Resurrection Men

2

“Good morning, gentlemen!” the voice boomed, entering the room.

Six of them already seated at the same oval table. A dozen or more box-files at one end, the end where the teacher would sit.

9:15–12:45: Case Management, DCI (ret’d) Tennant.

“I trust we’re all feeling bright as buttons. No thumping heads or churning stomachs to report!” Another box-file was slammed down onto the table. Tennant dragged his chair out, causing its feet to grate against the floor. Rebus was concentrating on the grain of the table’s wood, trying to keep it in focus. When he did finally look up, he blinked. It was the bald guy from the bar, dressed now in an immaculate chalk-stripe suit, white shirt and navy-blue tie. His eyes seemed little pinpricks of devilment as they alighted on every member of the previous night’s drinking party.

“I want all those cobwebs blown away, gentlemen,” he said, slapping his hand down on one of the files. Dust rose from it, hanging in a beam of light which was streaking through the window behind him, its sole purpose to fry the eyeballs of last night’s drinkers. Allan Ward, who’d hardly said three words in the bar but who’d moved quickly from pints to shots of straight tequila, was now sporting a pair of blue-tinted wraparound sunglasses and looked like he should be on the ski slopes rather than stuck in this airless room. He’d smoked a cigarette with Rebus outside after breakfast, hadn’t said a thing. But then Rebus hadn’t felt much like talking either.

“Never trust a man when you can’t see his eyes!” Tennant barked. Ward turned his head slowly towards him. Tennant didn’t add anything, just waited him out. Ward reached into his pocket, brought out a pouch and slipped the sunglasses into it.

“That’s better, DC Ward,” Tennant said. There were a couple of surprised looks around the table. “Oh yes, I know all your names. Know what that’s called? It’s called preparation. No case can succeed without it. You need to know who and what you’re dealing with. Wouldn’t you agree, DI Gray?”

“Absolutely, sir.”

“No use jumping to conclusions, is there?”

The look Gray gave Tennant, Rebus knew Tennant had struck a chord. He was showing that he had done his research: not just names, but everything else in their files.

“No, sir,” Gray said coldly.

There was a knock at the door. It opened, and two men started carrying in what looked like a series of large collages. It took only a moment for Rebus to realize what they were: the Wall of Death. Photographs, charts, news cuttings . . . the sort of stuff you pinned to the walls of an inquiry room. The material was mounted on sheets of cork boarding, and the men placed these against the walls of the room. When they’d finished, Tennant thanked them and told them to close the door when they left. Then he got up and walked around the table.

“Case management, gentlemen. Well, you’re old pros, aren’t you? You know how to manage a murder inquiry. No new tricks to be learned?” Rebus remembered Tennant’s words to him last night at the bar: he’d been on a fishing expedition, wondering how much Rebus would say . . . “That’s why I’m not going to bother with new tricks. Instead, how about sharpening up the old ones, eh? Some of you will know about this part of the course. I’ve heard it called ‘Resurrection.’ We give you an old case, something dormant, unsolved, and we ask you to take another look. We require you to work as a team. Remember how that used to be? Once upon a time you were all team players. These days you think you know better.” He was spitting out the words now, circling the table. “Maybe you don’t believe anymore. Well, believe this: for me, you’ll work together as a team. For me,” he paused, “and for the poor bloody victim.” He was back at his end of the table, opening a file, bringing out a series of glossy photographs. Rebus was remembering regimental sergeant majors he’d known in his army days. He was wondering if Tennant had served in the forces.

“You’ll remember your CID training here, how we put you in teams we called ‘syndicates’ and gave you a case to work on. You were videotaped . . .” Tennant pointed upwards. Cameras were watching from the corners of the room. “There’d be a whole squad of us watching and listening in another room, feeding you tidbits of information, seeing what you’d do with it.” He paused. “That won’t happen here. This is just you lot . . . and me. If I tape you, it’s for my own satisfaction.” As he started his walk around the table again, he deposited one print in front of each man.

“Take a look. His name is Eric Lomax.” Rebus knew the name. His heart missed a beat. “Beaten to death with something resembling a baseball bat or pool cue. Hit with such force that splinters of wood were embedded in the skull.” The photo landed in front of Rebus. It showed the body at the scene of crime, an alleyway illuminated by the photographer’s flash, raindrops falling into puddles. Rebus touched the photo but didn’t pick it up, afraid that his hand might tremble. Of all the unsolveds still moldering in their boxes and storerooms, why did it have to be this one? He focused on Tennant, seeking a clue.

