Set in Darkness

1

Darkness was falling as Rebus accepted the yellow hard hat from his guide.

‘This will be the admin block, we think,’ the man said. His name was David Gilfillan. He worked for Historic Scotland and was coordinating the archaeological survey of Queensberry House. ‘The original building is late seventeenth century. Lord Hatton was its original owner. It was extended at the end of the century, after coming into the ownership of the first Duke of Queensberry. It would have been one of the grandest houses on Canongate, and only a stone’s throw from Holyrood.’

All around them, demolition work was taking place. Queensberry House itself would be saved, but the more recent additions either side of it were going. Workmen crouched on roofs, removing slates, tying them into bundles which were lowered by rope to waiting skips. There were enough broken slates underfoot to show that the process was imperfect. Rebus adjusted his hard hat and tried to look interested in what Gilfillan was saying.

Everyone told him that this was a sign, that he was here because the chiefs at the Big House had plans for him. But Rebus knew better. He knew his boss, Detective Chief Superintendent ‘Farmer’ Watson, had put his name forward because he was hoping to keep Rebus out of trouble and out of his hair. It was as simple as that. And if — if — Rebus accepted without complaining and saw the assignment through, then maybe — maybe — the Farmer would receive a chastened Rebus back into the fold.

Four o’clock on a December afternoon in Edinburgh; John Rebus with his hands in his raincoat pockets, water seeping up through the leather soles of his shoes. Gilfillan was wearing green wellies. Rebus noticed that DI Derek Linford was wearing an almost identical pair. He’d probably phoned beforehand, checked with the archaeologist what the season’s fashion was. Linford was Fettes fast-stream, headed for big things at Lothian and Borders Police HQ. Late twenties, practically deskbound, and glowing from a love of the job. Already there were CID officers — mostly older than him — who were saying it didn’t do to get on the wrong side of Derek Linford. Maybe he’d have a long memory; maybe one day he’d be looking down on them all from Room 279 in the Big House.

The Big House: Police HQ on Fettes Avenue; 279: the Chief Constable’s office.

Linford had his notebook out, pen clenched between his teeth. He was listening to the lecture. He was listening.

‘Forty noblemen, seven judges, generals, doctors, bankers...’ Gilfillan was letting his tour group know how important Canongate had been at one time in the city’s history. In doing so, he was pointing towards the near future. The brewery next door to Queensberry House was due for demolition the following spring. The parliament building itself would be built on the cleared site, directly across the road from Holyrood House, the Queen’s Edinburgh residence. On the other side of Holyrood Road, facing Queensberry House, work was progressing on Dynamic Earth, a natural history theme park. Next to it, a new HQ for the city’s daily newspaper was at present a giant monkey-puzzle of steel girders. And across the road from that, another site was being cleared in preparation for the construction of a hotel and ‘prestige apartment block’. Rebus was standing in the midst of one of the biggest building sites in Edinburgh’s history.

‘You’ll probably all know Queensberry House as a hospital,’ Gilfillan was saying. Derek Linford was nodding, but then he nodded agreement with almost everything the archaeologist said. ‘Where we’re standing now was used for car parking.’ Rebus looked around at the mud-coloured lorries, each one bearing the simple word DEMOLITION. ‘But before it was a hospital it was used as a barracks. This area was the parade ground. We dug down and found evidence of a formal sunken garden. It was probably filled in to make the parade ground.’

In what light was left, Rebus looked at Queensberry House. Its grey harled walls looked unloved. There was grass growing from its gutters. It was huge, yet he couldn’t remember having seen it before, though he’d driven past it probably several hundred times in his life.

‘My wife used to work here,’ another of the group said, ‘when it was a hospital.’ The informant was Detective Sergeant Joseph Dickie, who was based at Gayfield Square. He’d successfully contrived to miss two out of the first four meetings of the PPLC — the Policing of Parliament Liaison Committee. By some arcane law of bureaucratic semantics, the PPLC was actually a subcommittee, one of many which had been set up to advise on security matters pertaining to the Scottish Parliament. There were eight members of the PPLC, including one Scottish Office official and a shadowy figure who claimed to be from Scotland Yard, though when Rebus had phoned the Met in London, he’d been unable to trace him. Rebus’s bet was that the man — Alec Carmoodie — was MI5. Carmoodie wasn’t here today, and neither was Peter Brent, the sharp-faced and sharper-suited Scottish Office representative. Brent, for his sins, sat on several of the subcommittees, and had begged off today’s tour with the compelling excuse that he’d been through it twice before when accompanying visiting dignitaries.

Making up the party today were the three final members of the PPLC. DS Ellen Wylie was from C Division HQ in Torphichen Place. It didn’t seem to bother her that she was the only woman on the team. She treated it like any other task, raising good points at the meetings and asking questions to which no one seemed to have any answers. DC Grant Hood was from Rebus’s own station, St Leonard’s. Two of them, because St Leonard’s was the closest station to the Holyrood site, and the parliament would be part of their beat. Though Rebus worked in the same office as Hood, he didn’t know him well. They’d not often shared the same shift. But Rebus did know the last member of the PPLC, DI Bobby Hogan from D Division in Leith. At the first meeting, Hogan had pulled Rebus to one side.

‘What the hell are we doing here?’

‘I’m serving time,’ Rebus had answered. ‘What about you?’

Hogan was scoping out the room. ‘Christ, man, look at them. We’re Old Testament by comparison.’

Smiling now at the memory, Rebus caught Hogan’s eye and winked. Hogan shook his head almost imperceptibly. Rebus knew what he was thinking: waste of time. Almost everything was a waste of time for Bobby Hogan.

‘If you’ll follow me,’ Gilfillan was saying, ‘we can take a look indoors.’

Which, to Rebus’s mind, really was a waste of time. The committee having been set up, things had to be found for them to do. So here they were wandering through the dank interior of Queensberry House, their way lit irregularly by unsafe-looking strip lights and the torch carried by Gilfillan. As they climbed the stairwell — nobody wanted to use the lift — Rebus found himself paired with Joe Dickie, who asked a question he’d asked before.

‘Put in your exes yet?’ By which he meant the claim for expenses.

‘No,’ Rebus admitted.

‘Sooner you do, sooner they’ll cough up.’

Dickie seemed to spend half his time at their meetings totting up figures on his pad of paper. Rebus had never seen the man write down anything as mundane as a phrase or sentence. Dickie was late thirties, big-framed with a head like an artillery shell stood on end. His black hair was cropped close to the skull and his eyes were as small and rounded as a china doll’s. Rebus had tried the comparison out on Bobby Hogan, who’d commented that any doll resembling Joe Dickie would ‘give a bairn nightmares’.

‘I’m a grown-up,’ Hogan had continued, ‘and he still scares me.’

Climbing the stairs, Rebus smiled again. Yes, he was glad to have Bobby Hogan around.

‘When people think of archaeology,’ Gilfillan was saying, ‘they almost always see it in terms of digging down, but one of our most exciting finds here was in the attic. A new roof was built over the original one, and there are traces of what looks like a tower. We’d have to climb a ladder to get to it, but if anyone’s interested...?’

‘Thank you,’ a voice said. Derek Linford: Rebus knew its nasal quality only too well by now.

‘Creep,’ another voice close to Rebus whispered. It was Bobby Hogan, bringing up the rear. A head turned: Ellen Wylie. She’d heard, and now gave what looked like the hint of a smile. Rebus looked to Hogan, who shrugged, letting him know he thought Wylie was all right.

‘How will Queensberry House be linked to the parliament building? Will there be covered walkways?’ The questions came from Linford again. He was out in front with Gilfillan. The pair of them had rounded a corner of the stairs, so that Rebus had to strain to hear Gilfillan’s hesitant reply.

‘I don’t know.’

His tone said it all: he was an archaeologist, not an architect. He was here to investigate the site’s past rather than its future. He wasn’t sure himself why he was giving this tour, except that it had been asked of him. Hogan screwed up his face, letting everyone in the vicinity know his own feelings.

‘When will the building be ready?’ Grant Hood asked. An easy one: they’d all been briefed. Rebus saw what Hood was doing — trying to console Gilfillan by putting a question he could answer.

‘Construction begins in the summer,’ Gilfillan obliged. ‘Everything should be up and running here by the autumn of 2001.’ They were coming out on to a landing. Around them stood open doorways, through which could be glimpsed the old hospital wards. Walls had been gouged at, flooring removed: checks on the fabric of the building. Rebus stared out of a window. Most of the workers looked to be packing up: dangerously dark now to be scrabbling over roofs. There was a summer house down there. It was due to be demolished, too. And a tree, drooping forlornly, surrounded by rubble. It had been planted by the Queen. No way it could be moved or felled until she’d given her permission. According to Gilfillan, permission had now been granted; the tree would go. Maybe formal gardens would be recreated down there, or maybe it would be a staff car park. Nobody knew. 2001 seemed a ways off. Until this site was ready, the parliament would sit in the Church of Scotland Assembly Hall near the top of The Mound. The committee had already been on two tours of the Assembly Hall and its immediate vicinity. Office buildings were being turned over to the parliament, so that the MSPs could have somewhere to work. Bobby Hogan had asked at one meeting why they couldn’t just wait for the Holyrood site to be ready before, in his words, ‘setting up shop’. Peter Brent, the civil servant, had stared at him aghast.

‘Because Scotland needs a parliament now.’

‘Funny, we’ve done without for three hundred years...’

Brent had been about to object, but Rebus had butted in. ‘Bobby, at least they’re not trying to rush the job.’

Hogan had smiled, knowing he was talking about the newly opened Museum of Scotland. The Queen had come north for the official opening of the unfinished building. They’d had to hide the scaffolding and paint tins till she’d gone.

Gilfillan was standing beside a retractable ladder, pointing upwards towards a hatch in the ceiling.

‘The original roof is just up there,’ he said. Derek Linford already had both feet on the ladder’s bottom rung. ‘You don’t need to go all the way,’ Gilfillan continued as Linford climbed. ‘If I shine the torch up...’

But Linford had disappeared into the roof space.

‘Lock the hatch and let’s make a run for it,’ Bobby Hogan said, smiling so they’d assume he was joking.

Ellen Wylie hunched her shoulders. ‘There’s a real... atmosphere in here, isn’t there?’

‘My wife saw a ghost,’ Joe Dickie said. ‘Lots of people who worked here did. A woman, she was crying. Used to sit on the end of one of the beds.’

‘Maybe she was a patient who died here,’ Grant Hood offered.

Gilfillan turned towards them. ‘I’ve heard that story, too. She was the mother of one of the servants. Her son was working here the night the Act of Union was signed. Poor chap got himself murdered.’

Linford called down that he thought he could see where the steps to the tower had been, but nobody was listening.

‘Murdered?’ Ellen Wylie said.

Gilfillan nodded. His torch threw weird shadows across the walls, illuminating the slow movements of cobwebs. Linford was trying to read some graffiti on the wall.

‘There’s a year written here... 1870, I think.’

‘You know Queensberry was the architect of the Act of Union?’ Gilfillan was saying. He could see that he had an audience now, for the first time since the tour had begun in the brewery car park next door. ‘Back in 1707. This’, he scratched a shoe over the bare floorboards, ‘is where Great Britain was invented. And the night of the signing, one of the young servants was working in the kitchen. The Duke of Queensberry was Secretary of State. It was his job to lead the negotiations. But he had a son, James Douglas, Earl of Drumlanrig. The story goes, James was off his head...’

‘What happened?’

Gilfillan looked up through the open hatch. ‘All right up there?’ he called.

‘Fine. Anyone else want to take a look?’

They ignored him. Ellen Wylie repeated her question.

‘He ran the servant through with a sword,’ Gilfillan said, ‘then roasted him in one of the kitchen fireplaces. James was sitting munching away when he was found.’

‘Dear God,’ Ellen Wylie said.

‘You believe this?’ Bobby Hogan slid his hands into his pockets.

Gilfillan shrugged. ‘It’s a matter of record.’

A blast of cold air seemed to rush at them from the roof space. Then a rubber-soled wellington appeared on the ladder, and Derek Linford began his slow, dusty descent. At the bottom, he removed the pen from between his teeth.

‘Interesting up there,’ he said. ‘You really should try it. Could be your first and last chance.’

‘Why’s that then?’ Bobby Hogan asked.

‘I very much doubt we’ll be letting tourists in here, Bobby,’ Linford said. ‘Imagine what that would do for security.’

Hogan stepped forward so swiftly that Linford flinched. But all Hogan did was lift a cobweb from the young man’s shoulder.

‘Can’t have you heading back to the Big House in less than showroom condition, can we, son?’ Hogan said. Linford ignored him, probably feeling that he could well afford to ignore relics like Bobby Hogan, just as Hogan knew he had nothing to fear from Linford: he’d be heading for retirement long before the younger man gained any position of real power and prominence.

‘I can’t see it as the powerhouse of government,’ Ellen Wylie said, examining the water stains on the walls, the flaking plaster. ‘Wouldn’t they have been better off knocking it down and starting again?’

‘It’s a listed building,’ Gilfillan censured her. Wylie just shrugged. Rebus knew that nevertheless she had accomplished her objective, by deflecting attention away from Linford and Hogan. Gilfillan was off again, delving into the history of the area: the series of wells which had been found beneath the brewery; the slaughterhouse which used to stand near by. As they headed back down the stairs, Hogan held back, tapping his watch, then cupping a hand to his mouth. Rebus nodded: good idea. A drink afterwards. Jenny Ha’s was a short stroll away, or there was the Holyrood Tavern on the way back to St Leonard’s. As if mind-reading, Gilfillan began talking about the Younger’s Brewery.

‘Covered twenty-seven acres at one time, produced a quarter of all the beer in Scotland. Mind you, there’s been an abbey at Holyrood since early in the twelfth century. Chances are they weren’t just drinking well-water.’

Through a landing window, Rebus could see that outside night had fallen prematurely. Scotland in winter: it was dark when you came to work, and dark when you went home again. Well, they’d had their little outing, gleaned nothing from it, and would now be released back to their various stations until the next meeting. It felt like a penance because Rebus’s boss had planned it as such. Farmer Watson was on a committee himself: Strategies for Policing in the New Scotland. Everyone called it SPINS. Committee upon committee... it felt to Rebus as if they were building a paper tower, enough ‘Policy Agendas’, ‘Reports’ and ‘Occasional Papers’ to completely fill Queensberry House. And the more they talked, the more that got written, the further away from reality they seemed to move. Queensberry House was unreal to him, the idea of a parliament itself the dream of some mad god: ‘But Edinburgh is a mad god’s dream/Fitful and dark...’ He’d found the words at the opening to a book about the city. They were from a poem by Hugh MacDiarmid. The book itself had been part of his recent education, trying to understand this home of his.

He took off his hard hat, rubbed his fingers through his hair, wondering just how much protection the yellow plastic would give against a projectile falling several storeys. Gilfillan asked him to put the hat back on until they were back at the site office.

‘You might not get into trouble,’ the archaeologist said, ‘but I would.’

Rebus put the helmet back on, while Hogan tutted and wagged a finger. They were back at ground level, in what Rebus guessed must have been the hospital’s reception area. There wasn’t much to it. Spools of electric cable sat near the door: the offices would need rewiring. They were going to close the Holyrood/St Mary’s junction to facilitate underground cabling. Rebus, who used the route often, wasn’t looking forward to the diversions. Too often these days the city seemed nothing but roadworks.

‘Well,’ Gilfillan was saying, opening his arms, ‘that’s about it. If there are any questions, I’ll do what I can.’

Bobby Hogan coughed into the silence. Rebus saw it as a warning to Linford. When someone had come up from London to address the group on security issues in the Houses of Parliament, Linford had asked so many questions the poor sod had missed his train south. Hogan knew this because he’d been the one who’d driven the Londoner at breakneck speed back to Waverley Station, then had had to entertain him for the rest of the evening before depositing him on the overnight sleeper.

Linford consulted his notebook, six pairs of eyes drilling into him, fingers touching wristwatches.

‘Well, in that case—’ Gilfillan began.

‘Hey! Mr Gilfillan! Are you up there?’ The voice was coming from below. Gilfillan walked over to a doorway, called down a flight of steps.

‘What is it, Marlene?’

‘Come take a look.’

Gilfillan turned to look at his reluctant group. ‘Shall we?’ He was already heading down. They couldn’t very well leave without him. It was stay here, with a bare lightbulb for company, or head down into the basement. Derek Linford led the way.

They came out into a narrow hallway, rooms off to both sides, and other rooms seeming to lead from those. Rebus thought he caught a glimpse of an electrical generator somewhere in the gloom. Voices up ahead and the shadowplay of torches. They walked out of the hallway and into a room lit by a single arc lamp. It was pointing towards a long wall, the bottom half of which had been lined with wooden tongue-and-groove painted the selfsame institutional cream as the plaster walls. Floorboards had been ripped up so that for the most part they were walking on the exposed joists, beneath which sat bare earth. The whole room smelt of damp and mould. Gilfillan and the other archaeologist, the one he’d called Marlene, were crouched in front of this wall, examining the stonework beneath the wood panelling. Two long curves of hewn stone, forming what seemed to Rebus like railway arches in miniature. Gilfillan turned round, looking excited for the first time that day.

‘Fireplaces,’ he said. ‘Two of them. This must have been the kitchen.’ He stood up, taking a couple of paces back. ‘The floor level’s been raised at some point. We’re only seeing the top half of them.’ He half-turned towards the group, reluctant to take his eyes off the discovery. ‘Wonder which one the servant was roasted in...’

One of the fireplaces was open, the other closed off by a couple of sections of brown corroding metal.

‘What an extraordinary find,’ Gilfillan said, beaming at his young co-worker. She grinned back at him. It was nice to see people so happy in their work. Digging up the past, uncovering secrets... it struck Rebus that they weren’t so unlike detectives.

‘Any chance of rustling us up a meal then?’ Bobby Hogan said, producing a snort of laughter from Ellen Wylie. But Gilfillan wasn’t paying any heed. He was standing by the closed fireplace, prying with his fingertips at the space between stonework and metal. The sheet came away easily, Marlene helping him to lift it off and place it carefully on the floor.

‘Wonder when they blocked it off?’ Grant Hood asked.

Hogan tapped the metal sheet. ‘Doesn’t look exactly prehistoric.’ Gilfillan and Marlene had lifted away the second sheet. Now everyone was staring at the revealed fireplace. Gilfillan thrust his torch towards it, though the arc lamp gave light enough.

There could be no mistaking the desiccated corpse for anything other than what it was.

2

Siobhan Clarke tugged at the hem of her black dress. Two men, patrolling the perimeter of the dance floor, stopped to watch. She tried them with a glare, but they’d returned to some conversation they were having, half-cupping their free hands to their mouths in an attempt to be heard. Then nods, sips from their pint glasses, and they were moving away, eyes on the other booths. Clarke turned to her companion, who shook her head, indicating that she hadn’t known the men. Their booth was a large semicircle, fourteen of them squeezed in around the table. Eight women, six men. Some of the men wore suits, others wore denim jackets but dress shirts. ‘No denims. No trainers’ was what it said on the sign outside, but the dress code wasn’t exactly being enforced. There were too many people in the club. Clarke wondered if it constituted a fire hazard. She turned to her companion.

‘Is it always this busy?’

Sandra Carnegie shrugged. ‘Seems about normal,’ she yelled. She was seated right next to Clarke, but even so was almost rendered unintelligible by the pounding music. Not for the first time, Clarke wondered how you were supposed to meet anyone in a place like this. The men at the table would make eye contact, nod towards the dance floor. If the woman agreed, everyone would have to move so the couple could get out. Then when they danced they seemed to move in their own worlds, barely making eye contact with their partner. It was much the same when a stranger approached the group: eye contact; dance floor nod; then the ritual of the dance itself. Sometimes women danced with other women, shoulders drooped, eyes scanning the other faces. Sometimes a man could be seen dancing alone. Clarke had pointed out faces to Sandra Carnegie, who’d always studied them closely before shaking her head.

It was Singles Night at the Marina Club. Good name for a nightclub sited just the two and a half miles from the coastline. Not that ‘Singles Night’ meant much. In theory it meant that the music might hark back to the 1980s or ’70s, catering for a slightly more mature clientele than some of the other clubs. For Clarke the word singles meant people in their thirties, some of them divorced. But there were lads in tonight who’d probably had to finish their homework before coming out.

Or was she just getting old?

It was her first time at a singles night. She’d tried rehearsing chat lines. If any sleazeball asked her how she liked her eggs in the morning, she was ready to tell him ‘Unfertilised’, but she’d no idea what she’d say if anyone asked what she did.

I’m a detective constable with Lothian and Borders Police wasn’t the ideal opening gambit. She knew that from experience. Maybe that was why lately she’d all but given up trying. All of them around the table knew who she was, why she was here. None of the men had tried chatting her up. There had been words of consolation for Sandra Carnegie, words and hugs, and dark looks at the men in the company, who’d shrivelled visibly. They were men, and men were in it together, a conspiracy of bastards. It was a man who had raped Sandra Carnegie, who had turned her from a fun-loving single mum into a victim.

Clarke had persuaded Sandra to turn hunter — that was the way she’d phrased it.

‘We’ve got to turn the tables on him, Sandra. That’s my feeling anyway... before he does it again.’

Him... he... But there were two of them. One to carry out the assault, the other to help hold the victim. When the rape had been reported in the newspapers, two more women had come forward with their stories. They’d been assaulted — sexually, physically — but not raped, not insofar as the law defined the crime. The women’s stories had been almost identical: all three were members of singles clubs; all three had been at functions organised by their club; all three had been heading home alone.

One man on foot, following them, grabbing them, and another driving the van which pulled up. The assaults took place in the back of the van, its floor covered with material of some kind, maybe a tarpaulin. Kicked out of the van afterwards, usually on the outskirts of the city, with a final warning not to say anything, not to go to the police.

‘You go to a singles club, you’re asking for what you get.’

The rapist’s final words, words which had set Siobhan Clarke thinking, seated in her cramped cupboard of an office; seconded to Sex Crimes. One thing she knew: the crimes were becoming more violent as the attacker grew in confidence. He’d progressed from assault to rape; who knew where he’d want to take it from there? One thing was obvious: he had something about singles clubs. Was he targeting them? Where did he get his information?

She wasn’t working Sex Crimes any more, was back at St Leonard’s and everyday CID, but she’d been given the chance to work on Sandra Carnegie, to persuade her back into the Marina. Siobhan’s reasoning: how would he know his victims belonged to singles clubs unless he’d been in the nightclub? Members of the clubs themselves — there were three in the city — had been questioned, along with those who’d left or been kicked out.

Sandra was grey-faced and drinking Bacardi and Coke. She’d spent most of the evening so far staring at the table-top. Before coming to the Marina, the club had met in a pub. This was how it worked: sometimes they met in the pub and moved on elsewhere; sometimes they stayed put; occasionally some function was arranged — a dance or theatre trip. It was just possible the rapist followed them from the pub, but more likely he started in the dance hall, circling the floor, face hidden behind his drink. Indistinguishable from the dozens of men doing the selfsame thing.

Clarke wondered if it was possible to identify a singles group by sight alone. It would be a fair-sized crowd, mixed sex. But that could make it an office party. There’d be no wedding rings, though... and while the age range would be broad, there’d be no one who could be mistaken for the office junior. Clarke had asked Sandra about her group.

‘It just gives me some company. I work in an old people’s home, don’t get the chance to meet anyone my own age. Then there’s David. If I want to go out, my mum has to babysit.’ David being her eleven-year-old son. ‘It’s just for company... that’s all.’

Another woman in the group had said much the same thing, adding that a lot of the men you met at singles groups were ‘let’s say less than perfect’. But the women were fine: it was that company thing again.

Sitting at the edge of the booth, Clarke had been approached twice so far, turning down both suitors. One of the women had leaned across the table.

‘You’re fresh blood!’ she’d shouted. ‘They can always smell that!’ Then she’d leaned back and laughed, showing stained teeth and a tongue turned green from the cocktail she was drinking.

‘Moira’s just jealous,’ Sandra had said. ‘The only ones who ever ask her up have usually spent all day queuing to renew their bus pass.’

Moira couldn’t have heard the remark, but she stared anyway, as if sensing some slight against her.

‘I need to go to the toilet,’ Sandra said now.

‘I’ll come with you.’

Sandra nodded her agreement. Clarke had promised: you won’t be out of my sight for a second. They lifted their bags from the floor and started pushing their way through the throng.

The loo wasn’t much emptier, but at least it was cool, and the door helped muffle the sound system. Clarke felt a dullness in her ears, and her throat was raw from cigarette smoke and shouting. While Sandra queued for a cubicle, Clarke made for the washbasins. She examined herself in the mirror. She didn’t normally wear make-up, and was surprised to see her face so changed. The eyeliner and mascara made her eyes look hard rather than alluring. She tugged at one of her shoulder straps. Now that she was standing up, the hem of her dress was at her knees. But when she sat, it threatened to ride up to her stomach. She’d worn it only twice before: a wedding and a dinner party. Couldn’t recall the same problem. Was she getting fat in the bum, was that it? She half-turned, tried to see, then turned her attention to her hair. Short: she liked the cut. It made her face longer. A woman bumped against her in the rush for the hand-drier. Loud snorts from one of the cubicles: someone doing a line? Conversations in the toilet queue: off-colour remarks about tonight’s talent, who had the nicest bum. Which was preferable: a bulging crotch or a bulging wallet? Sandra had disappeared into one of the cubicles. Clarke folded her arms and waited. Someone stood in front of her.

‘Are you the condom attendant or what?’

Laughter from the queue. She saw that she was standing beside the wall dispenser, moved slightly so the woman could drop a couple of coins into the slot. Clarke focused on the woman’s right hand. Liver spots, sagging skin. The left hand went to the tray: her wedding finger was still marked from where she’d removed her ring. It was probably in her bag. Her face was machine-tanned, hopeful but hardened by experience. She winked.

‘You never know.’

Clarke forced a smile. Back at the station, she’d heard Singles Night at the Marina called all sorts of things: Jurassic Park, Grab-a-Granny. The usual bloke jokes. She found it depressing, but couldn’t have said why. She didn’t frequent nightclubs, not when she could help it. Even when she’d been younger — school and college years — she’d avoided them. Too noisy, too much smoke and drink and stupidity. But it couldn’t just be that. These days, she followed Hibernian football club, and the terraces were full of cigarette smoke and testosterone. But there was a difference between the crowd in a stadium and the crowd at a place like the Marina: not many sexual predators chose to do their hunting in the midst of a football crowd. She felt safe at Easter Road; even attended away matches when she could. Same seat at every home game... she knew the faces around her. And afterwards... afterwards she melted into the streets, part of the anonymous mass. Nobody’d ever tried to chat her up. That wasn’t why they were there, and she knew it, hugging the knowledge to her on cold winter afternoons when the floodlights were needed from kick-off.

The cubicle bolt slid back and Sandra emerged.

‘About bleedin’ time,’ someone called out. ‘Thought you’d a fellah in there with you.’

‘Only to wipe my backside on,’ Sandra said. The voice — all tough, casual humour — was forced. Sandra started fixing her make-up at the mirror. She’d been crying. There were fresh veins of red in the corners of her eyes.

‘All right?’ Clarke asked quietly.

‘Could be worse, I suppose.’ Sandra studied her reflection. ‘I could always be pregnant, couldn’t I?’

Her rapist had worn a condom, leaving no semen for the labs to analyse. They’d run checks on sex offenders, ruled out a slew of interviewees. Sandra had gone through the picture books, a gallery of misogyny. Just looking at their faces was enough to give some women nightmares. Bedraggled, vacuous features, dull eyes, weak jaws. Some victims who’d gone through the process... they’d had unasked questions, questions Clarke thought she could phrase along the lines of: Look at them, how could we let them do this to us? They’re the ones who look weak.

Yes, weak at the moment of photographing, weak with shame or fatigue or the pretence of submission. But strong at the necessary moment, the crackling moment of hate. The thing was, they worked alone, most of them. The second man, the accomplice... Siobhan was curious about him. What did he get out of it?

‘Seen anyone you fancy?’ Sandra was asking now. Her lipstick trembled slightly as she applied it.

‘No.’

‘Got someone at home?’

‘You know I haven’t.’

Sandra was still watching her in the mirror. ‘I only know what you’ve told me.’

‘I told you the truth.’

Long conversations, Clarke setting aside the rule book and opening herself to Sandra, answering her questions, stripping away her police self to reveal the person beneath. It had begun as a trick, a ploy to win Sandra over to the scheme. But it had evolved into something more, something real. Clarke had said more than she’d needed to, much more. And now it seemed Sandra hadn’t been convinced. Was it that she didn’t trust the detective, or was it that Clarke had become part of the problem, just someone else Sandra could never wholly trust? After all, they hadn’t known one another until the rape; would never have met if it hadn’t happened. Clarke was here at the Marina, looking like Sandra’s friend, but that was another trick. They weren’t friends; probably would never be friends. A vicious assault had brought them together. In Sandra’s eyes, Clarke would always remind her of that night, a night she wanted to forget.

‘How long do we have to stay?’ she was asking now.

‘That’s up to you. We can leave any time you like.’

‘But if we do, we might miss him.’

‘Not your fault, Sandra. He could be anywhere. I just felt we had to give it a try.’

Sandra turned from the mirror. ‘Half an hour more.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘I promised my mum I’d be home by twelve.’

Clarke nodded, followed Sandra back into a darkness punctuated by lightning, as if the light show could somehow earth all the energy in the room.

Back at the booth, Clarke’s seat had been taken by a new arrival. Youngish male, fingers running down the condensation on a tall glass of what looked like straight orange juice. The club members seemed to know him.

‘Sorry,’ he said, getting to his feet as Clarke and Sandra approached. ‘I’ve nicked your seat.’ He stared at Clarke, then put out his hand. When Clarke took it, his grip tightened. He wasn’t going to let her go.

‘Come and dance,’ he said, pulling her in the direction of the dance floor. She could do little but follow him, right into the heart of the storm where arms buffeted her and the dancers squealed and roared. He looked back, saw that they were no longer visible from the table, and kept moving, crossing the floor, leading them past one of the bars and into the foyer.

‘Where are we going?’ Clarke asked. He looked around, seemed satisfied and leaned towards her.

‘I know you,’ he said.

Suddenly, she knew that his face was familiar to her. She was thinking: criminal, someone I helped put away? She glanced to left and right.

‘You work at St Leonard’s,’ he went on. She stared towards where his hand still held her wrist. Following her gaze, he let go suddenly. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘it’s just that...’

‘Who are you?’

He seemed hurt that she didn’t know. ‘Derek Linford.’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘Fettes?’ He nodded. The newsletter, that’s where she’d seen his face. And maybe in the canteen at HQ. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I could ask you the same thing.’

‘I’m with Sandra Carnegie.’ Thinking: no, I’m not; I’m out here with you... and I promised her...

‘Yes, but I don’t...’ His face crumpled. ‘Oh, hell, she was raped, wasn’t she?’ He ran thumb and forefinger down the slope of his nose. ‘You’re trying for an ID?’

‘That’s right.’ Clarke smiled. ‘You’re a member?’

‘What if I am?’ He seemed to expect an answer, but Clarke just shrugged. ‘It’s not the kind of information I bandy about, DC Clarke.’ Pulling rank, warning her off.

‘Your secret’s safe with me, DI Linford.’

‘Ah, speaking of secrets...’ He looked at her, head tilted slightly.

‘They don’t know you’re CID?’ It was his turn to shrug. ‘Christ, what have you told them?’

‘Does it matter?’

Clarke was thoughtful. ‘Hang on a sec, we talked to the club members. I don’t remember seeing your name.’

‘I only joined last week.’

Clarke frowned. ‘So how do we play this?’

Linford rubbed his nose again. ‘We’ve had our dance. We go back to the table. You sit one side, me the other. We really don’t need to talk to one another again.’

‘Charming.’

He grinned. ‘I didn’t mean it like that. Of course we can talk.’

‘Gee, thanks.’

‘In fact, something incredible happened this afternoon.’ He took her arm, guided her back into the club. ‘Help me get a round of drinks from the bar, and I’ll tell you all about it.’

‘He’s an arse.’

‘Maybe so,’ Clarke said, ‘but he’s rather a sweet arse.’

John Rebus sat in his chair, holding the cordless phone to his ear. His chair was by the window. There were no curtains and the shutters were still open. No lights were on in his living room, just a bare sixty-watt bulb in the hall. But the street lamps bathed the room in an orange glow.

‘Where did you say you bumped into him?’

‘I didn’t.’ He could hear the smile in her voice.

‘All very mysterious.’

‘Not compared to your skeleton.’

‘It’s not a skeleton. Kind of shrivelled, like a mummy.’ He gave a short, mirthless laugh. ‘The archaeologist, I thought he was going to jump into my arms.’

‘So what’s the verdict?’

‘SOCOs came in, roped the place off. Gates and Curt can’t look at Skelly till Monday morning.’

‘Skelly?’

Rebus watched a car cruising past, seeking a parking space. ‘Bobby Hogan came up with the name. It’ll do for now.’

‘Nothing on the body?’

‘Just what he was wearing: flared jeans, a Stones T-shirt.’

‘Lucky us, having an expert on the premises.’

‘If you mean a rock dinosaur, I’ll take that as a compliment. Yes, it was the cover of Some Girls. Album came out in ’78.’

‘Nothing else to date the body?’

‘Nothing in the pockets. No watch or rings.’ He checked his own watch: 2 a.m. But she’d known she could call him, had known he’d be awake.

‘What’s on the hi-fi?’ she asked.

‘That tape you gave me.’

‘The Blue Nile? There goes your dinosaur image. What do you think?’

‘I think you’re smitten by Mr Smarty-Pants.’

‘I do like it when you come over all fatherly.’

‘Watch I don’t put you over my knee.’

‘Careful, Inspector. These days I could have you off the job for saying something like that.’

‘Are we going to the game tomorrow?’

‘For our sins. I’ve a spare green and white scarf set aside for you.’

‘I must remember to bring my lighter. Two o’clock in Mather’s?’

‘There’ll be a beer waiting for you.’

‘Siobhan, whatever it was you were up to tonight...?’

‘Yes?’

‘Did you get a result?’

‘No,’ she said, sounding suddenly tired. ‘Not even a goalless draw.’

He put the phone down, refilled his whisky glass. ‘Refined tonight, John,’ he told himself. Oftentimes nowadays he just swigged from the bottle. The weekend stretched ahead of him, one football game the extent of his plans. His living room was wreathed in shadows and cigarette smoke. He kept thinking of selling the flat, finding somewhere with fewer ghosts. Then again, they were the only company he had: dead colleagues, victims, expired relationships. He reached again for the bottle, but it was empty. Stood up and watched the floor sway beneath him. He thought he had a fresh bottle in the carrier bag beneath the window, but the bag was empty and crumpled. He looked out of his window, catching his reflection and its puzzled frown. Had he left a bottle in the car? Had he brought home two bottles or just the one? He thought of a dozen places where he could get a drink, even at two in the morning. The city — his city — was out there waiting for him, waiting to show its dark, shrivelled heart.

‘I don’t need you,’ he said, resting the palms of his hands on the window, as if willing the glass to shatter and take him tumbling with it. A two-storey descent to the street below.

‘I don’t need you,’ he repeated. Then he pushed off from the glass, went to find his coat.

3

Saturday, the clan had lunch at the Witchery.

It was a good restaurant, sited at the top of the Royal Mile. The Castle was a near neighbour. Lots of natural light: it was almost like eating in a conservatory. Roddy had organised it for their mother’s 75th. She was a painter, and he reckoned she’d like all the light that poured into the restaurant. But the day was overcast. Squalls of rain drilled at the windows. Low cloud base: standing at the Castle’s highest point, you felt you could have touched heaven.

They’d started with a quick walk around the battlements, Mother looking unimpressed. But then she’d first visited the place some seventy years before, had probably been there a hundred times since. And lunch hadn’t improved her spirits, though Roddy praised each course, each mouthful of wine.

‘You always overdo things!’ his mother snapped at him.

To which he said nothing, just stared into his pudding bowl, glancing up eventually to wink at Lorna. When he did so, she was reminded of her brother as a kid, always with that shy, endearing quality — something he mostly reserved for voters and TV interviewers these days.

You always overdo things! Those words hung in the air for a time, as though others at the table wanted to relish them. But then Roddy’s wife Seona spoke up.

‘I wonder who he gets that from.’

‘What did she say? What did she say?’

And of course it was Cammo who brokered the peace: ‘Now, now, Mother, just because it’s your birthday...’

‘Finish the bloody sentence!’

Cammo sighed, took one of his deep breaths. ‘Just because it’s your birthday, let’s take a walk down towards Holyrood.’

His mother glared at him. She had eyes like a frigate’s hull. But then her face cracked into a smile. The others resented Cammo for his ability to bring about this transformation. At that moment, he possessed the powers of a magus.

Six of them at the table. Cammo, the elder son, hair swept back from his forehead, sporting his father’s gold cuff links — the one thing the old man had left him in the will. They’d never agreed on politics, Cammo’s father a Liberal of the old school. Cammo had joined the Conservative Party while still an undergraduate at St Andrews. Now he had a safe seat in the Home Counties, representing a mainly rural area between Swindon and High Wycombe. He lived in London, loved the nightlife and the sense of being at the core of something. Married, his wife a drunk and serial shopper. They were seldom seen together. He was photographed at balls and parties, always with some new woman on his arm.

That was Cammo.

He’d come north overnight on the sleeper; had complained that the club car hadn’t been open — staff shortages.

‘Bloody disgrace. You privatise the railways and still can’t get a decent whisky and soda.’

‘Christ, does anybody still drink soda?’

This was Lorna, back at the house as they prepared to go out to lunch. Lorna had always had the handling of her brother. She was all of eleven months younger than him, had somehow found time in her schedule for this reunion. Lorna was a fashion model — a story she was sticking to despite encroaching age and a shortage of bookings. In her late forties now, she’d been at her earning height in the 1970s. She still got work, cited Lauren Hutton as an influence. She’d dated MPs in her time, just as Cammo had seen fit to ‘walk out’ with the occasional model. She’d heard stories about him, and was sure he’d heard stories about her. On the rare occasions when they met, they circled one another like bare-knuckle fighters.

Cammo had made a point of choosing whisky and soda as his aperitif.

Then there was baby Roddy, just touching forty. Always the rebel at heart, but somehow lacking the curriculum vitae. Roddy the one-time Scottish office boffin, now an investment analyst. He was New Labour. Didn’t really possess the ammunition when his big brother came in with all ideological guns blazing. But Roddy sat there with quiet, immutable authority, the shells failing to scratch him. One political commentator had called him Scottish Labour’s Mr Fixit, because of his ability to brush away the sand from around the party’s many landmines and set about defusing them. Others called him Mr Suck-Up, a lazy explanation of his emergence as a prospective MSP. In fact, Roddy had planned today’s lunch as a double celebration, since he’d had official notice just that morning that he would be running in Edinburgh West End as Labour’s candidate for the Scottish Parliament.

‘Bloody hell,’ had been Cammo’s rolling-eyed reaction as the champagne was being poured.

Roddy had allowed himself a quiet smile, tucking a stray lock of thick black hair back behind his ear. His wife Seona had squeezed his arm in support. Seona was more than the loyal wife; if anything, she was the more politically active of the two, and history teacher at a city comprehensive.

Billary, Cammo often called them, a reference to Bill and Hillary Clinton. He thought most teachers were a short hop from subversives, which hadn’t stopped him flirting with Seona on half a dozen separate, usually drunken occasions. When challenged by Lorna, his defence was always the same: ‘Indoctrination by seduction. Bloody cults get away with it, why shouldn’t the Tory Party?’

Lorna’s husband was there, too, though he’d spent half the meal over by the doorway, head tucked in towards a mobile phone. From the back he looked faintly ridiculous: too paunchy for the cream linen suit, the pointy-toed black shoes. And the greying ponytail — Cammo had laughed out loud when introduced to it.

‘Gone New Age on us, Hugh? Or is professional wrestling your new forte?’

‘Sod off, Cammo.’

Hugh Cordover had been a rock star of sorts back in the 1970s and ’80s. These days he was a record producer and band manager, and got less media attention than his brother Richard, an Edinburgh lawyer. He’d met Lorna at the tail-end of her career, when some adviser had assured her she could sing. She’d turned up late and drunk at Hugh’s studio. He’d opened the door to her, thrown a glass of water into her face, and ordered her to come back sober. It had taken her the best part of a fortnight. They’d gone to dinner that night, worked in the studio till dawn.

People still recognised Hugh on the street, but they weren’t the people worth knowing. These days, Hugh Cordover lived by his holy book, this being a bulging, black leather personal organiser. He had it open in his hand as he paced the restaurant, phone tucked between shoulder and cheek. He was fixing meetings, always meetings. Lorna watched him over the rim of her glass, while her mother demanded that the lights be turned on.

‘So damned awful dark in here. Am I supposed to be reminded of the graveyard?’

‘Yes, Roddy,’ Cammo drawled, ‘do something about it, will you? This was your idea after all.’ Looking around the premises with all the disdain he could muster. But then the photographers had arrived — one organised by Roddy, one from a glossy magazine — which brought Cordover back to the table, and fixed authentic-seeming smiles to all the members of the Grieve clan.

Roddy Grieve hadn’t meant for them to walk the whole length of the Royal Mile. He’d gone so far as to organise a couple of taxis which were waiting for them outside the Holiday Inn. But his mother wouldn’t have it.

‘If we’re going to walk, then for Christ’s sake let’s walk!’ And off she set, her walking stick seven parts affectation to three parts painful necessity, leaving Roddy to pay off the drivers. Cammo leaned towards him.

‘You always overdo things.’ A pretty good imitation of their mother.

‘Bugger off, Cammo.’

‘I wish I could, dear brother. But the next train to civilisation’s not for some time yet.’ Making show of studying his watch. ‘Besides, it’s Mother’s birthday: she’d be devastated if I suddenly departed.’

Which, Roddy couldn’t help feeling, was probably true.

‘She’ll go over on that ankle,’ Seona said, watching her mother-in-law moving downhill with that peculiar shuffling gait which attracted all manner of attention. Sometimes, Seona felt that it was affectation, too. Alicia had always had ways and means of drawing the looks of those around her, and of including her offspring in the spectacle. It hadn’t been so bad when Allan Grieve had been alive — he’d kept his wife’s eccentricities in check. But now that Roddy’s father was dead, Alicia had started compensating for years of enforced normality.

Not that the Grieves were a normal family: Roddy had warned Seona about them the first time they’d gone out together. She’d already known, of course — everyone in Scotland knew at least something about the Grieves — but had elected to keep her counsel. Roddy wasn’t like them, she’d told herself back then. She still said it to herself sometimes, but without the old conviction.

‘We could go look at the parliament site,’ she suggested as they reached the St Mary’s Street junction.

‘Good God, whatever for?’ Cammo droned predictably.

Alicia pursed her lips, then, saying nothing, turned towards Holyrood Road. Seona tried not to smile: it had been a small but palpable victory. But then who was she fighting?

Cammo held back. The three women were matching each other for pace. Hugh had stopped by a shop window to take yet another call. Cammo fell into step beside Roddy, pleased to note that he was still immeasurably better groomed and dressed than his younger brother.

‘I’ve had another of those notes,’ he said, keeping the tone conversational.

‘What notes?’

‘Christ, didn’t I tell you? They come to my parliamentary office. My secretary opens them, poor girl.’

‘Hate mail?’

‘How many MPs do you know who get fan letters?’ Cammo tapped Roddy’s shoulder. ‘Something you’re going to have to live with if you get elected.’

‘If,’ Roddy repeated with a smile.

‘Look, do you want to hear about these bloody death threats or not?’

Roddy stopped in his tracks, but Cammo kept walking. It took Roddy a moment to catch up.

‘Death threats?’

Cammo shrugged. ‘Not unknown in our line of work.’

‘What do they say?’

‘Nothing much. Just that I’m “in for it”. One of them had a couple of razor blades inside.’

‘What do the police say?’

Cammo looked at him. ‘So middle-aged, and yet so naïve. The forces of law and order, Roddy — I offer this lesson gratis and for nothing — are like a leaky sieve, especially when there’s a drink in it for them and one or more MPs is involved.’

‘They’d talk to the media?’

‘Bingo.’

‘I still don’t see...’

‘The papers would be all over it, and all over me.’ Cammo waited for his words to sink in. ‘Wouldn’t have a life to call my own.’

‘But death threats...’

‘A crank.’ Cammo sniffed. ‘Not worth mentioning really, except as a warning. My fate could be yours some day, baby bro.’

‘If I get elected.’ That shy smile again, the shyness masking a real appetite for the fight.

‘If ne’er won fair maiden,’ Cammo said. Then he shrugged. ‘Something like that anyway.’ He looked ahead. ‘Mother’s fairly shifting, isn’t she?’

Alicia Grieve had been born Alicia Rankeillor, and it was under this name that she’d found fame — and a certain fortune — as a painter. The particular nature of Edinburgh light had been her subject. Her best-known painting — duplicated on greetings cards, prints and jigsaws — showed a series of jagged beams breaking through a carapace of cloud to pick out the Castle and the Lawnmarket beyond. Allan Grieve, though only a few years her elder, had been her tutor at the School of Art. They’d married young, but hadn’t become parents until their careers were well established. Alicia had the sneaking feeling that Allan had always resented her success. He was a great teacher, but lacked the spark of genius as an artist himself. She’d once told him that his paintings were too accurate, that art needed a measure of artifice. He’d squeezed her hand but said nothing until just before his death, when he’d thrown her words back at her.

‘You killed me that day, snuffed out any hope I might have still had.’ She’d started to protest but he’d hushed her. ‘You did me a good turn, you were right. I lacked the vision.’

Sometimes Alicia wished that she’d lacked the vision, too. Not that it would have made her a better, more loving mother. But it might have made her a more generous wife, a more pleasing lover.

Now she lived alone in the huge house in Ravelston, surrounded by the paintings of others — including a dozen of Allan’s, smartly framed — and a short walk from the Gallery of Modern Art, where they’d recently held a retrospective of her work. She had contrived an illness to excuse her from attending, then had gone in secret one day, only minutes past opening time when the place was dead, and had been shocked to find that thematic order had been placed on her work, an order she didn’t recognise.

‘They found a body, you know,’ Hugh Cordover was saying.

‘Hugh!’ Cammo piped up with mock cordiality. ‘You’re back with us!’

‘A body?’ Lorna asked.

‘It was on the news.’

‘I heard it was a skeleton actually,’ Seona said.

‘Found where?’ Alicia asked, pausing to take in the skyline of Salisbury Crags.

‘Hidden in a wall in Queensberry House.’ Seona pointed to the location. They were standing in front of its gates. They all stared at the building. ‘It used to be a hospital.’

‘Probably some poor old sod from the waiting list,’ Hugh Cordover said, but no one was listening.

4

‘Who do you think you are?’

‘What?’

‘You heard me.’ Jayne Lister threw a cushion at her husband’s head. ‘Those dishes have been sitting since last night.’ Her head motioned towards the kitchen. ‘You said you were going to do them.’

‘I am going to do them!’

‘When?’

‘It’s Sunday, day of rest.’ He was trying to make a joke of it; didn’t want his whole day ruined.

‘The whole week’s a day of rest as far as you’re concerned. What time did you get in last night?’

He tried to see past her to where the TV was playing: some kids’ morning show; presenter was a bit of all right. He’d told Nic about her. She was there right now, talking on the telephone, waving a card. Imagine waking up of a morning and finding that beside you in the scratcher.

‘Move your arse,’ he told his wife.

‘You’ve taken the words out of my mouth.’ She turned and pushed the off button. Jerry was off the sofa with a speed which surprised her. He liked the look on her face: startled, and with a little bit of fear mixed in. He pushed her aside, reached for the button, but her hands were in his hair, yanking him back.

‘Out with that Nic Hughes till all hours,’ she was yelling. ‘Think you can come and go as you please, fucking pig!’

He grabbed one of her wrists, squeezed. ‘Let go!’

‘Think I’m going to put up with it?’ She seemed oblivious to the pain. He squeezed harder, wrenching the wrist round. Her grip on his hair tightened. His scalp felt like it was on fire. Threw his head back and caught her just above the nose. That did it. She shrieked and let go, and he half-turned, pushing her hard on to the sofa. Her foot sent the coffee table flying: ashtray, empty cans, Saturday’s paper. Whole lot hit the deck. A thumping noise on the ceiling — upstairs neighbours complaining again. Her forehead was reddening where he’d connected. Christ, she’d given him a headache, too: as if the hangover wasn’t enough to be going on with.

He’d done his arithmetic this morning: eight pints and two nips. That tallied with the small change in his pockets. Taxi had cost six quid. Nic had paid for the curry: lamb rogan josh, lovely. Nic had wanted to hit the clubs, but Jerry had said he wasn’t in the mood.

‘What if I’m in the mood, though?’ Nic had said. But after the curry he hadn’t seemed so keen. Two or three pubs... then a taxi for Jerry. Nic had said he’d walk. That was the clever thing about living in the middle of town: no need to worry over transport. Out here in the sticks, transport was always a problem. The buses weren’t to be relied on, and he could never remember when they stopped running anyway. Even taxi drivers, you had to lie to them, tell them you were bound for Gatehill. When you reached Gatehill, you could either get out and walk across the playing fields, or you could persuade the driver to take you the final half-mile into the Garibaldi Estate. One time, Jerry had been jumped while crossing the football pitch: four or five of them, and him too drunk to do anything but capitulate. Ever since, he would argue to be taken the distance.

‘You really are a bastard,’ Jayne was saying, rubbing her brow.

‘You started it. I’m lying there with a head like blazes. If you’d just held off a few hours...’ His voice was soothing. ‘I was going to do the dishes, cross my heart. I just need a bit of peace first.’ Opening his arms to her. Fact was, the little bout of sparring had given him a hard-on. Maybe Nic was right about sex and violence, about how they were pretty much the same thing.

Jayne pounced to her feet, seemed to have seen straight through him. ‘Forget it, pal.’ Stalked out of the room. Temper on her... and always quick to take the huff. Maybe Nic was right, maybe he really could do better. But then look at Nic with his good job and his clothes and everything. Mortgage and money, and still Catriona had left him. Jerry snorted: left him for someone she met at a singles night! Married woman, and off she trots to a singles night... and meets someone! Life could be cruel, all right; Jerry should be thankful for small mercies. Back on with the telly, lying down on the sofa. His beer can was on the floor, untouched. He lifted it. Cartoons now, but that was all right; he liked cartoons. Didn’t have any kids, which was just as well: he was still a bit of a kid at heart himself. The ceiling thumpers upstairs, they had three... and had the gall to say he was noisy! And there it was on the floor, where it had fallen from the coffee table: the letter from the council. Complaints have reached us... powers to deal with problem neighbours... blah blah. Was it his fault they built the walls so thin? Bloody things would barely hold a Rawlplug. When the buggers upstairs were trying for kid number four, you felt like you were in the bed with them. One night, when they’d stopped he’d given them a round of applause. Deadly silence after, so he knew they’d heard.

He wondered if maybe that was why Jayne had gone off sex: fear of being heard. One day he’d ask her about it. Either that or he’d make her do it anyway. Make her cry out long and hard so they heard her upstairs, give them something to think about. That wee thing on the telly, he’d bet she was a noisy one. You’d have to clamp your hand over her mouth, but making sure she could still breathe.

Like Nic said, that was the important part.

‘You like football then?’

Derek Linford had taken Siobhan’s number at the Marina. Saturday, he’d left a message on her machine asking if she fancied a Sunday walk. So here they were in the Botanic Gardens, a crisp afternoon, couples all around, strolling just like them. But talking football.

‘I go most Saturdays,’ Siobhan confessed.

‘I thought there was a winter shutdown or something.’ Struggling to show some knowledge of the game.

She smiled at the effort he was making. ‘Only for the premier league. Last season, Hibs got knocked down to the first.’

‘Oh, right.’ They were coming to a signpost. ‘If you’re cold, we could go to the tropical house.’

She shook her head. ‘I’m fine. I don’t usually do much on a Sunday.’

‘No?’

‘Maybe a car boot sale. Mostly, I just stay home.’

‘No boyfriend then?’ She didn’t say anything. ‘Sorry I asked.’

She shrugged. ‘It’s not a sin, is it?’

‘Career we’re in, how are we supposed to meet people?’

She looked at him. ‘Hence the singles club?’

He reddened. ‘I suppose so.’

‘Don’t worry, I’m not about to tell anyone.’

He tried a smile. ‘Thanks.’

‘You’re right anyway,’ she went on, ‘when do we ever meet anyone? Apart from other cops, that is.’

‘And villains.’

The way he said it made her suspect he’d not met too many ‘villains’. But she nodded anyway.

‘I think the tea room’ll be open,’ he said. ‘If you’re ready...?’

‘Tea and a scone.’ She took his arm. ‘A perfect Sunday afternoon.’

Except that the family at the table next to them had one hyperactive child and a squealing infant in a pushchair. Linford turned to glower at the infant, as though it would instantly recognise his authority and start behaving.

‘What’s so funny?’ he said, turning back to Clarke.

‘Nothing,’ she said.

‘Must be something.’ He started attacking the contents of his coffee cup with a spoon.

She lowered her voice so the family wouldn’t hear. ‘I was just wondering if you were going to take him into custody.’

‘Chance would be a fine thing.’ He sounded serious.

They sat in silence for a minute or two, then Linford started telling her about Fettes. When she got a chance, she asked him: ‘And what do you like to do when you’re not working?’

‘Well, there’s always a lot of reading to do: textbooks and journals. I keep pretty busy.’

‘Sounds fascinating.’

‘It is, that’s what most people...’ His voice died away, and he looked at her. ‘You were being ironic, right?’

She nodded, smiling. He cleared his throat, got to work with the spoon again.

‘Change of subject,’ he said at last. ‘What’s John Rebus like? You work with him at St Leonard’s, don’t you?’

She was about to say that he hadn’t exactly changed the subject, but nodded instead. ‘Why do you ask?’

He shrugged. ‘The committee, he doesn’t seem to take it seriously.’

‘Maybe he’d rather be doing something else.’

‘From what I’ve seen of him, that would involve sitting in a pub with a cigarette in his mouth. Got a drink problem, has he?’

She stared at him. ‘No,’ she said coldly.

He was shaking his head. ‘Sorry, shouldn’t have asked. Got to stick up for him, haven’t you? Same division and all that.’

She bit back a reply. He let the spoon clatter back on to its saucer.

‘I’m being an idiot,’ he said. The infant was screaming again. ‘It’s this place... Can’t think straight.’ He risked a look at her. ‘Can we go?’

5

Monday morning, Rebus headed for the city mortuary. Normally, when an autopsy was being carried out, he would enter by the side door, which led directly to the viewing area. But the building’s air filtering wasn’t up to scratch, so all autopsies were now carried out at a hospital, and the mortuary was for storage only. There were none of the distinctive grey Bedford vans in the parking area — unlike most cities, the Edinburgh mortuary picked up every dead body; only later did undertakers enter the equation. He entered by the staff door. There was no one in the ‘card room’ — so called because employees spent their spare time playing cards there — so he wandered into the storage area. Dougie, who ran the place, was standing there in his white coat, clipboard in hand.

‘Dougie,’ Rebus said, announcing himself.

Dougie peered at him through wire-rimmed glasses. ‘Morning, John.’ His eyes twinkled with good humour. He always joked that he worked in the dead centre of Edinburgh.

Rebus twitched his nostrils, letting Dougie know he could smell the faint but noticeable smell.

‘Aye,’ Dougie said. ‘A bad one. Elderly lady, probably dead a week.’ He nodded towards the Decomposing Room, where the worst-smelling corpses were stored.

‘Well, my one’s been dead a sight longer than that.’

Dougie nodded. ‘You’re too late though. He’s already gone.’

‘Gone?’ Rebus checked his watch.

‘Two of my boys took him off to the Western General about an hour ago.’

‘I thought the autopsy was scheduled for eleven.’

Dougie shrugged. ‘Your man was keen — keen and persuasive. It takes a lot to get the Two Musketeers to change their diaries.’

The Two Musketeers: Dougie’s name for Professor Gates and Dr Curt. Rebus frowned.

‘My man?’

Dougie looked down at his clipboard, found the name. ‘DI Linford.’

When Rebus got to the hospital, the autopsy was in full swing, and with it the double act of Gates and Curt. Professor Gates liked to describe himself as big-boned. Certainly as he leaned over the remains he seemed the antithesis of his colleague, who was tall and gaunt. Curt, Gates’ junior by a decade, kept clearing his throat, something newcomers took as a comment on Gates’ handiwork. They didn’t know about the smoking habit, which was up to thirty a day now. Every moment Curt spent in the autopsy suite was precious time away from his fix. Rebus, whose mind had been on other things during the journey, suddenly craved a cigarette.

‘Morning, John,’ Gates said, glancing up from his work. Under his rubberised full-length apron he was wearing a crisp white shirt and red-and-yellow striped tie. Somehow his ties always stood out against the grey colours of the suite.

‘Been jogging?’ Curt asked. Rebus was aware that he was breathing heavily. He ran his hand over his forehead.

‘No, I just...’

‘If he keeps that up,’ Gates said, his eyes on Curt, ‘he’ll be next on the slab.’

‘Won’t that be fun?’ Curt responded. ‘Digestive tract full of bridies and beetroot.’

‘And the man’s so thick-skinned, we’ll need hatchets rather than scalpels.’ The pair shared a laugh. Not for the first time, Rebus cursed the rule of corroboration, which necessitated two pathologists at each autopsy.

The corpse — literally skin and bone, though some of the skin had been removed already — lay on a shallow stainless-steel trolley, the surface of which was moulded so as to catch any spilled blood. The corpse, however, had dust and cobwebs to spare, but no life fluid. Its skull lay on an angled wooden plinth which, in another context, might have been taken for a curio cheeseboard.

‘There’s a time and a place for banter, gentlemen.’ The voice was Linford’s. He was younger than either pathologist, but something about his tone quietened them. Then his eyes were on Rebus. ‘Good morning, John.’

Rebus walked over towards him. ‘Good of you to tell me about the change of schedule.’

Linford blinked. ‘Is there a problem?’

Rebus stared him out. ‘No, no problem.’ There were others in the room: two hospital technicians, a police photographer, someone from Scene of Crimes, and a suited and queasy-looking man from the Advocate Depute’s office. Autopsies were always crowded, everyone either getting on with their work, or else fidgeting nervously.

‘I did a bit of boning up over the weekend,’ Gates was saying, addressing the room. ‘So I can tell you that, judging by the deterioration, our friend here probably died some time in the late nineteen seventies or early eighties.’

‘Have his clothes gone for analysis?’ Linford asked.

Gates nodded. ‘Howdenhall got them this morning.’

‘A young man’s clothes,’ Curt added.

‘Or an old one trying to look trendy,’ the photographer said.

‘Well, the hair shows no signs of grey. Doesn’t necessarily mean anything.’ Gates looked at the photographer, letting him know his theories weren’t welcome. ‘The lab will give us a better date of death.’

‘How did he die?’ This from Linford. Normally Gates would punish such impatience, but he didn’t so much as glance at the young DI.

‘Skull fracture.’ Curt pointed to the area with a pen. ‘Could be a post-mortem injury, of course. Might not be the cause of death.’ He caught Rebus’s eye. ‘A lot depends on the Scene of Crime results.’

The SOCO was scribbling into a thick notepad. ‘We’re working on it.’

Rebus knew what they’d be looking for — murder weapon to start with, and then trace evidence such as blood. Blood had a way of sticking around.

‘How did he end up in the fireplace anyway?’ he asked.

‘Not our problem,’ Gates said, smiling towards Curt.

‘I take it we’re noting this as a suspicious death?’ the Fiscal Depute asked, his bass baritone belying the lack of height and brittle frame.

‘I’d say so, wouldn’t you?’ Gates had straightened up, clattering one of his tools back on to its metal tray. It took a moment for Rebus to realise that the pathologist was holding something in his gloved hand. Something shrivelled and the size of a large peach.

‘Tough old organ, the heart,’ Gates said, examining the specimen.

‘You missed the beginning,’ Curt explained to Rebus. ‘Gash in the skin over the ribcage. Could have been rats...’

‘Aye,’ Gates admitted, ‘rats carrying knives.’ He showed the organ to his colleague. ‘Inch-wide incision. Maybe a kitchen knife, eh?’

‘Suspicious death,’ the Fiscal Depute muttered to himself, writing it down in his notebook.

‘I should have been told,’ Rebus hissed. He was in the hospital car park, not about to let Derek Linford drive back to the Big House.

‘I know about you, John. You’re not a team player.’

‘And that was your idea of team playing? Leaving me out?’

‘Look, maybe you’ve got a point. I just don’t think it’s anything to get het up about.’

‘But it’s our case, right?’

Linford had opened the driver’s door of his shiny new BMW. It was a 3-Series, but would do him for now. ‘In what way?’

‘The PPLC. We found him.’

‘It’s not in our brief.’

‘Come on. Who else is going to want it? Do you think the parliament really wants an unsolved murder on the premises?’

‘A murder from twenty-odd years ago: I hardly think it’ll cost them any sleep.’

‘Maybe not, but the press won’t let it go. Any whiff of scandal, they’ll be able to point back to it: Holyrood’s murky past, a parliament tainted with blood.’

Linford snorted, but then was thoughtful, finally producing a smile. ‘Are you always like this?’

‘I think Skelly is ours.’

Linford folded his arms. Rebus knew what he was thinking: the investigation would touch the parliament; it was a route to meeting the movers and shakers. ‘How do we play it?’

Rebus rested a hand on the BMW’s wing, saw Linford’s look and removed it. ‘How did he end up there? A couple of decades back, the place was a hospital. I’m guessing you couldn’t just walk in, tear down a wall and stuff a body behind it.’

‘You think the patients might have noticed?’

It was Rebus’s turn to smile. ‘It will mean a bit of digging.’

‘Your forte, I believe?’

Rebus shook his head. ‘I’ve had enough of all that.’

‘What do you mean?’

He meant ghosts, but wasn’t about to try to explain. ‘What about Grant Hood and Ellen Wylie?’ he said instead.

‘Will they want it?’

‘They won’t have any choice. Ever heard the phrase pulling rank?’

Linford nodded thoughtfully, then got into his car, but Rebus’s hand stopped him pulling the door closed.

‘Just one other thing. Siobhan Clarke is a friend of mine. Anyone makes her unhappy makes me unhappy.’

‘Don’t tell me: I wouldn’t like you when you’re angry?’ Linford smiled again, but coldly this time. ‘I get the feeling Siobhan wouldn’t thank you for fighting her battles for her. Especially when they’re all in your head. Goodbye, John.’

Linford started the engine, then let it idle as he took a call on his mobile. After listening for a few seconds, he stared out at Rebus and slid his window down.

‘Where’s your car?’

‘Two rows back.’

‘You’d better follow me then.’ Linford terminated the call and tossed the mobile on to his passenger seat.

‘Why? What’s happened?’

Linford slid both hands around the steering wheel. ‘Another body at Queensberry House.’ He stared through the windscreen. ‘Only a bit fresher this time.’

6

They’d passed the summer house the previous Friday. It was a flimsy wooden affair which had belonged to the hospital and stood inside the grounds, next to Her Majesty’s cherry tree. Like the tree, the summer house was for the chop. But for now it was a handy storage area; nothing valuable, there was no lock on the door. And even a lock would have been ineffective, since most of the windows were broken.

This was where the body had been found, lying amidst old paint tins, bags of rubble and broken tools.

‘Probably not the way he’d have chosen to go,’ Linford muttered, looking around him at the chaos of the site. Uniforms were erecting a cordon around the summer house and its vicinity. Workers in hard hats were being told to disperse. A crowd of them had gathered on the roof of one of the buildings under demolition, from where they had a grandstand view of proceedings. Maybe their fellow workers would join them. Maybe the roof would cave in. Not yet midday and Rebus was conjuring up worst-case scenarios, while praying this would be as bad as it got. The site manager was being interviewed in the security hut, complaining that all the police officers needed to be issued with hard hats. Rebus and Linford had filched a couple from the hut. SOCOs were unpacking the arcana of their craft. A doctor had pronounced death; the call had gone out to the available pathologists. All the building work on Holyrood Road had reduced it to a single lane, controlled by traffic lights. Now, with police cars and vans on the scene (including a grey one from the mortuary, Dougie behind the wheel) queues were forming and tempers fraying. The sound of horns was growing into a chorus, rising into the bruised-looking sky.

‘Snow’s on the way,’ Rebus commented. ‘It’s cold enough for it.’ Yet the previous day had started mild, and even the rain had been like an April shower. Twelve degrees.

‘The weather’s not exactly a consideration,’ Linford snapped. He wanted to get closer to the body, wanted to be inside the summer house, but the locus had to be secured. He knew the rules: barging in meant leaving traces.

‘Doctor says the back of the skull was cracked open.’ He nodded to himself, looked towards Rebus. ‘Coincidence?’

Hands in pockets, Rebus shrugged. He was sucking on only his second cigarette of the morning. He knew Linford was tasting something: he was tasting fast-track. Not content with his own momentum, he was seeing a case, a big case. He was seeing himself at its heart, with media attention, the public clamouring for a result. A result he thought he could deliver.

‘He was running in my constituency,’ Linford was saying. ‘I’ve got a flat in Dean Village.’

‘Very nice.’

Linford stifled an embarrassed laugh.

‘It’s okay,’ Rebus assured him. ‘Times like this, we all tend to talk crap. It fills the spaces.’

Linford nodded.

‘Tell me,’ Rebus went on, ‘just how many murders have you worked?’

‘Is this where you pull the old I’ve-seen-more-corpses-than-you’ve-had-hot-dinners routine?’

Rebus shrugged again. ‘Just interested.’

‘I wasn’t always at Fettes, you know.’ Linford shuffled his feet. ‘Christ, I wish they’d get on with it.’ The body was still in situ, the body of Roddy Grieve. They knew his identity because a gentle search of his pockets had produced a wallet. But they knew, too, because his face was recognisable, even though the light had gone from its eyes. They knew because Roddy Grieve was somebody, and seemed so even in death.

He was a Grieve, part of ‘the clan’, as they’d come to be called. Once, a keen interviewer had gone so far as to name them Scotland’s first family. Which was nonsense.

Everyone knew Scotland’s first family was the Broons.

‘What are you smiling at?’

‘Nothing.’ Rebus nipped his cigarette and returned it to the packet. He couldn’t know for sure whether stubbing it out would have contaminated the crime scene. But he knew the importance of Scene of Crime work. And he felt the sudden pang of desire for a drink, the drink he’d arranged with Bobby Hogan just before Friday’s discovery. A long bar-room session of reminiscence and tall tales, with no bodies buried in walls or dumped in summer houses. A drink in some parallel universe where people had stopped being cruel to each other.

And speaking of mental torture, here came Chief Superintendent Farmer Watson. He had Rebus in his sights, and his eyes had narrowed, as though taking aim.

‘Don’t blame me, sir,’ Rebus said, getting his retaliation in first.

‘Christ, John, can’t you stay out of trouble for one minute?’ It was only half a joke. Watson’s retirement was a couple of months away. He’d already warned Rebus that he wanted a quiet canter downhill. Rebus held up his hands in surrender and introduced his boss to Derek Linford.

‘Ah, Derek.’ The Chief Super held out a hand. ‘Heard of you, of course.’ The two men shook; kept shaking as they sized one another up.

‘Sir,’ Rebus interrupted, ‘DI Linford and I... we feel this should be our case. We’re looking at parliamentary security, and this is a prospective MSP who’s been killed.’

Watson seemed to ignore him. ‘Do we know how he died?’

‘Not yet, sir,’ Linford was quick to answer. Rebus was impressed at the way he had changed. He was all fawning inferior now, eager to please the Big Chief. It was calculated, of course, but Rebus doubted Watson would notice, or even want to notice.

‘Doctor mentioned head trauma,’ Linford added. ‘Curiously, we’re getting a similar result from the body in the fireplace. Skull fracture and stab wound.’

Watson nodded slowly. ‘No stab wounds here, though.’

‘No, sir,’ Rebus said. ‘But all the same.’

Watson looked at him. ‘You think I’d let you near a case like this?’

Rebus shrugged.

‘I can show you the fireplace,’ Linford told Watson. Rebus wondered if he was trying to defuse the situation. Linford could get the case only through the PPLC, which meant not without Rebus.

‘Maybe later, Derek,’ the Farmer was saying. ‘Nobody’s going to bother much about a mouldy old skeleton when we’ve got Roddy Grieve on our hands.’

‘It wasn’t that mouldy, sir,’ Rebus felt bound to say. ‘And it’ll still need investigating.’

‘Naturally,’ Watson snapped. ‘But there are priorities, John. Even you’ve got to see that.’ Watson held a hand out, palm upwards. ‘Hell, is it starting to snow?’

‘Might persuade some of the audience to head indoors,’ Rebus said.

The Farmer grunted in agreement. ‘Well, if it’s going to start snowing, Derek, you might as well show me this fireplace of yours.’

Derek Linford looked as though he’d melt with pleasure, and started leading the Farmer indoors, leaving Rebus out in the cold, where he allowed himself a cigarette and a little smile. Let Linford work on the Farmer... that way they might get both cases, a workload to keep Rebus busy through the winter’s darkest weeks, and the perfect excuse to ignore Christmas for another year.

7

Identification was a formality, albeit a necessary one. The public entered the mortuary by a door in High School Wynd, and were immediately faced by a door marked Viewing Room. There were chairs for them to sit in. If they chose to wander, they’d come across a desk with a department store mannequin seated behind it. The mannequin was dressed in a white lab coat and had a moustache pencilled below its nose — a rare, if bizarre, example of humour, given the surroundings.

It would be some time before Gates and Curt could get round to doing an autopsy, but, as Dougie reassured Rebus, there was ‘plenty of room in the fridge’. There wasn’t nearly so much space in the reception area outside the Viewing Room. Roddy Grieve’s widow was there. So were his mother and sister. His brother Cammo was flying up from London. An unwritten rule stated that the media kept clear of the mortuary, no matter how juicy the story. But a few of the most rapacious vultures had gathered on the pavement across the road. Rebus, stepping outside for a cigarette, approached them. Two journalists, one photographer. They were young and lean and had little or no respect for old rules. They knew him, shuffled their feet but made no attempt to move.

‘I’m going to ask nicely,’ Rebus said, shaking a cigarette from its pack. He lit it, then offered the pack around. The three shook their heads. One was fiddling with his mobile phone, checking messages on its tiny screen.

‘Anything for us, DI Rebus?’ the other reporter asked.

Rebus stared at him, seeing immediately that it was no good appealing to reason.

‘Off the record, if you like,’ the reporter persisted.

‘I don’t mind being quoted,’ Rebus said quietly. The reporter lifted a tape-recorder from his jacket pocket.

‘Bit closer, please.’

The reporter obliged, switched the machine on.

Rebus was careful to enunciate slowly and clearly. After eight or nine words, the reporter flicked the machine off, the look on his face somewhere between a sneer and a grudging smile. Behind him, his colleagues were staring at their shoes.

‘Need a spell-check for any of that?’ Rebus asked. Then he crossed the road and headed back into the mortuary.

The ID was over, the paperwork complete. The family members looked numb. Even Linford looked a bit shaken: maybe it was another of his acts. Rebus approached the widow.

‘We can arrange for a couple of cars...’

She sniffed back tears. ‘No, that’s all right. Thanks anyway.’ She blinked, eyes finally focusing on him. ‘A taxi should be coming.’ The deceased’s sister came across, leaving her mother stony-faced and straight-backed on one of the chairs.

‘Mum has a funeral home she wants to use, if that’s all right with you.’ Lorna Cordover was speaking to the widow, but it was Rebus who answered.

‘You realise we can’t release the body just yet.’

She stared at him with eyes he’d stared at a thousand times in newspapers and magazines. Lorna Grieve: her modelling name. She wasn’t yet fifty, but was closing in on it fast. Rebus had first come across her towards the end of the sixties, when she’d have been in her late teens. She’d dated rock stars, was rumoured to have caused the break-up of at least one successful band. She’d been in Melody Maker and NME. Long straw-blond hair back then, and thin to the point of emaciation. She’d filled out quite a bit, and her hair was shorter, darker. But there was still something about her, even in this place, at this time.

‘We’re his bloody family,’ she snapped.

‘Please, Lorna,’ her sister-in-law cautioned.

‘Well, we are, aren’t we? Last thing we need is some jumped-up little squirt with a clipboard telling us—’

‘I think maybe you’re confusing me with the staff here,’ Rebus cut in.

She looked at him again, eyes narrowing. ‘Then just who the hell are you?’

‘He’s the policeman,’ Seona Grieve explained. ‘He’ll be the one who looks into...’ But she couldn’t find the words, and the sentence died softly with an exhalation.

Lorna Grieve snorted, pointed towards Derek Linford, who had seated himself next to the mother, Alicia. He was leaning towards her, his hand touching the back of hers. ‘That’, Lorna informed them, ‘is the officer who’ll be investigating Roddy’s murder.’ She squeezed Seona’s shoulder. ‘He’s the one we should be talking to,’ she said. Then, with a final glance towards Rebus, ‘Not his monkey.’

Rebus watched her move back towards the chairs. Beside him, the widow spoke so softly he didn’t catch it.

‘Sorry,’ she repeated.

He smiled, nodded. There were a dozen platitudes scrawled and waiting in his head. He rubbed a hand across his forehead to erase them.

‘You’ll want to ask us questions,’ she said.

‘When you’re ready.’

‘He didn’t have any enemies... not really.’ She seemed to be speaking to herself. ‘That’s what they always ask on TV, isn’t it?’

‘We’ll get round to it.’ He was watching Lorna Grieve, who was crouched in front of her mother. Linford was looking at her, drinking her in. The main door opened, a head appearing.

‘Somebody order a taxi?’

Rebus watched as Derek Linford escorted Alicia Grieve all the way out. It was a shrewd move: not the widow, but the matriarch. Linford knew power when he saw it.

They gave the family a few hours, then drove to Ravelston Dykes.

‘What do you reckon then?’ Linford asked. From his tone, he might have been asking what Rebus thought of the BMW.

Rebus just shrugged. Between them, they’d managed to sort out a Murder Room at St Leonard’s, it being the closest station to the locus. Not that it was a murder inquiry yet, but they knew it would be, just as soon as the autopsy was finished. Calls had gone out to Joe Dickie and Bobby Hogan. Rebus had also hooked up with Grant Hood and Ellen Wylie, neither of whom objected to the idea of working together on the Skelly case.

‘It’ll be a challenge,’ both had said, independently of one another. Their bosses would have the final say, but Rebus didn’t foresee problems. He’d told Hood and Wylie to get together, thrash out a plan of attack.

‘And who do we report to?’ Wylie had asked.

‘Me,’ he’d told her, making sure Linford wasn’t in earshot.

The BMW eased down into second as they approached an amber light. Had Rebus been driving, he’d have accelerated, probably just missing red. Maybe not on his own, but with a passenger — he’d have done it to impress. He’d have laid money on Linford doing it, too. The BMW stopped at the lights. Linford applied the handbrake and turned towards him.

‘Investment analyst, Labour candidate, high-profile family. What do you think?’

Rebus shrugged again. ‘I’ve seen the newspaper stories, same as you. Some people haven’t always liked the way candidates were selected.’

Linford was nodding. ‘Maybe some bad blood there?’

‘We’ll ask. Could just be a mugging gone wrong.’

‘Or a liaison.’

Rebus glanced at him. Linford was staring at the lights, fingers poised on the handbrake. ‘Maybe the SOCOs will work their magic.’

‘Fingerprints and fibres?’ Linford sounded sceptical.

‘Lot of mud around. Could be we’ll find footprints.’

The light turned green. With an empty road ahead, the BMW quickly changed up through its gears.

‘The boss has already been on to me,’ Linford told his passenger. Rebus knew that by boss he didn’t mean anything as middle-management as a chief super. ‘The ACC,’ Linford explained: Colin Carswell, Assistant Chief Constable (Crime). ‘He wanted to bring in a special team, something as high profile as this.’

‘Crime Squad?’

It was Linford’s turn to shrug. ‘Hand picked. I don’t know who he had in mind.’

‘What did you tell him?’

‘I said with me in charge, he didn’t have to worry.’ Linford couldn’t help it, had to turn towards Rebus to enjoy his reaction. Rebus was trying to look unmoved by it all. All his years on the force, he’d probably spoken with the ACC no more than two or three times.

Linford smiled, knew he’d hit some soft, fleshy part beneath Rebus’s shell-like exterior.

‘Of course,’ he went on, ‘when I mentioned that DI Rebus would be assisting...’

‘Assisting?’ Rebus bristled, and only now recollected that Linford had also spoken of being in charge.

‘He was a bit more dubious,’ Linford went on, ignoring the outburst. ‘But I told him you’d be fine, said we were working well together. That’s what I mean by assisting — you helping me, me helping you.’

‘But with you in charge?’

Hearing his own phrase thrown back at him seemed to please Linford: another palpable hit. ‘Your own chief super doesn’t want you on the case, John. Why is that?’

‘None of your business.’

‘Everyone knows about you, John. I could say that your reputation precedes you.’

‘But it’ll be different with you in charge?’ Rebus guessed.

Linford shrugged and was silent for a moment, then shifted in his seat. ‘While we’re enjoying this time together,’ he said, ‘maybe I should throw in that I’m seeing Siobhan tonight. But don’t worry, I’ll have her home by eleven.’

Roddy Grieve and his wife had lived together somewhere in Cramond, but Seona Grieve had intimated that she would be with Roddy’s mother. Situated at the end of a short narrow street, the huge detached house had a jagged feel to it. Maybe it was to do with the several crow-step gables, or the stone relief thistle set into the wall above the front door. There were no cars in the drive, and curtains had been drawn closed in every window — a sensible precaution: the reporters and cameraman were back, parked kerbside in a silver Audi 80. TV crews were probably on their way. Rebus had no doubt the Grieves would cope with the attention.

Grieve: the resonance of the name hit him for the first time. The grieving Grieves.

Linford rang the doorbell. ‘Nice place,’ he said.

‘I was brought up in something similar,’ Rebus told him. Then, after a pause: ‘Well, we lived in a cul-de-sac.’

‘And there’, Linford guessed, ‘the comparison ends.’

The door was opened by a man dressed in a camel-hair coat with dark brown lapels. The coat was unbuttoned. Beneath it could be glimpsed a tailored pinstripe suit and white shirt. The shirt was unbuttoned at the neck. In his left hand, the man carried a plain black tie.

‘Mr Grieve?’ Rebus guessed. He’d seen Cammo Grieve on TV many times. In the flesh he seemed taller and more distinguished, even in his present confused-looking state. His cheeks were red, either from cold or a few airline drinks. A couple of strands of silver and black hair were out of place.

‘You the police? Come inside.’

Linford followed Rebus into the hallway. There were paintings and drawings everywhere, not just covering the wood-panelled walls, but resting against the skirting boards, too. Books were piled high on the bottom step of the stone staircase. Several pairs of dusty-looking rubber wellington boots — men’s and women’s, and all of them black — sat at the foot of an overloaded coat rack. There were walking sticks protruding from an umbrella stand, and umbrellas hooked over the banister. An open jar of honey sat on a telephone table, as did an answering machine. The machine wasn’t plugged in, and there was no sign of a phone. Cammo Grieve seemed to take in his surroundings.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘In a bit of a... well, you understand.’ He stroked the stray hairs back into place.

‘Of course, sir,’ Linford said, his voice deferential.

‘A bit of advice, though,’ Rebus added, waiting till he had the MP’s attention. ‘Anyone at all could turn up claiming to be police officers. Make sure you ask for ID before letting them in.’

Cammo Grieve nodded. ‘Ah yes, the fourth estate. Bastards for the most part.’ He looked at Rebus. ‘Off the record.’

Rebus merely nodded; it was Linford who smiled too brightly at the attempted levity.

‘I still can’t...’ Grieve’s face hardened. ‘I trust the police will be working flat-out on this case. If I so much as hear of any corners being cut... I know what it’s like these days, tightened budgets, all of that. Labour government, you see.’

It was in danger of turning into a speech. Rebus interrupted. ‘Well, standing around here isn’t exactly helping matters, sir.’

‘I’m not sure I like you,’ Grieve said, narrowing his eyes. ‘What’s your name?’

‘His name’s Monkey Man,’ a voice called from a doorway. Lorna Grieve was carrying two glasses of whisky. She handed one to her brother, clinked her own against it before taking a gulp. ‘And this one’, she said, meaning Linford, ‘is the Organ Grinder.’

‘I’m DI Rebus,’ Rebus informed Cammo Grieve. ‘This is DI Linford.’

Linford turned from the wall. He’d been studying one of the framed prints. It was unusual in that it was a series of handwritten lines.

‘A poem to our mother,’ Lorna Grieve explained. ‘From Christopher Murray Grieve. He wasn’t any relation, in case you’re wondering.’

‘Hugh MacDiarmid,’ Rebus said, seeing the blank look on Linford’s face. The look didn’t change.

‘The Monkey Man has a brain,’ Lorna cooed. Then she noticed the honey. ‘Oh, there it is. Mother thought she’d put it down somewhere.’ She turned back to Rebus. ‘I’ll let you into a secret, Monkey Man.’ She was standing right in front of him. He stared at lips he had kissed as a young man, tasting printer’s ink and cheap paper in his mouth. She smelt of good whisky, a perfume he could savour. Her voice was harsh but her eyes were numb. ‘Nobody knows about that poem. He gave it to our mother. No other copy exists.’

‘Lorna...’ Cammo Grieve laid a hand against the back of his sister’s neck, but she twisted away from him. ‘It’s a sin beyond redeeming to stand here drinking while our guests go without.’ He ushered them into the morning room. It was wood-panelled like the hall, but boasted only a few small paintings hanging from a picture rail. There were two sofas and two armchairs, a TV and hi-fi. Apart from that, the room was all books, piled on the floor, squeezed into shelves, filling all the spaces between the potted plants on the window sill. With the curtains closed, the lights were on. The ceiling candelabrum could accommodate three bulbs, but only one was working. Rebus lifted a pile of birthday cards from the sofa: someone had decided the celebrations were over.

‘How is Mrs Grieve?’ Linford asked.

‘My mother’s resting,’ Cammo Grieve said.

‘I meant Mr Grieve’s... um, your brother’s...’

‘He means Seona,’ Lorna said, dropping on to one of the sofas.

‘Resting also,’ Cammo Grieve explained. He walked over to the marble fireplace, gestured towards the grate, which had become a repository for whisky bottles. ‘No longer a working fire,’ he said, ‘but it can still—’

‘Put fire in our bellies,’ his sister groaned, rolling her eyes. ‘Christ, Cammo, that one wore out long ago.’

Red had risen again in her brother’s cheeks — anger this time. Maybe he’d been angry when he’d answered the door, too. Lorna Grieve could have that effect on a man, no doubt about it.

‘I’ll have a Macallan,’ Rebus said.

‘A man with sharp eyes,’ Cammo Grieve said, making it sound like praise. ‘And yourself, DI Linford?’

Linford surprised Rebus, asked for a Springbank. Grieve produced tumblers from a small cupboard and poured a couple of decent measures.

‘I won’t insult you by offering to dilute them.’ He handed the drinks over. ‘Sit down, why don’t you?’

Rebus took one armchair, Linford the other. Cammo Grieve sat on the sofa beside his sister, who squirmed at the intrusion. They drank their drinks and were silent for a moment. Then there was a trilling sound from Cammo’s coat pocket. He lifted out a mobile phone and got to his feet, making for the door.

‘Hello, yes, sorry about that, but I’m sure you understand...’ He closed the door after him.

‘Well,’ Lorna Grieve said, ‘what have I done to deserve this?’

‘Deserve what, Mrs Cordover?’ Linford asked.

She snorted.

‘I think, DI Linford,’ Rebus said slowly, ‘she means what has she done to deserve being left alone here with two complete duds like us. Would that be accurate, Mrs Cordover?’

‘It’s Grieve, Lorna Grieve.’ There was some venom in her eyes, but not enough to kill her prey, merely stun it. But at least she was focused again — focused on Rebus. ‘Do we know one another?’ she asked.

‘I don’t think so,’ he admitted.

‘It’s just the way you keep staring at me.’

‘And how’s that?’

‘Like a lot of photographers I’ve met along the way. Sleazeballs with no film in the camera.’

Rebus hid his smile behind the whisky glass. ‘I used to be a big fan of Obscura.’

Her eyes widened a little, and her voice softened. ‘Hugh’s band?’

Rebus was nodding. ‘You were on one of their album sleeves.’

‘God, so I was. It seems like a lifetime ago. What was it called...?’

‘Continuous Repercussions.’

‘My God, I think you’re right. It was their last record, wasn’t it? I never really liked their stuff, you know.’

‘Really?’

They were talking now, having a conversation. Linford was on the periphery of Rebus’s vision, and if Rebus concentrated on Lorna Grieve, the younger man faded away until he could have been a trick of the light.

‘Obscura,’ Lorna reminisced. ‘That name was Hugh’s idea.’

‘It’s up near the Castle, isn’t it, the Camera Obscura?’

‘Yes, but I’m not sure Hugh ever went there. He chose the name for another reason. You know Donald Cammell?’

Rebus was stumped.

‘He was a film director. He made Performance.’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘He was born there.’

‘In the Camera Obscura?’

Lorna nodded, smiled across the room at him with something approaching warmth.

Linford cleared his throat. ‘I’ve been to the Camera Obscura,’ he said. ‘It’s quite amazing, the view.’

There was silence for a moment. Then Lorna Grieve smiled again at Rebus. ‘He doesn’t have a clue, does he, Monkey Man? Not the slightest clue what we’ve been talking about.’

Rebus was shaking his head in agreement as Cammo walked back into the room. He’d removed his coat, but not the jacket. Now that Rebus thought of it, the house was none too warm. These big old places, you put in central heating but not double glazing. High ceilings and draughts. Maybe it was time to turn the makeshift drinks cabinet back to its original use.

‘Sorry about that,’ Cammo said. ‘Blair was saddened by the news, apparently.’

Lorna snorted, back to her old self. ‘Tony Blair: I’d trust him as far as I could throw him.’ She looked at her brother. ‘Bet he’s never heard of you either. Roddy would have made twice the MP you’ll ever be. What’s more, at least he had the guts to stand for the Scottish parliament, somewhere he felt he could do some good!’

Her voice had risen, and with it the colour in her brother’s cheeks.

‘Lorna,’ he said quietly, ‘you’re distraught.’

‘Don’t you dare patronise me!’

The MP looked at his two guests, his smile attempting to reassure them that there was nothing here to worry about, nothing to take to the outside world.

‘Lorna, I really think—’

‘All the crap this family’s been through over the years, it’s all down to you!’ Lorna was growing hysterical. ‘Dad tried his damnedest to hate you!’

‘That’s enough!’

‘And Roddy, poor bastard, actually wanted to be you! And everything with Alasdair—’

Cammo Grieve raised his hand to slap his sister. She reared back from him, shrieking. And then there was someone in the doorway, shaking slightly, leaning heavily on a black walking cane. And someone else in the hall, hand clutching at the neck of her dressing-gown.

‘Stop this at once!’ Alicia Grieve shouted, stamping down hard with her cane. Behind her, Seona Grieve looked almost ghostly, as if alabaster had replaced the blood in her veins.

8

‘I didn’t even know this place had a restaurant.’ Siobhan looked around her. ‘You can smell the paint.’

‘It’s only been open a week,’ Derek Linford said, sitting down opposite her. They were in the Tower restaurant at the top of the Museum of Scotland on Chambers Street. There was a terrace outside, but no one was eating alfresco this December night. Their window table gave a view of the Sheriff’s Court and the Castle. The rooftops shone with frost. ‘I hear it’s pretty good,’ he added. ‘Same owner as the Witchery.’

‘Busy enough.’ Siobhan was studying the other diners. ‘I recognise that woman over there. Doesn’t she do restaurant reviews for one of the papers?’

‘I never read them.’

She looked at him. ‘How did you hear about it?’

‘What?’

‘This place.’

‘Oh.’ He was already studying the menu. ‘Some guy from Historic Scotland mentioned it.’

She smiled at ‘guy’, reminded that Linford was her own age, maybe even a year or two younger. His dress sense was so conservative — dark wool suit, white shirt, blue tie — that he seemed older. It might help explain his popularity with the ‘high hiedyins’ at the Big House. When he’d asked her to dinner, her first instinct had been to refuse. It wasn’t as if they’d exactly hit it off in the Botanics. But at the same time she wondered if she could learn anything from him. Her own mentor, Chief Inspector Gill Templer, didn’t seem to be helping much — too busy proving to her male colleagues that she was every bit their equal. Which wasn’t the truth. Truth was, she was better than most male CIs Siobhan had worked for. But Gill Templer didn’t seem to know that.

‘Would this be the guy who discovered the body in Queensberry House?’

‘That’s him,’ Linford said. ‘See anything you fancy?’

With some men, it would have come out as a chat-up line, trying to hook the expected response from her. But Linford was checking the menu like it was evidence.

‘I’m not much of a meat-eater,’ she told him. ‘Any news on Roddy Grieve?’

The waitress arrived and they ordered. Linford checked that Siobhan wasn’t driving before asking for a bottle of white wine.

‘Did you walk?’ he asked.

She shook her head. ‘Taxied it.’

‘I should have asked. I could’ve picked you up.’

‘That’s all right. You were telling me about Roddy Grieve.’

‘God, that sister of his.’ Linford shook his head at the memory.

‘Lorna? I’d like to meet her.’

‘She’s a monster.’

‘Good-looking monster.’ Linford shrugged, as if looks meant nothing to him. ‘If I look half as good at her age,’ Siobhan went on, ‘I’ll be doing well.’

He busied himself with his wineglass. Maybe he thought she was fishing for a compliment. Maybe she was.

‘She seemed to hit it off with your bodyguard,’ he said at last.

‘My what?’

‘Rebus. The one who doesn’t want me seeing you.’

‘I’m sure he—’

Linford leaned back suddenly in his chair. ‘Oh, let’s forget it. Sorry I said anything.’

Siobhan was confused now. She didn’t know what kind of signals her dinner partner was giving off. She brushed non-existent crumbs from her red crushed-velvet dress, checked the knees of her black tights for runs that weren’t there. With her coat off, her arms and shoulders were bare. Was she making him nervous?

‘Is there something wrong?’ she asked.

He shook his head, eyes everywhere but on her. ‘It’s just... I’ve never dated anyone from work before.’

‘Dated?’

‘You know, gone out for a meal with them. I mean, I’ve been to official functions, but never...’ His eyes finally rested on hers. ‘Just two people, me and one other. Like this.’

She smiled. ‘We’re having dinner, Derek, that’s all.’ She swallowed the sentence back, but too late. Was that all they were going to do, have dinner? Was he expecting anything more?

But he seemed to relax a little. ‘Bloody strange house, too,’ he said, as though his mind had been on the Grieves all along. ‘Paintings and newspapers and books spread everywhere. Deceased’s mother lives alone, should probably be in a home, someone to look after her.’

‘She’s a painter, isn’t she?’

‘Was. Not sure she still is.’

‘Her stuff fetches a small fortune. It was in the papers.’

‘Bit gaga if you ask me, but then she’d just lost a son. Not really for me to say, is it?’ He looked at her to see how he was doing. Her eyes told him to go on. ‘Cammo Grieve was there, too.’

‘He’s supposed to be a rake.’

Linford seemed surprised. ‘Bit fat to be a rake.’

‘Not a garden rake. You know, a bit of a ladies’ man, not to be trusted.’

She was grinning, but he took her at her word. ‘Not to be trusted? Hmm.’ He went thoughtful again. ‘God knows what they were talking about.’

‘Who?’

‘Rebus and Lorna Grieve.’

‘Rock music,’ Siobhan stated, leaning back so the waitress could pour the wine.

‘Some of the time, yes.’ Linford studied her. ‘How did you know?’

‘She’s married to a record producer, and John loves all that. Immediate connection.’

‘I can see why you’re in CID.’

She shrugged. ‘He’s probably the only man I know who plays Wishbone Ash on surveillance.’

‘Who are Wishbone Ash?’

‘Exactly.’

Later, when they’d finished their starters, Siobhan asked again about Roddy Grieve. ‘I mean, we are talking suspicious death here, aren’t we?’

‘Autopsy’s not been done yet, but it’s a racing certainty. He didn’t kill himself and it doesn’t look like an accident.’

‘Killing a politician.’ Siobhan tutted.

‘Ah, but he wasn’t, was he? He was a financial analyst who just happened to be running for parliament.’

‘Making it harder to fathom why he was killed?’

Linford nodded. ‘Could be a client with a grudge. Maybe Grieve made some bad investments.’

‘Then there are the people he beat to the Labour nomination.’

‘Agreed: plenty of infighting there.’

‘And there’s his family.’

‘A way of getting at them.’ Linford was still nodding.

‘Or he was just in the wrong place, et cetera.’

‘Goes to take a look at the parliament site, becomes victim of a mugging gone wrong.’ Linford puffed out his cheeks. ‘Lots of possible motives.’

‘And they all have to be looked at.’

‘Yes.’ Linford didn’t look too happy at the prospect. ‘Some hard work ahead. No easy answers.’

It sounded like he was trying to convince himself the whole thing was worth the candle. ‘John’s reliable, is he? Just between you and me.’

She thought it over, nodded slowly. ‘Once he gets his teeth in, he doesn’t let go.’

‘That’s what I’d heard. Doesn’t know when to let go.’ He made it sound like something less than praise. ‘The ACC wants me running the show. How do you think John will take it?’

‘I don’t know.’

He attempted a laugh. ‘It’s all right, I won’t tell him we’ve spoken.’

‘It’s not that,’ she said, though partly it was. ‘I genuinely don’t know.’

Linford looked disappointed in her. ‘Doesn’t matter,’ he said.

But Siobhan knew that it did.

Nic Hughes was driving his friend Jerry through the city streets. Jerry kept asking him where they were headed.

‘Christ almighty, Jerry, you’re like a broken record.’

‘I just like to know.’

‘What if I say we’re not going anywhere?’

‘That’s what you said before.’

‘And have we reached a destination?’ Jerry didn’t seem to understand. ‘No, we have not.’ Nic told him. ‘Because we’re driving aimlessly, and sometimes that can be fun.’

‘Eh?’

‘Just shut up, will you?’

Jerry Lister stared from his passenger window. They’d been south as far as the bypass, taken it to the Gyle and headed back towards Queensferry Road. But then instead of heading back into the centre, Nic had forked off towards Muirhouse and Pilton. They saw some guy urinating against a lamp-post and Jerry said to watch; pressed the button so his window slid down, and as they passed he let out a blood-curdling scream, laughing afterwards, checking the result in the rearview. You could hear the guy swearing.

‘They’re dogs out here, Jerry,’ Nic had warned him, as if Jerry needed telling.

Jerry liked Nic’s car. It was a shiny black Sierra Cosworth. When they passed a group of lads, Nic sounded the horn, waved as if he knew them. They stared, watching the car, watching its driver watching them.

‘Car like this, Jer, those kids would kill for it. I’m not joking, they’d do their granny in just for the chance of a test drive.’

‘Better not run out of petrol then.’

Nic looked at him. ‘We could take them, pal.’ All bravado with some speed in his system and wearing his blue suede jacket. ‘You don’t think so?’ Slowing the car, his foot all the way off the accelerator. ‘We could go back there and...’

‘Just keep driving, eh?’

A few moments of silence after that, Nic caressing the steering wheel round all the roundabouts they came to.

‘Are we going to Granton?’

‘Do you want to?’

‘What’s there?’ Jerry asked.

‘I don’t know. You’re the one who brought it up.’ A sly glance at his friend. ‘Ladies of the night, Jer, is that it? You want to try another?’ Tongue lolling from his mouth. ‘They won’t get in the car with two of us, you know. Too sussed for that, the night ladies. Maybe you could hide in the boot. I’d pick one up, take her to the car park... There’d be two of us, Jer.’

Jerry Lister licked his lips. ‘I thought we’d decided?’

‘Decided what?’

Jerry sounding worried. ‘You know.’

‘Memory’s shot, pal.’ Nic Hughes tapped his head. ‘It’s the drink. I drink to forget, and it seems to work.’ His face hardened, left hand twisting the gear stick. ‘Only I forget all the wrong things.’

Jerry turned to him. ‘Let her go, Nic.’

‘Easy for you to say.’ He bared his teeth as he spoke. There were flecks of white at the corners of his mouth. ‘Know what she told me, pal? Know what she said?’

Jerry didn’t want to hear. James Bond’s car had an ejector seat; all the Cosworth boasted was a sunroof. Jerry looked around anyway, as if seeking the ejector button.

‘She said this was a crap car. Said everyone laughed at it.’

‘They don’t.’

‘These kids out here, they’d tear this car up for an hour and then get bored. That’s all it would mean to them, which is a hundred per cent more than it meant to Cat.’

Some men got sad, emotional; they cried. Jerry had cried himself once or twice — a few cans of beer in him and watching Animal Hospital; and at Christmas when Bambi or The Wizard of Oz was on. But he’d never seen Nic cry. Instead, Nic turned it all into anger. Even when he was smiling, like now, Jerry knew he was angry, close to blowing. Not everyone knew, but Jerry did.

‘Come on, Nic,’ he said. ‘Let’s head into town, do Lothian Road or the Bridges.’

‘Maybe you’re right,’ Nic said at last. He was stopped at lights. A motorbike drew up alongside, revving. Not a big engine, but those things had no weight either. Kid on it, maybe seventeen. His eyes on them, face masked by the crash helmet. Nic’s foot went hard on clutch and accelerator, but when the lights changed the bike left them squashed like a hedgehog.

‘See that?’ Nic asked quietly. ‘That’s Cat waving me and my crap car bye-bye.’

Back in town they stopped for a breather, burger and chips, ate from the box, standing roadside, leaning against the car. Jerry’s jacket was cheap nylon. He had it zipped but was still shivering. Nic had his jacket open, didn’t look to be feeling the cold at all. There were kids in the restaurant, girls in their teens sat at a window table. Nic smiled at them, tried to catch their eyes. They sipped milk shakes, ignored him.

‘They think they’re in control, Jer,’ Nic said. ‘That’s what’s so funny about the whole thing. Here we are, standing out here in the cold, but it’s us that have the power. Their world’s forgotten that, but it would take us ten seconds to haul them into our world.’ He turned to his friend. ‘Wouldn’t it?’

‘If you say so.’

‘No, you’ve got to say it. That way, it becomes true.’ Nic dropped his burger box on to the pavement. Jerry hadn’t finished his, but Nic was getting back into the car, and he knew Jerry didn’t like smells in the Cosworth. There was a bin near by. He dropped his meal into it. One minute it’s food, the next it’s rubbish. The car was already moving as he pulled himself inside.

‘We’re not going to do one tonight, are we?’ The food seemed to have calmed Nic.

‘Don’t think so, no.’

Jerry relaxed as they cruised Princes Street — wasn’t the same since the council had made it one-way for cars. Headed up Lothian Road. Then down into the Grassmarket and up Victoria Street. Big buildings at the top. Jerry had no idea what any of them were. George IV Bridge: he recognised the old Sheriff Court, which was now the High Court, Deacon Brodie’s pub opposite. They took a right at the lights, tyres rippling over the setts as they cruised the High Street. Bitter outside, not many people walking. But Nic was pressing a button, lowering the passenger-side window. Jerry saw her: three-quarter-length coat; black stockings; short dark hair. Good height, trim figure. Nic slowed the car beside her.

‘Cold night to be out,’ he called. She ignored him. ‘You can catch a taxi outside the Holiday Inn if you’re lucky. It’s just down there.’

‘I know where it is,’ she snapped.

‘You English? On holiday?’

‘I live here.’

‘Just trying to be friendly. We’re always accused of being rude to English people.’

‘Just piss off, will you?’

Nic pushed the car forwards, then stopped, so he could turn round and see her face properly. She had a scarf around her neck, chin and mouth tucked into it. As she walked past, for all the world as if they didn’t exist, Nic caught Jerry’s eye and started nodding.

‘Lesbian, Jerry,’ he confirmed loudly, closing the window and moving off again.

Siobhan didn’t know quite why she was walking. But, entering Waverley Station by the back way, seeing it as a shortcut of sorts, she knew why she was shaking.

Lesbian.

Sod them all. The whole lot of them. She’d turned down Derek Linford’s offer of a lift. Said she felt like a walk; unsure straight away why she’d said it. They’d parted amicably enough. No handshake or peck on the cheek, that wasn’t the Edinburgh way, not on a first dinner-date. Just smiles and a promise to do it again some time: a promise she was pretty sure she’d be breaking. It was strange, taking the lift down from the restaurant through the museum. Workmen were still busy, even at that hour. Cables and ladders, the sound of an electric drill.

‘I thought this place was open for business,’ Linford had said.

‘It is,’ she’d told him. ‘It’s just not ready yet, that’s all.’

She’d walked up George IV Bridge, decided to head down the High Street. But that car, those men... she’d wanted off that street. A long flight of dark steps, shadows all around, shouts and music from still-open pubs. Then Waverley. She would cut through, back up on to Princes Street, then down Broughton Street, the city’s so-called gay village.

Which was where she lived. It was where a lot of people lived.

Lesbian.

Sod them all.

She thought back on the evening, trying to calm herself. Derek had been nervous, but then who was she to talk? The sex crimes secondment, it had put her off men. The register of offenders... all those hungry faces... the details of their crimes. And then her time with Sandra Carnegie, swapping stories and feelings. One officer who’d worked sex crimes for the best part of four years had warned her: ‘It’s a passion-basher, puts you right off.’ Three tramps had attacked a student, another student had been assaulted on one of the South Side’s richest streets. A car cruising past, an attempted chat-up and stinging punchline; small beer by comparison. All the same, she’d remember that name — Jerry — and the shiny black Sierra.

From the pedestrian bridge, she could look down on to the railway tracks and the concourse. Above her was the station’s leaky glass roof. When something plummeted, just on the edge of her vision, she thought she was imagining it. She looked across and saw snow falling. No, not snow: big flakes of glass. There was a hole in the roof, and below on one of the platforms someone was yelling. A couple of taxi drivers had opened their doors, were making for the scene.

Another leaper: that’s what it was. An area of darkness on the platform: it was like staring into a black hole. But really it was a long coat, the coat the leaper had been wearing. Siobhan made for the steps down to the concourse. Passengers were waiting for the sleeper to London. A woman was crying. One of the taxi drivers had taken off his jacket and laid it over the top half of the body. Siobhan moved forward. The other taxi driver put a hand out to stop her.

‘I wouldn’t, love,’ he said. For a moment she misheard him: I wouldn’t love. I wouldn’t love because love makes you weak. I wouldn’t love because your job will kill it dead.

‘I’m a police officer,’ she told him, reaching for her warrant card.

So many people had jumped from North Bridge, the Samaritans had bolted a sign to the parapet. North Bridge connected Old Town Edinburgh to the New Town and passed over the deep gully which housed Waverley Station. By the time Siobhan got there, no one was around. Distant shapes and voices: drinkers heading home. Taxis and cars. If anyone had seen the fall, they hadn’t bothered stopping. Siobhan leaned over the parapet, looked down on Waverley’s roof. Almost directly below was the hole. Through it, she could glimpse movement on the platform. She’d called for assistance, told them to alert the mortuary. She was off duty; let one of the uniforms — Rebus called them woolly suits — deal with it. From the dead man’s clothes, she was assuming he was a tramp. Only you didn’t call them tramps these days, did you? Problem was, she couldn’t think of the right word. Already in her head she was writing her report. Looking around at the empty street, she realised she could just walk away. Leave it to others. Her foot touched something. A plastic carrier bag. She nudged it and felt resistance. Stooping, she picked it up. It was one of the oversized bags you carried skirts or dresses home in. A Jenners bag, no less. The upmarket department store was a couple of minutes’ walk away. She doubted the leaper had ever shopped there. But she guessed his whole life was contained in the bag, so she took it with her back down to Waverley.

She’d dealt with suicides before. People who turned on the gas and sat down next to the fire. Cars left running in locked garages. Pill bottles by the bed, blue lips flecked with white. A CID officer had jumped from Salisbury Crags not so long ago. Plenty of places like that in Edinburgh; no shortage of suicide spots.

‘You could go home, you know,’ a uniform told her. She nodded. The woman officer smiled. ‘So what’s keeping you?’

A good question. It was as if she knew, knew there was so little to go home to.

‘You’re one of DI Rebus’s, aren’t you?’ the uniform asked.

Siobhan glared at her. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

The woman shrugged. ‘Sorry I spoke.’ Then she turned and walked away. They’d cordoned off the section of platform where the body lay. A doctor had confirmed death, and one of the mortuary vans was getting ready to remove the remains. Station staff were in search of a hose, wanted to get a jet-spray on to the platform. Blood and brains would be washed on to the tracks.

The sleeper passengers had departed, the station readying to close for the night. No taxis now. Siobhan wandered over to the left-luggage lockers. There was a desk there, and a male uniform was emptying the Jenners bag on to it, picking out each item gingerly, as if dealing with contamination.

‘Anything?’ Siobhan asked.

‘Just what you see.’

There had been no form of ID on the deceased, nothing in his pockets but a handkerchief and some coins. Siobhan studied the items on the table. A polythene bread bag seemed to contain a rudimentary wash-kit. There were a few articles of clothing, an old copy of Reader’s Digest. A small transistor radio, its back held on with sticking tape. The day’s evening paper, folded and crumpled...

You’re one of DI Rebus’s. Meaning what? Meaning she’d grown to be like him: a loner, a drifter? Were there just the two types of cop: John Rebus or Derek Linford? And did she have to choose?

A sandwich wrapped in greaseproof paper; a child’s lemonade bottle, half-filled with water. More clothing was appearing from the bag, which was all but empty now. The uniform tipped the remnants out. They looked like things the deceased had collected on his travels: a few pebbles, a cheap ring, shoelaces and buttons. A small, thin cardboard box which, from the faded picture on it, had once contained the radio. Siobhan picked it up and shook it, pulled it open and shook out a little book which at first she took for a passport.

‘It’s a passbook,’ the uniform said. ‘Building society.’

‘So it’ll have a name on it,’ Siobhan said.

The uniform opened the book. ‘Mr C. Mackie. There’s an address in the Grassmarket.’

‘And how was Mr Mackie’s investment portfolio doing?’

The uniform turned a couple of pages, angling the passbook as if he was having trouble focusing.

‘Not bad,’ he said at last. ‘Just over four hundred grand in credit.’

‘Four hundred thousand? Looks like the drinks are on him then.’

But the uniform turned the passbook towards her. She reached out and took it. He hadn’t been joking. The tramp being scraped and hosed off platform 11 was worth four hundred thousand pounds.

9

Tuesday, Rebus was back at St Leonard’s. Chief Superintendent Watson wanted a meeting with him. When he arrived, Derek Linford was already seated, a mug of oily-looking coffee untouched in one hand.

‘Help yourself,’ Watson said.

Rebus raised the beaker he was holding. ‘Already got some, sir.’ Whenever he remembered, he tried to bring half a cup of coffee with him. There was a sign you saw above some bars — ‘Do not ask for credit as a refusal can often offend’. The beaker was Rebus’s way of not giving offence to his senior officer.

When they were all seated, the Chief Super got straight to the point.

‘Everyone’s interested in this case: reporters, public, government...’

‘In that order, sir?’ Rebus asked.

Watson ignored him. ‘. . which means I’m going to be keeping closer tabs on you than usual.’ He turned to Linford. ‘John here can be like a bull in a china shop. I’m looking to you to be on matador duty.’

Linford smiled. ‘As long as the bull’s okay about it.’ He looked to Rebus, who stayed quiet.

‘Reporters are foaming at the mouth. The parliament, the elections... dry as dust. Now at last they’ve got a story.’ Watson held up thumb and forefinger. ‘Two stories actually. Couldn’t be any connection, could there?’

‘Between Grieve and the skeleton?’ Linford seemed to consider it, glanced towards Rebus who was busy checking the crease in his left trouser leg. ‘Shouldn’t think so, sir. Not unless Grieve was killed by a ghost.’

Watson wagged a finger. ‘That’s just the sort of thing the journalists are after. Joking’s fine in here, but not outside, understood?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Linford looked suitably abashed.

‘So what have we got?’

‘We’ve conducted preliminary interviews with the family,’ Rebus answered. ‘Further interviews to follow. Next step is to talk to the deceased’s political agent, then maybe to the local Labour Party.’

‘No known enemies?’

‘Widow didn’t seem to think so, sir,’ Linford said quickly, leaning forward in his chair. He didn’t want Rebus hogging the stage. ‘Still, there are things wives don’t always know.’

The Chief Super nodded. To Rebus, his face looked even more florid than usual. Run-up to the golden cheerio and he gets landed with this.

‘Friends? Business acquaintances?’

Linford nodded back, catching Watson’s rhythm. ‘We’ll speak to them all.’

‘Did the autopsy throw up anything?’

‘Blow to the base of the skull. It caused immediate haemorrhaging. Seems he died pretty much where he fell. Two more blows after that, producing fractures.’

‘These two blows were post-mortem?’

Linford looked to Rebus for confirmation. ‘Pathologist seems to think so,’ Rebus obliged. ‘They were to the top of the skull. Grieve was pretty tall —’

‘Six-one,’ Linford interrupted.

‘— so to render a blow like that, the attacker had to be hellish tall or standing on something.’

‘Or Grieve was already prone when the blows arrived,’ Watson said, mopping his forehead with a handkerchief. ‘Yes, makes sense, I suppose. How the devil did he get in there?’

‘Either he climbed the fence,’ Linford guessed, ‘or else someone had keys. The gates are kept padlocked at night: too much stuff in there worth nicking.’

‘There’s a security guard,’ Rebus continued. ‘He says he was there all night, kept a regular patrol, but didn’t see anything.’

‘What do you think?’

‘I think he was kipping in the office. Nice and warm in there. Radio and kettle, all mod cons. Either that or he’d bunked off home.’

‘He says he checked the summer house?’ Watson asked.

‘He says he thinks he did.’ Linford quoted from memory: ‘“I always shine my torch inside, just in case. No reason I wouldn’t have that night.”’

The Chief Super leaned forward, rested his elbows on the desk. ‘What do you think?’ He had eyes only for Linford.

‘I think we need to concentrate on the motive, sir. Was this a chance encounter? Prospective MSP wants to take a midnight look at his future workplace, happens across someone who decides to bludgeon him to death?’ Linford shook his head persuasively, his eyes dodging Rebus, who was glaring, having said almost exactly the same thing to him about an hour before.

‘I’m not sure,’ Watson said. ‘Say someone was in there stealing tools. Grieve interrupts them, so they whack him.’

‘And after he’s laid out,’ Rebus interrupted, ‘they hit him twice more for luck?’

Watson grunted, acknowledging the point. ‘And the murder weapon?’

‘Not recovered yet, sir,’ Linford said. ‘Lot of building sites around there, places you could conceal something. We’ve got officers out looking.’

‘The contractors are carrying out an inventory,’ Rebus added. ‘Just in case anything’s missing. If your theory about it being a theft is right, maybe the inventory will throw up something.’

‘One more thing, sir. Recent scuff marks on the shoes and traces of dirt and dust on the inside legs of Grieve’s trousers.’

Watson smiled. ‘God bless forensics. What does it mean?’

‘Means he probably did climb the fence or the gate.’

‘All the same, rule nothing out and everything in. Talk to all the keyholders. All of them, understood?’

‘Very good, sir,’ Linford said.

Rebus just nodded, though no one was paying attention.

‘And our friend Skelly?’ the Chief Super asked.

‘Two other members of the PPLC are on it, sir,’ Rebus said.

Watson grunted again, then looked at Linford. ‘Something wrong with your coffee, Derek?’

Linford’s gaze went to the surface of the drink. ‘No, sir, not at all. Just don’t like it too hot.’

‘And how is it now?’

Linford put the mug to his lips, drained it in two swallows. ‘It’s very good, sir. Thank you.’

Rebus suddenly had no doubts: Linford would go far in the force.

When the meeting was over, Rebus told Linford he’d catch him up, and knocked again on Watson’s door.

‘I thought we’d finished?’ The Farmer was busy with paperwork.

‘I’m being sidelined,’ Rebus said, ‘and I don’t like it.’

‘Then do something about it.’

‘Such as?’

The Farmer looked up. ‘Derek’s in charge. Accept the fact.’ He paused. ‘Either that or ask for a transfer.’

‘Wouldn’t want to miss your retirement do, sir.’

The Farmer put down his pen. ‘This is probably the last case I’ll handle, and I can’t think of one with a higher profile.’

‘You saying you don’t trust me with it, sir?’

‘You always think you know better, John. That’s the problem.’

‘All Linford knows are his desk at Fettes and which arses to lick.’

‘The ACC says different.’ The Farmer sat back in his chair. ‘Bit of jealousy there, John? Younger man speeding through the ranks...?’

‘Oh aye, I’ve always been gasping for a promotion.’ Rebus turned to leave.

‘Just this once, John, play for the team. It’s that or the sideline...’

Rebus closed the door on his boss’s words. Linford was waiting for him at the end of the corridor, mobile pressed to his ear.

‘Yes, sir, we’re headed there next.’ He listened, raised a hand to let Rebus know he’d only be a minute. Rebus ignored him, stalked past and down the stairs. Linford’s voice carried down a few moments later.

‘I think he’ll be fine, sir, but if not...’

Rebus dismissed the nightwatchman, but the man stayed in his seat, eyes shifting nervously between Rebus and Linford.

‘I said you can go.’

‘Go where?’ the watchman asked at last, voice trembling. ‘This is my office.’

Which was true: the three men were seated in the gatehouse of the parliament site. There was a thick register lying on the table, being pored over by Linford. It listed all the visitors to the site since work had begun. Linford had his notebook out, but hadn’t jotted a single name into it.

‘I thought you might want to go home,’ Rebus told the watchman. ‘Shouldn’t you be asleep or something?’

‘Aye, sure,’ the man mumbled. He probably reckoned he wouldn’t have the job much longer. Bad PR for the security firm, a body finding its way on to the premises. It was a low-pay job, being a security guard, and the hours tended to suit loners and the desperate. Rebus had told the man that they’d be checking up on him — you found a lot of ex-cons in his line of work. The man had admitted to spending some time at what he called the Windsor Hotel Group, meaning in jail. But he swore no one had asked him for copies of his keys. He wasn’t protecting anybody.

‘On you go then,’ Rebus said. The guard left. Rebus let out a long whistle of breath and stretched his vertebrae. ‘Anything?’

‘A few suspicious names,’ Linford announced. He turned the ledger so Rebus could see. The names were their own, along with Ellen Wylie, Grant Hood, Bobby Hogan and Joe Dickie: the group who’d toured Queensberry House. ‘Or how about the Scottish Secretary and the Catalan President?’

Rebus blew his nose. There was a one-bar electric fire in the room, but the heat was having no difficulty escaping through the cracks in the door and window. ‘What did you reckon to our nightwatchman?’

Linford closed the register. ‘I think if my two-year-old nephew asked for the gate keys, he’d hand them over rather than risk a bite to the ankles.’

Rebus went to the window. It was crusted with dirt. Outside, everyone was busy knocking things down and putting things up. An investigation was like that, too: sometimes you were demolishing an alibi or story, sometimes building up the case, each new piece of information another brick in the often unlovely edifice.

‘But is that what happened?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know. Let’s see what the background check digs up.’

‘I think we’re wasting our time. I don’t think he knows anything.’

‘Oh?’

‘I don’t even think he was here. Remember how vague he was about the weather that night? He couldn’t even be sure which route he took when he patrolled.’

‘He’s not the brightest of specimens, John. We still have to do the check.’

‘Because it’s procedure?’

Linford nodded. Outside, something was making a noise: rugga rugga rugga rugga rugga.

‘Has that thing been going all the time?’ Rebus asked.

‘What thing?’

‘That noise, the cement mixer or whatever it is.’

‘I don’t know.’

There was a knock at the door. The site manager came in, holding his yellow hard hat by its rim. He wore a yellow oilskin jacket over brown cord trousers. His walking boots were covered in glaur.

‘Just a few follow-up questions,’ Linford informed him, gesturing for the man to sit.

‘I’ve inventoried the tools,’ the site manager said, unfolding a sheet of paper. ‘Of course, things do go walkabout on any job.’

Rebus looked at Linford. ‘You take this one. I need some fresh air.’

He stepped out into the cold and breathed deeply, then searched his pockets for cigarettes. He’d been going off his head in there. Christ, and a drink would go down too well. There was a mobile van parked outside the gates, selling burgers and tea to the construction workers.

‘Double malt,’ Rebus said to the woman.

‘And do you take water with that?’

He smiled. ‘Just a tea, thanks. Milk, no sugar.’

‘Right, love.’ She kept rubbing her hands together between tasks.

‘Must get pretty cold, working here.’

‘Perishing,’ she admitted. ‘I could do with a tot now and again myself.’

‘What sort of hours are you open?’

‘Andy opens at eight, does breakfasts and things. I usually take over at two, so he can hit the cash and carry.’

Rebus checked his watch. ‘It’s just gone eleven.’

‘Sure you don’t want anything else? I’ve just cooked a couple of burgers.’

‘Go on then. Just the one.’ He patted his midriff.

‘You need feeding up, you do,’ she told him, winking as she spoke.

Rebus took the tea from her, then the burger. There were sauce bottles on a ledge. He spiralled some brown on to the contents of the roll.

‘Andy’s not been too good,’ she said. ‘So it’s down to me just now.’

‘Nothing serious?’ Rebus took a bite of scalding meat and melting onions.

‘Just flu, and maybe not even that. You men are all hypochondriacs.’

‘Can’t blame him for trying, this weather.’

‘Don’t see me complaining, do you?’

‘Women are made of stronger stuff.’

She laughed, rolled her eyes.

‘What time do you finish?’

She laughed again. ‘You chatting me up?’

He shrugged. ‘I might want another of these later.’ He held up the burger.

‘Well, I’m here till five. But they go quick, come lunchtime.’

‘I’ll risk it,’ Rebus said. It was his turn to wink, as he headed back through the gate. He drank the tea as he walked. When the roof workers started to winch another load of slates down towards the waiting skip, he remembered he wasn’t wearing a hard hat. There were some in the gatehouse, but he didn’t want to go back there. Instead, he headed into Queensberry House. The stairs down to the basement were unlit. He could hear voices echoing at the end of the hall. Shadows were moving in the old kitchen. When he stepped into the room, Ellen Wylie glanced towards him and nodded a greeting. She was listening to an elderly woman speak. They’d found a chair for her to sit in. It was one of those director’s chairs with a canvas seat and back, and it complained every time its occupant moved, which she did often and in animated fashion. Grant Hood was standing by a side wall, taking notes. He was keeping out of the woman’s eyeline, so as not to distract her.

‘It was always covered in wood,’ the woman was saying. ‘That’s my recollection.’ She had one of those high-pitched, authoritative accents.

‘This sort of stuff?’ Wylie asked. She pointed to a section of tongue-and-groove, still fixed to the wall near the door.

‘I believe so, yes.’ The woman noticed Rebus, gave him a smile.

‘This is Detective Inspector Rebus,’ Wylie said.

‘Good morning, Inspector. My name is Marcia Templewhite.’

Rebus stepped forward, took her hand for a moment.

‘Miss Templewhite worked for the Health Board back in the seventies,’ Wylie explained.

‘And for many years before that, too,’ Miss Templewhite added.

‘She remembers some building work,’ Wylie went on.

‘Lots of work,’ Miss Templewhite corrected. ‘The whole basement was gutted. New heating system, floor repairs, pipework... It was quite a guddle, I can tell you. Everything had to be moved upstairs, and then we didn’t know where to put it. Went on for weeks.’

‘And the wooden sections were removed?’ Rebus asked.

‘Well, I was just telling...’

‘DS Wylie,’ Wylie reminded her.

‘I was just telling DS Wylie, if they’d found these fireplaces, surely they’d have said something?’

‘You didn’t know about them?’

‘Not until DS Wylie told me.’

‘But the building work’, Grant Hood said, ‘coincides fairly well with the skeleton’s age.’

‘You don’t suppose one of the workers could have got himself bricked up?’ Miss Templewhite asked.

‘I think he’d have been noticed,’ Rebus told her. All the same, he knew they’d be asking the builders that very question. ‘Who were the contractors?’

Miss Templewhite threw up her hands. ‘Contractors, subcontractors... I could never really keep up with them.’

Wylie looked at Rebus. ‘Miss Templewhite thinks there’ll be records somewhere.’

‘Oh yes, most definitely.’ She looked around her at her surroundings. ‘And now Roddy Grieve’s dead, too. It was never a lucky place this. Never was, never will be.’ She nodded at all three of them, her confident words accompanied by a solemn, knowing face, as if she took no comfort from the truth.

Back at the snack van, he paid for the teas.

‘Guilty conscience?’ Wylie said, accepting hers. A patrol car had arrived to take Miss Templewhite home. Grant Hood was seeing her safely into the back of it, waving her off.

‘Why should I feel guilty?’ Rebus asked.

‘Story is, it was you that put our names down for this.’

‘Who told you that?’

She shrugged. ‘Word gets around.’

‘Then you should be thanking me,’ Rebus said. ‘High-profile case like this could make your career.’

‘Not as high profile as Roddy Grieve.’ She was staring at him.

‘Spit it out,’ he said. But she shook her head. He handed the spare styrofoam beaker to Grant Hood. ‘Seemed like a nice old sort.’

‘Grant likes the more mature woman,’ Wylie said.

‘Get lost, Ellen.’

‘Him and his pals go to Grab-a-Granny night at the Marina.’

Rebus looked at Hood, who was blushing. ‘That right, Grant?’

Hood just looked at Wylie, concentrated on his tea.

Seemed to Rebus they were getting on okay, felt comfortable enough to talk about their private lives, then to joke about it. ‘So,’ he said, ‘getting back to business...’ He moved away from the van, where workers were queuing for lunchtime treats of crisps and chocolate bars, their eyes roving towards Ellen Wylie. Wylie and Hood were both wearing hard hats, but didn’t look right in them. The line of workers knew they were just visiting. ‘What have we got so far?’

‘Skelly’s gone to some specialist lab down south,’ Wylie said. ‘They reckon they can give us a more accurate date of death. But meantime the thinking is ’79 to ’81.’

‘And we know building work was going on down there in 1979,’ Hood added. ‘Which I’d say is our best bet.’

‘Based on what?’ Rebus asked.

‘Based on the fact that if you’re going to hide a body down there, you need the means and the opportunity. Most of the time, the basement was off-limits. And who’d dump a body there unless they knew about the fireplace? They knew it was going to be blocked up again, probably thought it would stay that way for a few more hundred years.’

Wylie was nodding agreement. ‘Has to be tied in to the refit work.’

‘So we need to know which companies were involved, and who was working for them at the time.’ The two junior officers shared a look. ‘I know, it’s a big job. Firms could have gone to the wall. Maybe they’re not as good at keeping old paperwork as Miss Templewhite. But they’re all we’ve got.’

‘Personnel records will be a nightmare,’ Wylie said. ‘A lot of the building trade, they take people on for a job, lay them off again afterwards. Builders move on, don’t always stay in the business.’

Rebus was nodding. ‘You’re going to have to depend on goodwill a lot of the time.’

‘Meaning what, sir?’ Hood asked.

‘Meaning you have to be nice and polite. That’s why I chose you. Someone like Bobby Hogan or Joe Dickie, they’d go barging in demanding answers. Play it like that, suddenly the person you’re talking to could become forgetful. Like the song says, nice and easy does it.’ He was looking at Wylie.

Through the gate behind her, he glimpsed the site manager emerging from the gatehouse, slipping his hard hat back on. Linford came out, hard hat in hand, and looked around, seeking Rebus. Saw him and came out of the gate.

‘Missing tools?’ Rebus asked.

‘A few bits and pieces.’ Linford nodded across the road. ‘Any news from the search parties?’ Two groups of uniforms were checking the area for the murder weapon.

‘I don’t know,’ Rebus said. ‘I haven’t seen them.’

Linford looked at him. ‘But you’ve got time to stop for tea?’

‘Just keeping my junior officers happy.’

Linford was still staring. ‘You think this is a waste of time, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Mind if I ask why?’ He folded his arms.

‘Because it’s all arse-backwards,’ Rebus said. ‘Does it really matter how he got into the site or what he was killed with? We should be looking at the who and why. You’re like one of those office managers who worries about paperclips when the case-files are ten feet high on everybody’s desk.’

Linford glanced at his watch. ‘Bit early in the day for character assassination.’ Trying to make a joke of it, aware that others were listening.

‘You can interview the site manager as much as you like,’ Rebus went on, ‘but even if you narrow it down to a missing claw hammer, how much further on will you be? Let’s face it, whoever killed Roddy Grieve knew what they were doing. If they’d been caught nicking slates, they might have thumped him, but more likely they’d just have run off. They certainly wouldn’t have kept hitting him after he was down. He knew his killer, and it wasn’t by chance that he was here. It’s to do with what he was or who he was. That’s what we should be concentrating on.’ He paused, aware that the line of workers was watching the performance.

‘Here endeth the lesson,’ Ellen Wylie said, smiling into her cup.

10

Roddy Grieve’s election agent was called Josephine Banks. Sitting in one of the interview rooms at St Leonard’s, she explained that she’d known Grieve for about five years.

‘We were pretty active in New Labour, right from the start. I did some canvassing for John Smith, too.’ Her eyes lost their focus for a moment. ‘He’s still missed.’

Rebus sat across from her, fingers busy exploring a cheap pen. ‘When did you last see Mr Grieve?’

‘The day he died. We met in the afternoon. Only five months till the election, there was a lot of work to get through.’

She was five and a half feet tall and carried most of her weight at the stomach and hips. Her face was small and round with the beginnings of a double chin. She’d pulled back her thick black hair and tied it at the nape of her neck. She wore half-moon glasses with Dalmatian-spotted frames.

‘You never thought of standing?’ Rebus asked.

‘What? As an MSP?’ She smiled at the suggestion. ‘Maybe next time.’

‘You’ve ambitions that way?’

‘Of course.’

‘So what made you want to help Roddy Grieve, as opposed to any other candidate?’

She wore black mascara and eyeshadow. Her eyes were green. They seemed to sparkle when she moved them.

‘I liked him,’ she said, ‘and I trusted him. He still had ideals, unlike his brother, say.’

‘Cammo?’

‘Yes.’

‘You don’t get on?’

‘No reason why we should.’

‘What about Cammo and Roddy?’

‘Oh, they argued politics whenever they could, but that wasn’t often. They only met at family occasions, and then they had Alicia and Lorna to stop them.’

‘What about Mr Grieve’s wife?’

‘Which one?’

‘Roddy’s.’

‘Yes, but which one? He had two, you know.’

Rebus was confused momentarily.

‘First one didn’t last long,’ Josephine Banks said, crossing her legs. ‘It was a teenage thing.’

Rebus turned his pen the right way round and opened his notebook. ‘What was her name?’

‘Billie.’ She spelled it for him. ‘Her maiden name’s Collins. But maybe she’s remarried.’

‘Is she still around?’

‘Last I heard she was teaching somewhere in Fife.’

‘Did you ever meet her?’

‘God no, she was long gone by the time I met Roddy.’ She looked at him. ‘You know there’s a son?’

None of the family had mentioned it. Rebus shook his head. Banks looked disappointed in him.

‘His name’s Peter. He uses the surname Grief. Ring any bells?’

Rebus was busy writing. ‘Should it?’

She shrugged. ‘He’s in a pop group. The Robinson Crusoes.’

‘Never heard of them.’

‘Some of your younger colleagues may have.’

‘Ouch.’ Rebus winced; it made her smile.

‘But Peter’s almost beyond the pale.’

‘Because of what he does?’

‘Oh no, not that. I think his grandmother’s thrilled to have a pop star in the family.’

‘What then?’

‘Well, he chooses to make his home in Glasgow.’ She paused. ‘You have spoken to the family, haven’t you?’ He nodded. ‘Only I’d have thought Hugh would have mentioned him.’

‘I haven’t actually met Mr Cordover yet. He’s the band’s producer, is he?’

‘He’s their manager. Dear me, do I have to tell you everything? Hugh’s got this thing about young bands now — Vain Shadows, Change and Decay...’ She smiled at his lack of recognition.

‘I’ll ask one of my younger colleagues,’ he said, causing her to laugh.

He went to the canteen, fetched them coffee. The burger had given him indigestion, so he stopped at his desk and downed a couple of Rennies. At one time, he could have eaten anything, any time of day. But his guts seemed to have taken early retirement. He picked up his phone and called Lorna Grieve, thinking: so far Josephine Banks hadn’t mentioned Seona Grieve. She’d managed to sidetrack him by bringing the first Mrs Grieve, Billie Collins, into play. There was no answer at the Cordover residence. He took the drinks back to the interview room. ‘There you go, Ms Banks.’

‘Thank you.’ She looked as if she hadn’t moved all the time he’d been away.

‘I keep wondering’, she said, ‘when you’ll get round to me. I mean, all this other stuff is just a roundabout way of getting there, isn’t it?’

‘You’ve lost me.’ Rebus took the notebook and pen from his pocket, laid them on the desk.

‘Roddy and me,’ she said, leaning towards him. ‘The affair we were having. Is it time to talk about that now?’

Right hand reaching for the pen, Rebus agreed that it was.

‘It’s like that in politics.’ She paused. ‘Well, any profession really. Two people working closely together.’ She sipped the coffee. ‘Politicians are nothing if not gossips. I think it’s down to a lack of self-confidence. Bad-mouthing everyone else is such a simple option.’

‘So you weren’t actually having an affair?’

She looked at him, smiled. ‘Did I give that impression?’ Bowed her head slightly in apology. ‘What I should have said was, the rumoured affair. And that’s as far as it got. You didn’t know?’

He shook his head.

‘All these interviews... I thought someone would have...’ She straightened in her chair. ‘Well, maybe I’ve misjudged them.’

‘You’re really the first person we’ve spoken to.’

‘But you’ve talked to the clan?’

‘You mean Mr Grieve’s family?’

‘Yes.’

‘They knew?’

‘Seona knew. I’m assuming she didn’t keep it to herself.’

‘Did Mr Grieve tell her?’

She smiled again. ‘Why should he? There wasn’t any truth in it. If someone here made a sly reference about you, would you report it to your wife?’

‘So how did Mrs Grieve find out?’

‘The usual way. Our old friend, Anonymous.’

‘A letter?’

‘Yes.’

‘Just the one?’

‘You’ll have to ask her.’ She placed her beaker on the table. ‘You’re dying for a cigarette, aren’t you?’ Rebus looked at her. She nodded towards his pen, which was raised to his mouth. ‘You keep doing that,’ she said. ‘And I wish you wouldn’t.’

‘Why’s that, Ms Banks?’

‘Because I’m gasping for one myself.’

Smoking at St Leonard’s was restricted to the rear car park. Since this was off-limits to the public, he stood with Josephine Banks on the pavement out front, the pair of them shuffing their feet as they enjoyed their individual fixes.

Nearing the end of his cigarette, perhaps to defer the moment when he would have to finish it, he asked her if she’d any idea who had written the letter.

‘Not a clue.’

‘It had to be someone who knew you both.’

‘Oh, yes. I’m guessing it was someone in the local party. Or maybe a sore loser. The selection process for candidates, it was pretty rough at times.’

‘How so?’

‘Old Labour versus New. Ancient grievances given fresh momentum.’

‘Who stood against Mr Grieve?’

‘There were three others: Gwen Mollison, Archie Ure and Sara Bone.’

‘Was it a fair fight?’

A mixture of smoke and chilled breath billowed from her mouth. ‘As these things go, yes. I mean, there weren’t any dirty tricks.’

Something in her tone made him ask: ‘But?’

‘There was a certain amount of bad feeling when Roddy won the vote. Mostly from Ure. You must have seen it in the papers.’

‘Only if it reached the sports pages.’

She looked at him. ‘You are going to vote?’

He shrugged, examined what was left of his cigarette. ‘Why was Archie Ure so upset?’

‘Archie’s been in the Labour Party for donkey’s. And he believes in devolution. Back in ’79, he canvassed half of Edinburgh. Then along comes Roddy, snatches his birthright from under his nose. Tell me, did you vote in ’79?’

March 1, 1979: the failed devolution referendum. ‘I don’t remember,’ Rebus lied.

‘You didn’t, did you?’ She watched him shrug. ‘Whyever not?’

‘I wasn’t the only one.’

‘I’m just curious. It was bitter cold that day, maybe the snow put you off.’

‘Are you poking fun at me, Ms Banks?’

She flicked her cigarette stub into the road. ‘I wouldn’t dare, Inspector.’

1979.

He remembered Rhona, his wife at the time, with her roll of ‘Vote Yes’ stickers. He kept finding them on his jackets, the car windscreen, even on the flask he sometimes took with him to work. The winter had been hell: dark and freezing and with strikes breaking out all over. The Winter of Discontent, the papers called it, and he wasn’t about to disagree. His daughter Sammy was four. When he and Rhona had arguments, they kept their voices down so as not to wake her. His work was a problem: not enough hours in the day. And recently Rhona had been becoming active politically, campaigning for the SNP. For her, devolution meant a step towards independence. For Jim Callaghan and his Labour government, it meant... well, Rebus was never sure exactly. A sop to the Nationalists? Or to the nation as a whole? Would it really strengthen the Union?

They argued politics at the kitchen table until Rebus became bored by it all. He would fall on to the sofa and tell Rhona he didn’t care. At first she would stand in front of him, blocking his view of the TV screen. Her arguments were cogent as well as passionate.

‘I really can’t be scunnered,’ he’d say when she finished, and she’d start hitting him with a cushion until he wrestled her down on to the carpet, the pair of them laughing.

Maybe it was because he was getting a reaction. Whatever, his intransigence grew. He wore a ‘Scotland Says NO’ badge home one night. They were at the kitchen table again, eating supper. Rhona looked tired: day job and childcare and out canvassing. She didn’t say anything about his badge, even when he unpinned it from his coat and fixed it to his shirt. She just stared at him with deadened eyes, and wouldn’t talk the rest of the evening. In bed, she turned her back on him.

‘I thought you wanted me to get more political,’ he joked. She stayed silent. ‘I’m serious,’ he said. ‘I’ve thought through the issues like you said, and I’ve decided to vote No.’

‘You do what you want,’ she said coldly.

‘I will then,’ he answered, his eyes on her hunched form.

But on the day, 1 March, he did something worse than voting No. He didn’t vote at all. He could blame work, the weather, any number of things. But really, it was to make Rhona suffer. He knew this as he watched the office clock, watched the hands pass the referendum’s close. With minutes left, he almost dashed for his car, but told himself it was too late. It was too late.

Felt like hell on the drive home. She wasn’t there; was off somewhere to watch ballot boxes being emptied, or with like-minded people in the back room of a pub, awaiting news of exit polls.

The babysitter left him to it. He looked in on Sammy, who was fast asleep, one arm cradling Pa Broon, her favoured teddy bear. It was late when Rhona returned. She was a little bit drunk, and so was he: four cans of Tartan Special in front of the TV. He had the picture on but the sound down, listening to the hi-fi. He was about to tell her that he’d voted No, but knew she’d see through the lie. Instead, he asked how she was feeling.

‘Numb,’ she said, standing in the doorway, as if reluctant to enter the room. ‘But then,’ she said, turning back into the hall, ‘that’s almost an improvement.’

March 1, 1979. The referendum had a clause attached, 40 per cent of the electorate had to vote Yes. The rumour was the Labour government down in London wanted obstacles put in the way of devolution. They feared that Scottish Westminster MPs would be lost, and that the Conservatives would be gifted a permanent majority in the Commons. Forty per cent had to vote Yes.

It wasn’t even close. Thirty-three said Yes, 31 No. The turnout was just under 64 per cent. The result, as one paper put it, was ‘a nation divided’. The SNP withdrew their support for the Callaghan government — he called them ‘turkeys voting for Christmas’ — an election had to be called, and the Conservatives came back into power, led by Margaret Thatcher.

‘Your SNP did that,’ Rebus told Rhona. ‘Now where’s your devolution?’

She just shrugged a response, beyond goading. They’d come a long way since the cushion fights on the floor. He turned to his work instead, immersing himself in other people’s lives, other people’s problems and miseries.

And hadn’t voted in an election since.

After Josephine Banks had gone, he returned to the Murder Room. DS ‘Hi-Ho’ Silvers was making telephone calls. So were a couple of DCs who’d been brought in from other divisions. Chief Inspector Gill Templer was having a confab with the Farmer. A WPC walked past and handed the Farmer a sheaf of telephone messages — so many they were held by a bulldog clip. The Farmer frowned at them, went on listening to Templer. The Farmer’s jacket was off and the sleeves of his white shirt were rolled up. All around Rebus people were moving, and computer keyboards were being hammered, and ringing phones were being answered. On his desk were copies of inquiry transcripts, initial interviews with the members of the clan. Cammo Grieve had drawn the short straw, ended up under the inquisitorial gaze of Bobby Hogan and Joe Dickie.

Cammo Grieve: Any idea how long this will take?

Hogan: Sorry, sir. Don’t mean to inconvenience you.

Grieve: My brother’s been murdered, you know!

Hogan: Why else would we be talking to you, sir?

(Rebus had to smile: Bobby Hogan had a way of saying ‘sir’ that made it sound like an insult.)

Dickie: You went back down to London on the Saturday, Mr Grieve?

Grieve: First bloody chance I could.

Dickie: You don’t get on with your family?

Grieve: None of your bloody business.

Hogan: (To Dickie) Put down that Mr Grieve refused to answer.

Grieve: For Christ’s sake!

Hogan: No need to take Our Lord’s name in vain, sir.

(Rebus laughed out loud this time. Apart from the usual trinity — weddings, funerals and christenings — he doubted Bobby Hogan had ever seen the inside of a church.)

Grieve: Look, let’s just get on with it, shall we?

Dickie: Couldn’t agree more, sir.

Grieve: I was back in London Saturday night. You can check with my wife. We spent Sunday together, except when I had some constituency business to discuss with my agent. Couple of friends joined us for dinner. Monday morning, I was on my way to the House when I got the call on my mobile to say Roddy was dead.

Hogan: And how did you feel, sir...?

On it went, Cammo Grieve combative, Hogan and Dickie soaking up his hostility like a sponge, hitting back with questions and comments that illustrated their feelings towards him.

As Hogan had commented afterwards — strictly off the record — ‘Only time that shite would get a cross from me was if he had fangs.’

Lorna Grieve and her partner had, individually, faced up to the easier pairing of DI Bill Pryde and DS Roy Frazer. Neither had seen Roddy on the Sunday. Lorna had gone to visit friends in North Berwick, while Hugh Cordover had busied himself in his home-based studio, with an engineer and various band members as witnesses.

There were still no sightings of Roddy Grieve on the Sunday night, when he’d supposedly been out for a drink with friends. No friends seemed to have seen him. The implication was: Roddy had enjoyed a secret life, something apart from his marriage. And this, by its very nature, would give the investigation all sorts of problems.

Because no matter how hard you tried, some secrets were bound to stay unrevealed.

11

The building society was on George Street. When Siobhan Clarke had first arrived in Edinburgh, George Street had seemed a windy ghetto of stunning architecture and sluggish business. Half the office space seemed to be empty, with To Let notices strung like pennants from the buildings. Now the street was changing, upmarket shops being joined by a string of bars and restaurants, most of them housed in what had been banks.

That C. Mackie’s building society was still trading seemed, under the circumstances, a minor miracle. Clarke sat in the manager’s office while he found the relevant paperwork. Mr Robertson was a small, rotund man with a large, polished head and beaming smile. The half-moon glasses gave him the appearance of a Dickensian clerk. Clarke tied not to imagine him in period clothes, but failed. He took her smile as one of approbation — either of his character in general or his efficiency — and sat back down at his modern desk in his modern office. The manila file was slim.

‘The C stands for Christopher,’ he remarked.

‘Mystery solved,’ Clarke said, opening her notebook. Mr Robertson beamed at her.

‘The account was opened in the March of 1980. The fifteenth, to be precise, a Saturday. I’m afraid I wasn’t the manager then.’

‘Who was?’

‘My predecessor, George Samuels. I wasn’t even at this branch, prior to my elevation.’

Clarke flipped through Christopher Mackie’s passbook. ‘The opening balance was £430,000?’

Robertson checked the figures. ‘That is correct. Thereafter, we have a history of occasional minor withdrawals and annual interest.’

‘You knew Mr Mackie?’

‘No, I don’t believe so. I took the liberty of asking the staff.’ He ran his fingers down the columns of figures. ‘You say he was a tramp?’

‘His clothing would suggest he was homeless.’

‘Well, I know house prices are extortionate, but all the same...’

‘With four hundred thousand to spare, he might have found himself something?’

‘With that sort of money, he might have found just about anything.’ He paused. ‘But then there is this address in the Grassmarket.’

‘I’ll be going there later, sir.’

Robertson nodded distractedly. ‘One of the staff, our Mrs Briggs. He seemed to deal with her when he made a withdrawal.’

‘I’d like to talk to her.’

He nodded again. ‘I presumed as much. She’s ready for you.’

Clarke looked at her pad. ‘Has his address changed at all, while he’s been a customer here?’

Robertson peered at the paperwork. ‘It would seem not,’ he said at last.

‘Didn’t it seem unusual to you, sir: that amount of money in the one account?’

‘We did write to Mr Mackie from time to time, asking if he’d like to discuss other options. Thing is, you can’t be too pushy.’

‘Or the customer might take umbrage?’

Mr Robertson nodded. ‘This is a wealthy place, you know. Mr Mackie wasn’t the only one with that kind of cash at his disposal.’

‘Thing is, sir, he didn’t dispose of it.’

‘Which brings me to another point...’

‘We haven’t found anything resembling a will, if that’s what you’re getting at.’

‘And no next of kin?’

‘Mr Robertson, I didn’t even have a first name till you gave me one.’ Clarke closed her notebook. ‘I’ll talk to Mrs Briggs now, if I may.’

Valerie Briggs was a middle-aged woman who’d recently had her hair restyled. Clarke guessed as much from the way Mrs Briggs kept touching a hand to her head, as if not quite believing the shape and texture.

‘The very first time he came in here, it was me he talked to.’ A cup of tea had been provided for Mrs Briggs. She looked at it uncertainly: tea in her boss’s office was, like her hairstyle, a new and challenging experience. ‘Said he wanted to open an account and who should he speak to. So I gave him the form and off he went. Came back with it filled in and asked if he could open the account with cash. I thought he’d made a mistake, put down too many noughts.’

‘He had the money with him?’

Mrs Briggs nodded, wide-eyed at the memory. ‘Showed me it, all in a smart-looking briefcase.’

‘A briefcase?’

‘Lovely and shiny it was.’

Siobhan scribbled a note to herself. ‘And what happened?’ she asked.

‘Well, I had to fetch the manager. I mean, that amount of cash...’ She shivered at the thought.

‘This was Mr Samuels?’

‘The manager, yes. Lovely man, old George.’

‘You keep in touch?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘So what happened?’

‘Well, George... Mr Samuels, that is, took Mr Mackie into the office. The old office.’ She nodded at where they were sitting. ‘It used to be over by the front door. Don’t know why they moved it. And when Mr Mackie came out, that was it, we had a new customer. And every time he came in, he’d wait until I could deal with him.’ She shook her head slowly. ‘Such a shame to see him go like that.’

‘Go?’

‘You know, let himself go. I mean, the day he opened the account... well, he wasn’t dressed to the nines but he was presentable. Suit and what have you. Hair might have needed a wash and trim...’ She patted her own hair again. ‘. . but nicely spoken and everything.’

‘Then he started going downhill?’

‘Pretty much straight away. I mentioned it to Mr Samuels.’

‘What did he say?’

She smiled at the memory, recited the reply: ‘“Valerie, dear, there are probably more eccentric rich people out there than normal ones.” He had a point, I suppose. But he said something else I remember: “Money brings with it a responsibility some of us are unable to handle.”’

‘He could have a point.’

‘Maybe so, dear, but I told him I’d be willing to take my chances any time he felt like emptying the safe.’

They shared a laugh at this, before Clarke asked Mrs Briggs how she might find Mr Samuels.

‘That’s an easy one. He’s a demon for the bowls. It’s like a religion with him.’

‘In this weather?’

‘Do you give up churchgoing because it’s snowing outside?’

It was a good point, and one Clarke was willing to concede in exchange for an address.

She walked past the bowling green and pushed open the door to the social club. She hadn’t been to Blackhall before, and the maze of streets had defeated her, twice misleading her back on to the busy Queensferry Road. This was Bungalow Land, an area of the city that seemed to have stepped straight out of the 1930s. It seemed a world away from Broughton Street. Here, you appeared to have left the city. There was precious little commerce, precious few people about. The bowling green had a careworn look, its grass a dull emulsion. The clubhouse behind it was a single-storey affair of brown wooden slats, probably thirty years old and showing its age. She stepped inside to a furnace-blast from the ceiling-mounted heater. There was a bar ahead of her, where an elderly woman was humming some show tune as she dusted the bottles of spirits.

‘Bowls?’ Clarke called.

‘Through the doors, hen.’ Nodding in the general direction without losing her beat. Clarke pushed open the double doors and was in a long narrow room. A green baize mat, twelve feet wide and about fifty long, took up most of the available space. A few plastic chairs were scattered around the periphery, but there were no spectators, just the four players, who looked towards the interruption with all the ire they could muster until, noting her sex and youth, their faces melted and backs straightened.

‘One of yours, I’ll bet,’ one man said, nudging his neighbour.

‘Away to hell.’

‘Jimmy likes them with a bit more meat on their bones,’ the third player added.

‘And a few more miles on the clock, too,’ said player four. They were laughing now, laughing with the confidence of old men, immune from penalty.

‘Wouldn’t you give your left one to be forty years younger?’ The speaker stooped to pick up one of his bowls. The jack had been dispatched to the far end of the carpet. Two bowls sat either side of it.

‘Sorry to interrupt your game,’ Clarke said, deciding immediately on her approach. ‘I’m Detective Constable Clarke.’ She showed them her warrant card. ‘I’m looking for George Samuels.’

‘Told you they’d catch up with you, Dod.’

‘It was only a matter of time.’

‘I’m George Samuels.’ The man who stepped forward was tall and slender and wore a burgundy tie under his sleeveless V-neck jumper. His hand when she shook it had a firm grip and was warm and dry. His hair was snowy white and plentiful, like cotton wadding.

‘Mr Samuels, I’m from St Leonard’s police station. Would you mind if I had a word?’

‘I’ve been expecting you.’ His eyes were the blue of summer water. ‘It’s about Christopher Mackie, isn’t it?’ He saw the look of surprise on her face and broke into a smile, pleased that he still had some force in the world.

They sat in a corner of the bar. An elderly couple sat in the other corner: the man had drifted off to sleep and the woman was knitting. A half-pint of beer sat in front of the man, a sherry in front of his companion.

George Samuels had ordered a whisky, doubling its volume with water. He’d signed Clarke in so that she could drink as his guest, but she’d only wanted coffee. Now, after the first sip, she was wishing she hadn’t bothered. The catering-sized tin of instant behind the bar should have given her the first clue. The second should have been when the barmaid started chipping away at the contents.

‘How did you know?’ she asked.

Samuels ran a hand over his forehead. ‘I always knew there was something wrong with it... with him. You don’t just walk into a building society with that amount of money.’ He looked up from his drink. ‘You don’t, do you?’

‘I’d like the chance to try,’ she said.

He smiled. ‘You’ve been talking to Val Briggs. She said much the same thing. We always joked about it.’

‘If you thought there was something odd about it, why take the money?’

He opened his arms. ‘If I hadn’t, someone else would. This was twenty years ago. We weren’t under any obligation to tell the police if something like that happened. That one deposit made me Branch Manager of the Month.’

‘Did he say anything about the money?’

Samuels was nodding. There was something Christmasy about his hair; Clarke imagined playing with it, like playing with fresh snow. ‘Oh, I asked,’ he told her. ‘I came straight out.’

‘And?’ A couple of biscuits had arrived with the coffee. She bit into one. It was soft, felt greasy in her mouth.

‘He asked if I needed to know. I said I’d like to know, which wasn’t quite the same thing. He told me it was from a bank robbery.’ Her look pleased him all over again. ‘Of course, we both laughed. I mean, he was joking. The notes... their serial numbers... I’d have known if they’d been stolen.’

Clarke nodded. There was a paste in her mouth. The only way she could swallow it was with the help of a drink, and the only drink available was the coffee. She took a swig, held her breath and swallowed.

‘So what else did he say?’

‘Oh, he said something about the money coming to him in a will. Him having cashed the cheque to see what that amount of cash looked like.’

‘He didn’t say where he cashed the cheque?’

Samuels shrugged. ‘I’m not sure I’d have believed him, even if he had.’

She looked at him. ‘You thought the money was...?’

‘Tainted in some way.’ He was nodding. ‘But no matter what I thought, there he was, offering to place it in an account at my branch.’

‘No qualms?’

‘Not at the time.’

‘But you always knew someone would be coming to speak with you about Mr Mackie?’

Another shrug. ‘I’m beyond the point of giving excuses, Miss Clarke. But I’m guessing you know where the money came from.’

Clarke shook her head. ‘Haven’t a clue, sir.’

Samuels sat back in his chair. ‘Then why are you here?’

‘Mr Mackie committed suicide, sir. Lived like a tramp, then threw himself off North Bridge. I’m trying to find out why.’

Samuels couldn’t help. He’d spoken with Mackie only on that one occasion. As Clarke drove back into the city, heading for the Grassmarket, she considered her options. The process took all of three seconds. She had this one slender trail, that was all. To find out the what and why, she had to find out who Christopher Mackie had been. She’d already phoned a search request to the records people. He wasn’t in any phone book, and, just as she’d suspected, when she arrived at the Grassmarket address she found herself at a hostel for the homeless.

Grassmarket was an odd little world all of its own. Centuries back, they’d held executions here, a fact commemorated by the name of one of the pubs: The Last Drop. Until the 1970s, the area had borne the reputation of being a haven for the destitute and the wandering. But then gentrification became the model. Small specialist shops opened, the bars were spruced up, and tourists began their hesitant, steep descent down Victoria Street and Candlemaker Row.

The hostel wasn’t exactly publicising its existence. Two grimy windows and a solid-looking door. Outside, a couple of men were crouched beside the wall. One of them asked if she had a light. She shook her head.

‘Probably means you’ve no fags on you either,’ he said, resuming his conversation with his friend.

Clarke turned the door handle, but the door was locked. There was a buzzer on the wall. She pressed it twice and waited. A scrawny young man yanked open the door, took one look at her and retreated back inside, saying to no one in particular, ‘Surprise, surprise, it’s the polis.’ He fell into a chair and got back to the serious business of daytime TV. There were a couple of beaten-up armchairs in the room, plus a long wooden bench and two that looked like bar stools. The TV and a coffee table more or less completed the furnishings. There was a tin ashtray on the table, but the linoleum floor looked to be the more popular destination for stubbed cigarettes. One elderly man was asleep in an armchair, his face speckled with bits of white paper. Clarke was about to investigate, when her meeter and greeter tore a scrap from an old newspaper, moistened it in his mouth, then spat it towards the sleeping figure.

‘Two points for the face,’ he explained. ‘One for the hair or beard.’

‘What’s your record?’

He grinned, showing a mouth missing half its teeth. ‘Eighty-five.’

A door opened at the far end of the room. ‘Can I help you?’

Clarke walked over, shook the woman’s hand. Behind her, the record-holder made siren noises. ‘I’m DC Clarke, St Leonard’s police station.’

‘Yes?’

‘Do you know a man called Christopher Mackie?’

A protective look. ‘I might do. What has he done?’

‘I’m afraid Mr Mackie’s dead. Suicide, it looks like.’

The woman closed her eyes for a second. ‘Was he the one who jumped from North Bridge? All it said in the papers was that he was homeless.’

‘You knew him then?’

‘Let’s talk about it in the store.’

Her name was Rachel Drew and she’d been in charge of the hostel for a dozen years.

‘Not that it’s really a hostel,’ she said. ‘It’s a day centre. But to be honest, when there’s no place else for them to go, they do use the front room for bedding down in. I mean, it’s winter, what else are you going to do?’

Clarke nodded. The room they sat in was pretty much as Rachel Drew had said: a store. There was a desk and a couple of chairs, but the rest of the space was taken up with boxes of tinned foods. Drew had explained that there was a tiny kitchen annexe, and that she and a couple of helpers rustled up three meals a day.

‘It’s not haute cuisine, but I don’t get many complaints.’

Drew was a large, homely woman, maybe mid-forties, with shoulder-length brown hair which looked naturally frizzy. She had dark eyes and a sallow face, but there was warmth and humour in her voice, fighting what Clarke reckoned was near-permanent tiredness.

‘What can you tell me about Mr Mackie?’

‘He was a lovely, gentle man. Didn’t make friends easily, but that was his choice. It took me a long time to get to know him. He was already a feature here when I arrived. I don’t mean he was always hanging about the place, but you’d see him regularly.’

‘You kept his mail for him?’

Drew nodded. ‘There was never much. His DSS cheque was about it... Maybe two or three letters a year.’

His building society statements, Clarke guessed. ‘How well did you know him?’

‘Why do you ask?’

Clarke stared her out. Drew managed a wry smile. ‘Sorry, I’m pretty protective about my boys and girls. You’re wondering if Chris was suicidal.’ She shook her head slowly. ‘I wouldn’t have said so.’

‘When did you last see him?’

‘A week or so back.’

‘Do you know where he went when he wasn’t here?’

‘I make it a rule never to ask.’

‘Why’s that?’ Clarke was genuinely interested.

‘You never know which question will hit a nerve.’

‘He didn’t tell you anything about his past?’

‘A few stories. He said he’d been in the forces. Another time, he told me he’d been a chef. Said his wife ran off with one of the waiters.’

Clarke caught Drew’s tone. ‘You didn’t believe him?’

Drew sat back in her chair, her face and shoulders framed by tinned goods. Every day she opened some tins and did some cooking, feeding people so the rest of the world could forget about them. ‘I get told a lot of stories. I’m a good listener.’

‘Did Chris have any close friends?’

‘Not here, not that I noticed. But maybe outside...’ Drew narrowed her eyes. ‘Don’t get me wrong or anything, but just why the hell are you so interested in a down and out.’

‘Because he wasn’t. Chris had a building society account. He was in credit to the tune of four hundred thousand pounds.’

‘Lucky him,’ Drew snorted. Then she saw the look on Clarke’s face. ‘Oh, Christ, you’re serious.’ Now she sat forward in her chair, toes on the ground, elbows on her knees. ‘Where did he get...?’

‘We don’t know.’

‘Goes some way to explaining your interest. Who gets the money?’

Clarke shrugged. ‘Next of kin... relatives.’

‘Always supposing he has any.’

‘Yes.’

‘And supposing you can find them.’ Drew chewed at her bottom lip. ‘You know, there were times when this place was struggling. Christ, we’re struggling now. And he never so much as...’ She laughed suddenly and harshly, clapping her hands together. ‘The sneaky little sod. What was he playing at?’

‘That’s what I’m wondering.’

‘If you can’t trace his family, where does the money go?’

‘I think the Treasury.’

‘The government? Christ, there’s no justice, is there?’

‘Careful who you say that to,’ Clarke said with a smile.

Drew was shaking her head and chuckling. ‘Four hundred grand. And he jumped and left it all behind.’

‘Yes.’

‘Knowing you’d find out about it.’ Drew stared at Clarke. ‘It’s like he was setting you a puzzle, isn’t it?’ She was thoughtful for a moment. ‘You should take it to the papers. Once the story’s out, the family will come to you.’

‘Along with every shyster and fraud in the game. That’s why I need to find out about him: so I can weed out the con artists.’

‘True enough. You’ve got a head on your shoulders, haven’t you?’ She exhaled loudly. ‘Things I could do with that money.’

‘Like hire a cook?’

‘I was thinking more of a year in Barbados.’

Clarke smiled again. ‘One last thing: I don’t suppose you’ve a picture of Chris?’

Drew raised an eyebrow. ‘You know, I think you might be in luck.’ She opened a drawer of the desk and began pulling out sheets of paper and raffle tickets, pens and cassette tapes. Finally she found what she was looking for: a packet of photographs. She flicked through them, picked one out and handed it over.

‘Taken last Christmas, but Chris hasn’t really changed much since. That’s him next to the Bearded Wonder.’

Clarke recognised the sleeping man from the other room. In the photo, he was in his armchair but very much awake, mouth agape in almost a parody of joy. On the arm of the chair sat the man called Christopher Mackie. Medium height, the beginnings of a paunch. Black hair swept back from a prominent forehead. His smile was mischievous, as though he was in on some secret. Yes, and wasn’t he just? It was the first time she’d been face to face with him. It felt strange. So far, she’d only known him in death...

‘Here he is on his own,’ Drew said.

The second photo showed Mackie washing a sinkful of dishes. He’d been caught unawares by the photographer, and his face was determined, focused on the job at hand. The flash made his face ghostly white, red dots for eyes.

‘Mind if I take these?’

‘Go ahead.’

Clarke tucked the pictures into her jacket pocket. ‘I’d also appreciate it if you’d keep what I’ve told you to yourself for the moment.’

‘Don’t want to be snowed under with cranks?’

‘Wouldn’t make my job any easier.’

Drew seemed to make her mind up about something. She opened a red plastic card index, flicked through the contents and lifted out one of the cards.

‘Chris’s personal details,’ she said, handing the card over. ‘Date of birth and his doctor’s name and phone number. Maybe they’ll help.’

‘Thanks,’ Clarke said. She drew a banknote from her pocket. ‘This isn’t a bribe or anything, I’d just like to put something towards the hostel.’

Drew stared at the money. ‘Fair enough,’ she said at last, accepting it. ‘If it helps your conscience, how can I refuse?’

‘I’m a police officer, Ms Drew. The conscience is removed during training.’

‘Well,’ Rachel Drew said, getting to her feet, ‘looks to me like you’ve maybe grown a new one.’

12

Rebus gave Derek Linford the choice: Roddy Grieve’s workplace, or Hugh Cordover’s studio. Knowing full well which one Linford would go for.

‘I might pick up a few tips for my portfolio while I’m at it,’ Linford said, leaving Rebus to head out towards Roslin and the baronial home of Hugh Cordover and Lorna Grieve. Roslin was the home of the ancient and extraordinary Rosslyn Chapel, which in recent years had become the target of a range of millennialist nutters. They said the Ark of the Covenant was buried beneath its floor. Or it was an alien mothership. The village itself was quiet, nondescript. High Manor sat a quarter-mile further on, behind a low stone wall. There were stone gateposts but no gates, just a sign saying ‘Private’. It was called High Manor because in his days as a member of Obscura, Hugh had been ‘High Chord’. Rebus had one of their albums with him: Continuous Repercussions. Lorna was on the sleeve, seated high-priestess style on a throne, diaphanous white dress, a snake coiled around her head. Laser lights shone from her eyes. Around the edges of the album sleeve were rows of hieroglyphs.

He parked his Saab beside a Fiat Punto and a Land-Rover. A couple of other cars stood off to one side: a beaten-up old Merc and an open-topped American classic. He left the album in the car and made for the front door. Lorna Grieve herself opened it. Ice rattled in the glass she was holding.

‘My little Monkey Man,’ she cooed. ‘In here with you. Hugh’s down in the bowels. You have to be quiet till he’s finished.’

What she meant was that Hugh Cordover was in his studio. It took up the whole lower ground floor of the house. Cordover himself sat in the production suite with an engineer. The equipment around them seemed about to swamp them. Through the thickened window, Rebus could see into the studio proper. Three young men, shoulders slumped with exhaustion. The drummer was pacing behind his kit, a bottle of Jack Daniels hanging from one hand. The guitarist and bassist seemed to be concentrating on the sound from their headphones. Empty beer cans lay strewn around them, along with cigarette packets, wine bottles and guitar strings.

‘See what I mean?’ Cordover said into a microphone. The musicians nodded. He glanced towards Rebus. ‘All right, guys, the police are here to talk to me, so don’t go chopping lines in there, okay?’

Sneers, V-signs towards the window. Rock and roll, Rebus thought, had never been so dangerous.

Cordover gave the engineer some instructions, then rose stifflly from his chair. He ran a hand over his unshaven face, shaking his head slowly. Motioned for Rebus to precede him from the production suite.

‘Who are they?’ Rebus asked.

‘The next big thing,’ Cordover told him, ‘if I get my way. They’re called The Crusoes.’

‘The Robinson Crusoes?’

‘You’ve heard of them?’

‘Someone mentioned you were their manager.’

‘Manager, arranger, producer. All-round general father figure.’ Cordover pushed open a door. ‘This is the Rec Room.’

More mess on the floor. Music magazines lying on chairs. A portable TV, portable hi-fi. A pool table.

‘All mod cons,’ Cordover said, pulling open the fridge and reaching in for a soft drink. ‘Want something?’

Lorna Grieve, seated on a red sofa, closed the newspaper she’d been skimming. ‘If I’m any judge of character, my Monkey Man will be wanting something stronger than that.’ She rattled her own glass to make the point. She was dressed in a swirling green silk trousersuit. Barefoot, with a red chiffon scarf around her neck.

‘A soft drink will be fine actually,’ Rebus said, nodding when Cordover brought out two bottles of flavoured mineral water.

‘Is it okay to talk here?’ Cordover said. ‘Or would you prefer upstairs?’

‘Mind you,’ Lorna added, ‘it’s no tidier up there than down here.’

‘This is fine,’ Rebus said, settling himself on one of the chairs. Cordover hauled himself up on to the pool table, legs swinging over the side. His wife rolled her eyes, as if in wonder at his inability to use a chair.

‘Which one was Peter Grief?’ Rebus asked.

‘The bassist,’ Cordover answered.

‘He knows about his father?’

‘Of course he knows,’ Lorna Grieve snapped back.

‘They were never close,’ Cordover added.

‘The Monkey Man’, Grieve said to her husband, ‘is shocked that so soon after Roddy’s brutal murder, the pair of you can be back at work as though nothing’s happened.’

‘Yes,’ Cordover shot back. ‘So much more useful to hit the bottle.’

‘When did I ever need the excuse of a death in the family?’ She smiled at Cordover, eyes heavy-lidded. Then, turning to Rebus: ‘You’ve a lot to learn about the clan, Monkey Man.’

‘Why do you keep calling him that?’ Cordover sounding irritated.

‘It’s a Rolling Stones song,’ Rebus said. He watched Lorna Grieve toast him on this response. Smiled at her, couldn’t help himself. She was drinking brandy; even from this distance he could all but taste it.

‘I knew Stew,’ Cordover said.

‘Stew?’ Lorna narrowed her eyes.

‘Ian Stewart,’ Rebus explained. ‘The sixth Stone.’

Cordover nodded. ‘His face didn’t fit the image, so he couldn’t be in the band. Played session for them instead.’ He turned to Rebus. ‘You know he came from Fife? And Stu Sutcliffe was born in Edinburgh.’

‘And Jack Bruce was Glaswegian.’

Cordover smiled. ‘You know your stuff.’

‘I know some stuff. For example, I know that Peter’s mother is called Billie Collins. Has anyone been in touch with her?’

‘Why the hell should we care?’ Lorna said. ‘She can buy a paper, can’t she?’

‘I think Peter’s spoken with her,’ Cordover added.

‘Where does she live?’

‘St Andrews, I think.’ Cordover looked to his wife for confirmation. ‘She teaches at a school there.’

‘Haugh Academy,’ Lorna said. ‘Is she a suspect?’

Rebus was writing in his notebook. ‘Do you want her to be?’ Asked casually, not looking up.

‘The more the merrier.’

Cordover leapt from his perch. ‘For Christ’s sake, Lorna!’

‘Oh, yes,’ his wife spat back, ‘you always did have a soft spot for her. Or should that be a hard spot?’ She looked at Rebus. ‘Hugh always excused his rutting by saying he was an artist. Only he’s never been much of a sack artist, have you, sweetie?’

‘Stories, that’s all they were.’ Cordover was pacing now.

‘Speaking of stories,’ Rebus said, ‘had you heard anything about Josephine Banks?’

Lorna Grieve chuckled, cupped her hands in mock prayer. ‘Oh yes, let it be her. That would be too perfect.’

‘Roddy was a public figure, Inspector,’ Cordover said, his eyes on his wife. ‘You get all sorts of rumours. It goes with the territory.’

‘Does it?’ Lorna said. ‘How fascinating. And tell me, what rumours have you heard about me?’

Cordover stayed silent. Rebus could tell the man had some reply formed, something wounding: none, which just proves how far you’ve fallen. Something like that. But he stayed silent.

It seemed as good a time as any to toss a grenade into the room. ‘Who’s Alasdair?’

There was silence. Lorna gulped at her drink. Cordover rested against the pool table. Rebus was content to let the silence do his work.

‘Lorna’s brother,’ Cordover said at last. ‘Not that I ever knew him.’

‘Alasdair was the best of us,’ Lorna said quietly. ‘That’s why he couldn’t bear to stay.’

‘What happened to him?’ Rebus asked.

‘He ran off into the wild blue yonder.’ She made a sweeping motion with her glass. It was all ice now, nothing left to drink.

‘When?’

‘Ancient history, Monkey Man. He’s in warm climes now, and good luck to him.’ She turned towards Rebus, pointed to his left hand. ‘No wedding ring. Would I make a good detective, do you think? And you’re a drinker, too. You’ve been eyeing up my glass.’ She pouted. ‘Or is there something else you’re interested in?’

‘Please ignore her, Inspector.’

She flung the tumbler at her husband. ‘Nobody ignores me! I’m not the has-been here.’

‘That’s right, the agencies are clamouring at your door. The phone never stops ringing.’ The tumbler had missed him; he brushed ice-water from his arm.

Lorna pushed herself off the sofa. Rebus got the idea the pair were used to arguing in public, that they considered it their inalienable right as artists.

‘Hey, you two.’ A voice of reason from the doorway. ‘We can’t hear ourselves think in there. So much for soundproofing.’ It was a drawl, easy, relaxed. Peter Grief reached into the fridge for a bottle of water. ‘Besides, it’s the rock star who should be having the tantrums, not his aunt and uncle.’

Rebus and Peter Grief sat in the control room. Everyone else was upstairs in the dining room. A baker’s van had arrived, bearing trays of sandwiches and patisserie. Rebus had a little paper plate in his hand, just the one triangle of bread on it: chicken tikka filling. Peter Grief was using a finger to remove the cream from a wedge of sponge cake. It was all he’d eaten so far. He’d asked if it was all right to have music on in the background. Music helped him to think.

‘Even when it’s a rough mix of one of my own songs.’

Which is what they were listening to. Rebus said he considered three-piece bands a rarity. Grief corrected him by mentioning Manic Street Preachers, Massive Attack, Supergrass, and half a dozen others, then added: ‘And Cream, of course.’

‘Not forgetting Jimi Hendrix.’

Grief bowed his head. ‘Noel Redding: not many bassists could keep up with James Marshall.’

Niceties dispensed with, Rebus put down his plate. ‘You know why I’m here, Peter?’

‘Hugh told me.’

‘I’m sorry about your father.’

Grief shrugged. ‘Bad career move for a politician. Now if he’d only been in my business...’ It had the sound of a rehearsed line, something to be used over and again as self-protection.

‘How old were you when your parents separated?’

‘Too young to remember.’

‘You were brought up by your mother?’

Grief nodded. ‘But they stayed close. You know, “for the sake of the child”.’

‘Something like that still hurts though, doesn’t it?’ Grief glanced up. There was a seam of anger in his voice. ‘How would you know?’

‘I left my wife. She had to bring up our daughter.’

‘And how’s your daughter doing?’ The anger quickly replaced by curiosity.

‘She’s okay.’ Rebus paused. ‘Now, that is. Back then... I’m not so sure.’

‘You are a cop, right? I mean, this isn’t some cheap trick to get me discussing my feelings with a counsellor?’

Rebus smiled. ‘If I was a counsellor, Peter, my next question would be, “Do you think you need to discuss your feelings?”’

Grief smiled, bowed his head. ‘Sometimes I wish I was like Hugh and Lorna.’

‘They don’t exactly keep things bottled up, do they?’

‘Not exactly.’ Another smile, dying slowly on his lips. Grief was tall and slender with black hair, possibly dyed, and slicked back from a semi-quiff. His face was long and angular, prominent cheekbones and dark, haunted eyes. He looked right for the part: soiled white T-shirt baggy at the sleeves. Black drainpipe denims and biker boots. Thin leather braids around both wrists and a pentangle hanging from his throat. If Rebus had been casting for bassist in a rock band, he’d have told the other applicants to head for home.

‘You know we’re trying to figure out who might have wanted to kill your father?’

‘Yes.’

‘When you spoke with him, did he ever...? Did you get the feeling he had enemies, anyone he was worried about?’

Grief was shaking his head. ‘He wouldn’t have told me.’

‘Who would he have told?’

‘Maybe Uncle Cammo.’ Grief paused. ‘Or Grandma.’ His fingers were busy imitating the loudspeaker bass-line. ‘I wanted you to hear this song. It’s about the last time Dad and I spoke.’

Rebus listened; the rhythm wasn’t exactly funereal.

‘We had this big falling-out. He thought I was wasting my time, blamed Uncle Hugh for stringing me along.’

Rebus couldn’t make out the words. ‘So what’s the song called?’

‘Here’s the chorus coming.’ Grief began to sing along, and now Rebus could make out the words only too well.

Hugh Cordover and Lorna Grieve walked Rebus out to his car.

‘Yes,’ Cordover said, ‘that’s probably their best song.’ He carried a cordless phone with him.

‘You know it’s about his father?’

‘I know they argued, and Peter got a song out of it.’ Cordover shrugged. ‘Does that mean it’s about his father? I think you’re being a bit too literal, Inspector.’

‘Maybe.’

Lorna Grieve was showing no ill-effects from the drink she’d consumed. She examined Rebus’s Saab as though it was a museum piece. ‘Do they still make these?’

‘The new models don’t come with gas lamps,’ Rebus told her. She smiled at him.

‘A sense of humour, how refreshing.’

‘Just one more thing...’ Rebus leaned into the car, came out with the Obscura album.

‘My God,’ Cordover said. ‘You don’t see many of these around.’

‘Wonder why,’ his wife muttered, staring at her photo on the cover.

‘I was going to ask if you’d sign it?’ Rebus said, bringing out a pen.

Cordover took the pen from him. ‘With pleasure. But hang on, do you want me or High Chord?’

Rebus smiled. ‘It’s got to be High Chord, hasn’t it?’

Cordover scrawled the name across the cover and made to hand the album back.

‘And the model...?’ Rebus asked. She looked at him and he thought she was going to refuse. But then she took the pen and added her name, studying the cover afterwards.

‘The hieroglyphs,’ Rebus asked, ‘any idea what they mean?’

Cordover laughed. ‘Not a clue. