s just this, sir. That day we met for lunch, you were … well, how can I put it? It struck me afterwards that you were too enthusiastic, too willing to talk. Then I saw you going to see Audrey Gillespie and … well, I started thinking.’

McAllister tried to hide behind his steaming mug. ‘About what?’

‘You don’t deny you went to see Mrs Gillespie?’

‘Not at all. I know her, of course. I met her husband several times, professionally and socially. Mrs Gillespie accompanied her husband on those social occasions.’

Rebus nodded. ‘And the other occasions — there’s interaction between the district council and the Scottish Office?’

‘Of course, and both Councillor Gillespie and myself worked on an industry remit.’

‘Mmm,’ Rebus said. ‘And did the councillor know you were seeing his wife behind his back?’

‘Now hang on — ’

‘Let me finish. You see, Mr McAllister, all this stuff Tom Gillespie found out, is it possible he could have gleaned so much unaided? Someone had to be passing him the information, perhaps anonymously.’

‘You’ve lost me.’

‘Never mind, you’ll catch up. I think you found out about Mensung and PanoTech and Charters’ other scams. Sir Iain trusted you, had you pegged as a possible successor. Maybe he had you go into Mensung to make sure there was nothing that could come to light.’ Rebus stood up. ‘Now, here’s where it gets interesting. Because you either passed the information on so you could scupper Sir Iain — in other words, for the public good. Or you did it to keep Gillespie busy and out of the way while you enjoyed a fling with his wife — which might be called the private good. Either way, I think you did it.’

‘And you were generous enough to drag me out of bed in the middle of the night to let me know your suspicions?’ McAllister sat back in his chair, hands pressed to his chin as if in prayer.

‘I came here,’ Rebus said, ‘because if you did it only to smooth your affair with Audrey Gillespie, then I’m sunk. Whereas, if you really did want to get at Sir Iain, then we could be of use to one another.’

McAllister looked up and frowned. ‘How?’

So Rebus sat down again and told him.

It was Sir Iain he wanted. He’d cancelled out all the other numbers in the equation, except Charters and Sir Iain. And Sir Iain was one possible route to Derry Charters. Rebus wanted him. He wanted him because people like Sir Iain Hunter were always in the right, even when they were wrong. Sir lain lived and worked by the same ground rules a lot of villains swore by. He was selfish without appearing to be, full of arguments and self-justifications. He espoused the public good, but lined his pockets with the public’s money. He wasn’t so very different from the likes of Paul Duggan. If Rebus tried hard enough, he found he could blame Sir lain for the fates of Willie Coyle and Dixie Taylor. Kirstie had run away from home because her father had been shown the city’s corrupt heart, and wasn’t going to do anything about it. But the heart was artificial, and Sir lain Hunter was working the bellows.

When Rebus climbed the stairs to his flat, he found someone huddled in his doorway. It was Sammy. His hand on her shoulder woke her up, and she sprang to her feet.

‘What’s happened?’ he asked.

‘I’ve been phoning you all day. I was worried about you.’ There were dried tearstains down both her cheeks. ‘I thought I’d wait for you here.’

He let her in. She looked around the living room and saw the duvet on the chair. ‘Is this where you sleep?’

‘Some nights,’ Rebus said, lighting the fire.

‘You can’t get much rest there.’

‘It’s all right. Do you want anything to drink?’ She shook her head.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

He puffed out his cheeks, then exhaled. ‘I think so, just about.’ He sank into his chair. ‘I’m a bit scared, that’s all. I’m going to do something tomorrow; it may not turn out the way I want.’

‘One reason I wanted to see you,’ she began. ‘I can’t get it out of my mind, that note … and what happened. I thought maybe if you could tell me the story, it would help.’

Rebus smiled. ‘It’s not exactly a bedtime story.’

His daughter had curled up in front of the fire, and held a cushion against her chest. ‘Tell me anyway,’ she said.

So Rebus told her, leaving nothing out — it was no less than she deserved. And afterwards, she fell asleep still clutching the cushion. Rebus placed the duvet over her, turned the fire down low, and sat down in his chair again, tears falling so softly that he knew he wouldn’t wake her.

He was wearing his best suit.

Flower had phoned first thing to say he wasn’t going. He didn’t explain, didn’t need to. Rebus didn’t need any more from him. Flower was thinking tactically: if it all went wrong — as it well might — Flower would be in the foxhole. He still had Rebus’s promise: chief inspector. If it all worked out.

Sammy had helped him with his grooming. He hadn’t had much sleep, but he didn’t look too bad considering, and the suit definitely helped.

‘Patience chose it for me,’ he told his daughter.

‘She has good taste,’ Sammy agreed.

He phoned first, stressing secrecy and urgency. There were problems, but finally he was given fifteen minutes in the mid-morning. Fifteen precious minutes. He had a bit of time to kill, so paced the flat, emptied the jar and put it back under the radiator, found his dental appointment card and tore it up.

Sammy gave him a good luck kiss as he left the flat.

‘We’re not so very different,’ she told him.

‘Like father and daughter,’ he said, returning the kiss.

He parked at the front of St Andrew’s House, and a guard came out and told him he couldn’t do that. Rebus showed his warrant card, but the guard was adamant, and directed him to the visitors’ parking.

‘Tell me,’ Rebus said, ‘if I was Sir Iain Hunter, would I still have to move the car?’

‘No,’ said the guard, ‘that would be different.’

And Rebus smiled, feeling a little of the tension leaving him. The man was right: that would be different.

He walked up the steps to the building. Close up, it didn’t look so much like a power station or the Reichstag. He was signed in at the desk and given a visitor’s pass. Security had to check the contents of his bag — just some papers and a cassette. Someone came down to escort him upstairs, where he was passed on to someone else who took him to a secretary’s office. On the way, in a short narrow corridor, his escort nearly bumped into Sir Iain Hunter. She apologised, but Sir lain wasn’t paying her any attention. Rebus winked at him and smiled as he passed. He didn’t look back, but he could feel the eyes boring into him, right between the shoulder-blades.

This, he thought, is for Willie and Dixie, and for Tom Gillespie. And for everyone who doesn’t know the way the system works, the way it makes room for lying and cheating and stealing.

But he knew, above all, that he was doing it for himself.

There was no secretary in the secretary’s office, just Rory McAllister, looking very ill-at-ease but there, as he’d promised. Rebus found another wink to spare. Then the secretary came in and ushered them into an ante-chamber. She knocked on the door in front of them and opened it.

He’d joked with the security man about the contents of his bag — ‘I’d hardly be carrying a bomb in a Spar carrier-bag’ — but now he walked into the room with the booby-trap tucked under his arm.

‘Good of you to find time to see us, sir.’

He meant it, too. Dugald Niven, Secretary of State for Scotland, had a busy schedule. Rebus was sure it would go ahead as usual, no matter what.

The End