“Eric Lomax,” Tennant was saying, “died in the center of our biggest, ugliest city on a busy Friday night. Last seen a bit the worse for wear, leaving his usual pub. About five hundred yards from this alley. The alley itself used by ladies of the night for knee-tremblers and God knows what else. If any of them stumbled across the body, they didn’t come forward at the time. A punter on his way home phoned it in. We’ve still got the tapes of his call.” Tennant paused. He was back at the head of the table, and this time he sat down.

“All this was six years ago: October 1995. Glasgow CID handled the original investigation, but came to a slow stop.” Gray had looked up. Tennant nodded towards him. “Yes, DI Gray, I appreciate that you were part of that inquiry. It doesn’t make any difference.” Now his eyes scanned the table, fixing each man in turn. But Rebus’s gaze had shifted to Francis Gray. Gray had worked the Lomax case . . .

“I don’t know any more about this case than you do, gentlemen,” Tennant was telling them. “By the end of the morning, you should know more than me. We’ve got a session each day, and if some of you want to continue in the evening after your other classes, you won’t find me complaining. The door will always be open. We’re going to sift the paperwork, study the transcripts, see if anything was missed. We’re not looking for cock-ups: as I say, I’ve no idea what we’re going to find in these boxes.” He patted one of the files. “But for ourselves, and Eric Lomax’s family, we’re going to have a bloody good go at finding his killer.”

“Which do you want me to be: good cop or bad cop?”

“What?” Siobhan was busy looking for a parking spot, didn’t think she’d quite heard him.

“Good cop, bad cop,” DC Davie Hynds repeated. “Which one am I?”

“Jesus, Davie, we just go in and ask our questions. Is that Fiesta pulling out, do you think?” Siobhan braked, flashed her lights. The Fiesta moved from its curbside spot. “Hallelujah,” Siobhan said. They were at the north end of the New Town, just off Raeburn Place. Narrow streets lined with cars. The houses were known as “colonies”: split into upper and lower halves, exterior stone stairs giving the only clue that these weren’t normal terraces. Siobhan stopped again just in front of the space, preparing to reverse into it, then saw that the car behind was nosing in, stealing her precious parking place.

“What the —” She sounded her horn, but the driver was ignoring her. The rear end of his car was jutting out into the street, but he seemed happy enough, was reaching over to the passenger seat to pick up some papers. “Look at this sod!” Siobhan said. Then she undid her seat belt and got out of the car, Hynds following.

He watched her tap on the driver’s window. The man pushed open his door, getting out.

“Yes?” he said.

“I was backing in here,” Siobhan told him, pointing to her own car.

“So?”

“So I’d like you to move.”

The man pressed the button on his ignition key, locking all the doors. “Sorry,” he said, “but I’m in a hurry, and possession is nine-tenths of the law.”

“That may be so” — Siobhan was opening her warrant card, holding it up before him — “but I happen to be the other tenth, and right now that’s the part that matters.”

The man looked at the card, then at Siobhan’s face. There was a dull clunk as the car’s locks sprang open again. The man got in and started his ignition.

“Stand there,” Siobhan told Hynds, gesturing to the spot the man’s car was leaving. “Don’t want any other bugger trying that trick.”

Hynds nodded, watched her making for her own car. “I think this means I’m the good guy,” he said, but not loud enough for her to hear.

Malcolm Neilson lived in one of the upper colonies. He answered the door wearing what looked like pajama trousers — baggy, with vertical pink and gray stripes — and a fisherman’s thick pullover. He was barefoot and sported wild, frazzled hair, as if he’d just pulled his finger out of a light socket. The hair was graying, the face round and unshaven.

“Mr. Neilson?” Siobhan asked, opening her warrant card again. “I’m DS Clarke, this is DC Hynds. We spoke on the phone.”

Neilson leaned out from his doorway, as if to look up and down the street. “You better come in then,” he said, closing the door quickly after them. The interior was cramped: living room with a tiny kitchen off, plus maybe two bedrooms maximum. In the narrow hallway, a ladder led up through a trapdoor into the loft.

“Is that where you . . . ?”

“My studio, yes.” He glanced in Siobhan’s general direction. “Out of bounds to visitors.”

He led them into the chaotic living room. It was split-level: sofa and stereo speakers down below, dining table above. Magazines were strewn around the floor, most with pictures and pages torn from them. Album sleeves, books, maps, empty wine bottles with the labels peeled off. They had to be careful where they put their feet.

“Come in if you can get in,” the artist said. He seemed nervous, shy, never meeting his visitors’ eyes. He smeared an arm along the sofa, clearing its contents onto the floor. “Sit down, please.”

They sat. Neilson seemed content to crouch in front of them, sandwiched by the loudspeakers.

“Mr. Neilson,” Siobhan began, “as I said on the phone, it’s just a few questions about your relationship with Edward Marber.”

“We didn’t have a relationship,” the artist snapped.

“How do you mean?”

“I mean we didn’t speak, didn’t communicate.”

“You’d had a falling-out?”

“The man rips off his customers and his artists both! How is it possible to have a relationship under those circumstances?”

“Just to remind you that Mr. Marber’s dead,” Siobhan said quietly. The artist’s eyes almost met hers for an instant.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s just that you talk about him in the present tense.”

“Oh, I see.” He grew thoughtful. Siobhan could hear his breathing; it was loud and hoarse. She wondered if he might be asthmatic.

“Do you have any proof?” she asked at last.

“That he was a cheat?” Neilson considered this, then shook his head. “It’s enough that I know it.”

From the corner of her eye, Siobhan noticed that Hynds had taken out his notebook and was busy with his pen. The doorbell rang and Neilson bounded to his feet with a muttered apology. When he’d gone, Siobhan turned to Hynds.

“Not even the offer of a cuppa. What are you writing?”

He showed her. It was just a series of squiggles. She looked at him for an explanation.

“Concentrates the mind wonderfully if they think everything they say is likely to be recorded.”

“Learn that in college?”

He shook his head. “All those years in uniform, boss. You learn a thing or two.”

“Don’t call me boss,” she said, watching as Neilson led another visitor into the room. Her eyes widened. It was the parking-space thief.

“This is my . . . um . . .” Neilson was attempting introductions.

“I’m Malcolm’s solicitor,” the man said, managing a thin smile.

Siobhan took a moment to recover. “Mr. Neilson,” she said, trying for eye contact, “this was meant to be a casual chat. There was no need for . . .”

“Nice to formalize things though, don’t you find?” The solicitor stepped through the debris. “My name’s Allison, by the way.”

“And your surname, sir?” Hynds inquired blithely. In the fraction of a second it took the solicitor to recover, Siobhan could have hugged her colleague.

“William Allison.” He handed a business card to Siobhan.

She didn’t so much as glance at it, just handed it straight to Hynds. “Mr. Allison,” she said quietly, “all we’re doing here is asking a few routine questions concerning the relationship — professional and personal — which may have existed between Mr. Neilson and Edward Marber. It would have taken about ten minutes and that would have been the end of it.” She got to her feet, aware that Hynds was following suit: a quick learner, she liked that. “But since you want to formalize things, I think we’ll continue this discussion down at the station.”

The solicitor straightened his back. “Come on now, no need for —”

She ignored him. “Mr. Neilson, I assume you’ll want to travel with your lawyer?” She stared at his bare feet. “Shoes might be an idea.”

Neilson looked at Allison. “I’m in the middle of —”

Allison cut him off. “Is this because of what happened outside?”

Siobhan held his gaze without blinking. “No, sir. It’s because I’m wondering why your client felt the need of your services.”

“I believe it’s everyone’s right to —”

Neilson was tugging at Allison’s sleeve. “Bill, I’m in the middle of something, I don’t want to spend half the day in a police cell.”

“The interview rooms at St. Leonard’s are quite cozy actually,” Hynds informed the artist. Then he made a show of studying his watch. “Of course, this time of day . . . it’s going to take us a while to get through the traffic.”

“And back again afterwards,” Siobhan added. “Plus the waiting time if a room’s not available . . .” She smiled at the solicitor. “Still, makes things nice and formal, just the way you want them.”

Neilson held up a hand. “Just a minute, please.” He was leading the solicitor out into the hallway. Siobhan turned to Hynds and beamed. “One–nil to us,” she said.

“But is the referee ready to blow?”

She shrugged a reply, slid her hands into her jacket pockets. She’d seen messier rooms, couldn’t help wondering if it were part of an act — the eccentric artist. The kitchen was just behind the dining table and looked clean and tidy. But then maybe Neilson just didn’t use it very much . . .

They heard the front door close. Neilson shambled back into the room, head bowed. “Bill’s decided . . . um, that is . . .”

“Fine,” Siobhan said, settling once again on the sofa. “Well, Mr. Neilson, sooner we get started and all that, eh?”

The artist crouched down between the speakers. They were big and old; wood-veneered sides and brown foam grilles. Hynds sat down, notebook in hand. Siobhan caught Neilson’s eye at last and offered her most reassuring smile.

“So,” she said, “just why exactly did you feel the need to have a solicitor present, Mr. Neilson?”

“I just . . . I thought it was the done thing.”

“Not unless you’re a suspect.” She let this sink in. Neilson muttered something that sounded like an apology.

Sitting back in the sofa, beginning to relax, Siobhan started the interview proper.

They both got cups of hot brown liquid from the machine. Hynds grimaced as he took his first sip.

“Couldn’t we all chip in for a coffeemaker?” he asked.

“It’s been tried before.”

“And?”

“And we started arguing about whose turn it was to buy the coffee. There’s a kettle in one of the offices. You can bring your own mug and stuff, but take my advice: keep everything locked up, or it’ll go walkies.”

He stared at the plastic cup. “Easier to use the machine,” he mumbled.

“Exactly.” She pushed open the door to the murder room.

“So whose mug did DI Rebus throw?” Hynds asked.

“Nobody knows,” she admitted. “Seems it’s been here since they built this place. Could even be that the builders left it.”

“No wonder he got the boot then.” She looked at him for an explanation. “Attempted destruction of a historical artifact.”

She smiled, made for her desk. Someone had borrowed her chair — again. Looking around, the nearest spare was Rebus’s. He’d taken it from the Farmer’s office when the old DCS had retired. That no one had touched it was testament to Rebus’s reputation, which didn’t stop her pushing it across the floor and making herself comfortable.

Her computer screen was blank. She hit a key, bringing it back to life. A new screen saver was flickering across her vision. PROVE IT THEN — POINT ME OUT. She looked up from the screen, scanning the room. Two primary targets: DC Grant Hood and DS George “Hi-Ho” Silvers. They had their heads together, standing by the far wall. Maybe they were discussing the following week’s rota, swapping assignments. Grant Hood had had a thing about her not that long back. She thought she’d managed to damp those flames without making an enemy of him. But he did like his boxes of tricks: computers; video games; digital cameras. It would be just his style to start sending her messages.

Hi-Ho Silvers was different. He liked his practical jokes, had made her his victim before. And though he was married, he had a reputation. He’d propositioned Siobhan half a dozen times over the past few years — she could always depend on him for some lurid suggestion at the Christmas party. But she wasn’t sure he’d know how to change a screen saver. He could barely change misspelled words when he was typing his reports.

Other candidates . . . ? DC Phyllida Hawes, on temporary transfer from Gayfield Square . . . newly promoted Detective Chief Inspector Bill Pryde . . . Neither of them seemed to fit the bill. When Grant Hood turned his head in her direction, she pointed at him. He frowned, shrugged his shoulders as if to ask what she wanted. She indicated her computer screen, then wagged her finger. He broke off his conversation with Silvers and started towards her. Siobhan tapped a key, so that the screen saver disappeared, replaced with a fresh page from the word-processing software.

“Got a problem?” Hood asked.

She shook her head slowly. “I thought I had. The screen saver . . .”

“What about it?” He was at her shoulder now, studying the screen.

“It was slow to shift.”

“Could be your memory,” he said.

“Nothing wrong with my memory, Grant.”

“I mean the memory on the hard disk. If it’s filling up, everything slows down.”

She knew as much but pretended she didn’t. “Oh, right.”

“I’ll check it, if you like. Only take two ticks.”

“Wouldn’t want to keep you from your little chitchat.”

Hood looked over to where George Silvers was now perusing the Wall of Death: a montage of photos and documents relating to the case, stuck to the far wall with Blu-Tac.

“Hi-Ho’s turned malingering into an art form,” Hood said quietly. “He’s been over there half the day, says he’s trying to get a ‘feel’ for events.”

“Rebus does the same thing,” she stated. Hood looked at her.

“Hi-Ho’s no John Rebus. All George Silvers wants is a quiet life until his pension maxes out.”

“Whereas?”

“Whereas Rebus will be lucky to still be around to collect his.”

“Is this a private confab, or can anyone join in?” Davie Hynds was standing not three feet away, hands in trouser pockets to indicate that he was at a loose end.

Grant Hood straightened up, slapped a hand onto Hynds’s shoulder. “And how’s the new boy shaping up, DS Clarke?”

“So far, so good.”

Hood whistled, making a show of reappraising Hynds. “That’s high marks, coming from DS Clarke, Davie. You’ve obviously wangled your way into her affections.” With an exaggerated wink, he moved off, heading once more for the Wall of Death.

Hynds took a step towards Siobhan’s desk. “Is there some history between you two?”

“Why do you say that?”

“DC Hood obviously doesn’t like me.”

“It’ll take a while, that’s all.”

“But am I right? Is there a history?”

She shook her head slowly, keeping her eyes on his. “You reckon yourself a bit of an expert, don’t you, Davie?”

“How do you mean?”

“As an amateur psychologist.”

“I wouldn’t say —”

She was resting against the back of Rebus’s chair. “Let’s give you a test: what did you make of Malcolm Neilson?”

Hynds folded his arms. “I thought we’d covered this.”

By which he meant their conversation as Siobhan drove them from Neilson’s home back to St. Leonard’s. They hadn’t learned very much from the meeting, Neilson admitting it was no secret he wasn’t on speaking terms with the art dealer. He’d further admitted being annoyed that he’d suddenly been excluded from the New Colorists.

“That bugger Hastie couldn’t paint a living room wall, and as for Celine Blacker . . .”

“I quite like Joe Drummond though,” Hynds had interrupted. Siobhan had given him a warning look, but Neilson wasn’t listening anyway.

“Celine’s not even her real name,” he was saying.

In the car, Siobhan had asked if Hynds knew anything about painting.

“I did read up on the Colorists a bit,” he’d admitted. “Case like this, thought it might come in handy . . .”

Now, he rested his knuckles against the edge of Siobhan’s desk, leaning in towards her. “He’s not got much of an alibi,” he stated.

“But did he act like a man who might need one?”

Hynds considered this. “He called his lawyer . . .”

“Yes, but that was a moment’s panic. Once we actually got talking, didn’t you think he relaxed?”

“He was pretty confident.”

Siobhan, gazing into the middle distance, found herself locking eyes with George Silvers. She pointed to her computer screen, then wagged the finger at him. He ignored her, went back to his pretense of studying the wall.

Detective Chief Superintendent Gill Templer was suddenly standing in the doorway.

“Noise Abatement Society been leafleting again?” she bellowed. “A quiet office is one that isn’t working hard enough.” She narrowed in on Silvers. “Think you’re going to solve the case by osmosis, George?” There were smiles, but no laughter. The officers were trying to look busy but focused.

Templer was heading relentlessly for Siobhan’s desk. “How did you get on with the artist?” she asked, her voice dropping several decibels.

“Says he was in a few pubs that evening, ma’am. Got a take-away and went home to listen to Wagner.”

“Tristan und Isolde,” Hynds confided. Then, when Templer turned her laser glare on him, he blurted out that Neilson had wanted a solicitor present at the interview.

“Did he now?” The beams switched to Siobhan.

“It’ll go in my report, ma’am.”

“But you didn’t think it worth mentioning?”

The side of Hynds’s neck was reddening as he realized he’d dropped Siobhan in it.

“We don’t think it really means anything . . .” His voice fell away as he found himself the center of attention again.

“That’s your judgment, is it? Well, I can see I’m completely surplus to requirements. DC Hynds,” Templer announced to the room, “thinks he’s competent to make all the decisions around here.”

Hynds tried for a smile, failed.

“But just in case he’s wrong . . .” Templer was moving towards the doorway again, gesturing into the corridor. “Seeing how we’re down a DI, the Big House have let us borrow one of theirs.”

Siobhan sucked air between her teeth as a body and face she recognized walked into the room.

“DI Derek Linford,” Templer stated by way of introduction. “Some of you may already know him.” Her eyes turned towards Hi-Ho Silvers. “George, you’ve been staring at that wall long enough. Maybe you can bring Derek up to speed on the case, eh?”

With that, Templer left the room. Linford looked around, then walked stiffly towards George Silvers, shaking the proffered hand.

“Christ,” Hynds was saying in an undertone, “I felt like I was on her petri dish for a minute back there . . .” Then he noticed Siobhan’s face. “What is it?”

“What you were saying before . . . about Grant and me.” She nodded her head in Linford’s direction.

“Oh,” Davie Hynds said. Then: “Fancy another coffee?”

Out at the machine she gave him an edited version of events, telling him that she’d gone out with Linford on a couple of occasions, but leaving out the fact that Linford had started spying on her. She added that there was bad blood between Linford and Rebus, too, with the former blaming the latter for a severe beating he’d been given.

“You mean DI Rebus beat him up?”

Siobhan shook her head. “But Linford blames him all the same.”

Hynds gave a low whistle. He seemed about to say something, but now Linford himself was walking down the corridor, sorting out some loose coins in his hand.

“Change for fifty pee?” he asked. Hynds immediately reached into his own pocket, allowing Linford and Siobhan to share a look.

“How are you, Siobhan?”

“Fine, Derek. How are you?”

“Better.” He nodded slowly. “Thanks for asking.” Hynds was slotting coins home, refusing Linford’s offer of the fifty-pence piece.

“Was it tea or coffee you were after?”

“I think I’m capable of pushing the button myself,” Linford told him. Hynds realized he was trying too hard, took half a step back.

“Besides,” Linford added, “knowing this machine, it hardly makes any difference.” He managed a smile, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes.

“Why him?” Siobhan asked.

She was in DCS Templer’s office. Gill Templer had just got off the phone and was scribbling a note in the margin of a typewritten sheet.

“Why not?”

It struck Siobhan that Templer hadn’t been chief super back then. She didn’t know the full story.

“There’s . . .” — she found herself echoing Hynds’s word — “history.” Templer glanced up. “Between DI Linford and DI Rebus,” Siobhan went on.

“But DI Rebus is no longer part of this team.” Templer lifted the sheet of paper as if to read it.

“I know that, ma’am.”

Templer peered at her. “Then what’s the problem?”

Siobhan took the whole office in with a sweep of her eyes. Window and filing cabinets, potted plant, a couple of family photographs. She wanted it. She wanted someday to be sitting where Gill Templer was.

Which meant not giving up her secrets.

Which meant seeming strong, not rocking the boat.

“Nothing, ma’am.” She turned towards the door, reached out for the handle.

“Siobhan.” The voice was more human. “I respect your loyalty to DI Rebus, but that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a good thing.”

Siobhan nodded, keeping her face to the door. When her boss’s phone rang again, she made what she felt was a dignified exit. Back in the murder room, she checked her screen saver. No one had tampered with it. Then she had a thought, and walked the short distance back across the corridor, knocking on the door, putting her head around without waiting. Templer put a hand across the receiver’s mouthpiece.

“What is it?” she asked, her voice once again iron.

“Cafferty,” Siobhan said simply. “I want to be the one who interviews him.”

Rebus was slowly circling the long oval table. Night had fallen, but the slat blinds remained open. The table was strewn with stuff from the box-files. What it lacked as yet was some order. Rebus didn’t think it was his job to impose order, yet that was what he was doing. He knew that come the morning, the rest of the team might want to rearrange everything, but at least he’d have tried.

Interview transcripts, reports from the door-to-door inquiries, medical and pathology, forensics and Scene of Crime . . . There was a lot of background on the victim, as was to be expected: how could they hope to solve the crime until they had a motive? The area’s prostitutes had been reluctant to come forward. No one had claimed Eric Lomax as a client. It didn’t help that there had been a series of murders of Glasgow prostitutes and that the police had been accused of not caring. Nor did it help that Lomax — known to his associates as Rico — had operated on the fringes of the city’s criminal community.

In short, Rico Lomax was a lowlife. And even on this morning’s evidence, Rebus could see that some of the officers on the original inquiry had felt that all his demise did was erase another name from the game. One or two of the Resurrection Men had mooted similar feelings.

“Why give us a scumbag to work on?” Stu Sutherland had asked. “Give us a case we want to see solved.”

Which remark had earned him a roasting from DCI Tennant. They had to want to see all their cases solved. Rebus had watched Tennant throughout, wondering why the Lomax case had been chosen. Could it be random chance, or something altogether more threatening?

There was a box of newspapers from the time. A lot of interest had been shown in them, not least because they brought back memories. Rebus sat himself down now and leafed through a couple. The official opening of the Skye Road Bridge . . . Raith Rovers in the UEFA Cup . . . a bantamweight boxer killed in the ring in Glasgow . . .

“Old news,” a voice intoned. Rebus looked up. Francis Gray was standing in the open doorway, feet apart, hands in pockets.

“Thought you were down the pub,” Rebus said.

Gray sniffed as he came in, rubbed a hand across his nose. “We just ended up discussing all this.” He tapped one of the empty box-files. “The lads are on their way over, but looks like you beat us all to it.”

“It was all right when it was just tests and lectures,” Rebus said, leaning back in his chair so he could stretch his spine.

Gray nodded. “But now there’s something for us to take seriously, eh?” He pulled out the chair next to Rebus’s, sat down and concentrated on the open newspaper. “But you seem to be taking it more seriously than most.”

“I just got here first, that’s all.”

“That’s what I mean.” Gray still wasn’t looking at him. He wet a thumb and turned back a page. “You’ve got a bit of a rep, haven’t you, John? Sometimes you get too involved.”

“Oh aye? And you’re here for always toeing the line?”

Gray allowed himself a smile. Rebus could smell beer and nicotine from his clothes. “We’ve all crossed the line sometime, haven’t we? It happens to good cops as well as bad. Maybe you could even say it’s what makes the good cops good.”

Rebus studied the side of Gray’s head. Gray was at Tulliallan because he’d disobeyed one order too many from a senior officer. Then again, as Gray had said: “My boss was, is, and will forever be a complete and utter arsehole.” A pause. “With respect.” That final phrase had cracked the table up. The problem with most of the Resurrection Men was, they didn’t respect those above them in the pecking order, didn’t trust them to do a good job, make the right decision. Gray’s “Wild Bunch” would be returned to duty only when they’d learned to accept and respond to the hierarchy.

“See,” Gray was saying now, “give me a boss like DCI Tennant any day of the week. Guy like that’s going to call a spade a shovel. You know where you stand with him. He’s old school.”

Rebus was nodding. “At least he’s going to give you a bollocking to your face.”

“And not go shafting you from behind.” Now Gray found himself at the newspaper’s front page. He held it up for Rebus to see: ROSYTH BID BRINGS HOPE OF 5,000 JOBS . . . “Yet we’re still here,” Gray said quietly. “We haven’t quit and they haven’t made us. Why do you think that is?”

“We’d cause too much trouble?” Rebus guessed.

Gray shook his head. “It’s because deep down they understand something. They know that they need us more than we need them.” Now he turned to match Rebus’s gaze, seemed to be waiting for Rebus to say something in reply. But there were voices in the corridor, and then faces in the doorway. Four of them, toting a couple of shopping bags from which were produced cans of beer and lager and a bottle of cheap whiskey. Gray rose to his feet, quickly took over.

“DC Ward, you’re in charge of finding us some mugs or glasses. DC Sutherland, might as well shut the blinds, eh? DI Rebus here has already got the ball rolling. Who knows, maybe we’ll wrap this up tonight and put Archie Tennant’s gas at a peep . . .”

They knew they wouldn’t, but that didn’t stop them trying, starting with a brainstorming session that went all the better for the loosening effects of the alcohol. Some of the theories were wild, and got wilder, but there were nuggets among the dross. Tam Barclay made a list. As Rebus had suspected would happen, the separate clusters of paperwork on the table soon collided, restoring chaos to the whole. He didn’t say anything.

“Rico Lomax wasn’t expecting anything,” Jazz McCullough stated at one point.

“How do you reckon?”

“Wary men tend to change their routine, but here’s Rico, cool as you like, at his usual spot in his usual bar on the same night as always.”

There were nods of agreement. Their thinking had been: some gangland falling-out, an organized hit.

“We all spoke to our snitches at the time,” Francis Gray added. “A lot of pieces of silver crossed a good many undeserving palms. Result: zip.”

“Doesn’t mean there wasn’t a contract on him,” Allan Ward said.

“Still with us, Allan?” Gray said, sounding surprised. “Is it not time you were tucked up in bed with your teddy?”

“Tell me, Francis, do you buy your one-liners wholesale? Only they’re well past their sell-by.”

There was laughter at this, and a few fingers pointed at Gray, as if to say: The lad got you, Francis! He definitely got you!

Rebus watched Gray’s mouth twist itself into a smile so thin it could have graced a catwalk.

“I can see this is going to be a long night,” Jazz McCullough said, bringing them back to earth.

After a can of beer, Rebus excused himself to visit the toilet. It was at the end of the corridor and down a flight of stairs. As he left the room, he could hear Stu Sutherland repeating one of the earlier theories:

“Rico was freelance, right? As in not affiliated to any gang in particular. And one of the things he was good at, if the rumors are true, was getting the various soldiers off the battlefield when things got too hot . . .”

Rebus knew what Sutherland was talking about. If someone did a hit, or got into any other trouble which necessitated them getting out of town for a while, it was Rico’s job to find a safe haven. He had contacts everywhere: council flats, holiday homes, caravan sites. From Caithness to the border, the Western Isles to East Lothian. Caravans on the east coast were a specialty: Rico had cousins who ran half a dozen separate sites. Sutherland wanted to know who’d been hiding out at the time Rico had been hit. Could one of the safe houses have been breached, a visit with a baseball bat Rico’s punishment? Or had someone been trying to find out a location from him?

It wasn’t a bad notion. What troubled Rebus was how, six years on, they’d go about finding out. By the stairwell, he saw a shadowy figure heading down. Cleaner, he thought. But the cleaners had been round earlier. He started to descend, but then thought better of it. Walked the length of the opposite corridor: there was another set of stairs down at its end. Now he was on the ground floor. He walked on tiptoe back towards the central stairwell, keeping in against the wall. Pushed open the glass doors and surprised the figure who was skulking there.

“Evening, sir.”

DCI Archibald Tennant spun round. “Oh, it’s you.”

“Spying on us, sir?”

Rebus could see Tennant considering his options.

“I’d probably do the same thing,” Rebus said into the silence, “under the circumstances.”

Tennant tilted his head upwards. “How many are in there?”

“All of us.”

“McCullough’s not bunked off home?”

“Not tonight.”

“In that case, I am impressed.”

“Why don’t you join us, sir? Couple of cans of beer left . . .”

Tennant made a show of checking his watch, wrinkled his nose. “Time I was turning in,” he said. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t . . .”

“Mention bumping into you? Wouldn’t that be going against the team ethos, sir?” Beginning to smile, enjoying Tennant’s discomfort.

“Just this once, DI Rebus, maybe you could play the outsider.”

“Step out of character, you mean?”

This elicited a smile from the older man. “Tell you what, I’ll leave it to your judgment, shall I?” He turned and pushed his way out of the college’s main doors. The path outside was well lit, and Rebus watched him all the way, then stepped beneath the staircase, where the public telephones were.

His call was answered on the fifth ring. Rebus kept his eyes on the stairs, ready to hang up if anyone came down.

“It’s me,” he said into the receiver. “I need a meet.” He listened for a moment. “Sooner if you can manage it. What about this weekend? It’s nothing to do with you-know-what.” He paused. “Well, maybe it is. I don’t know.” He nodded as he learned that the weekend was out of the question. After listening to a few more words, Rebus hung up and pushed open the door to the toilets. Stood there at the sink, running the water. It was less than a minute before someone else came in. Allan Ward offered a grunt before making for one of the cubicles. Rebus heard the door lock, Ward loosen his trouser belt.

“Waste of time and brain cells,” Ward’s voice bounced off the ceiling. “Complete and utter waste of manpower.”

“I get the feeling DCI Tennant has failed to sway you?” Rebus called.

“Fucking waste of time.”

Taking this as a yes, Rebus left Ward to his business.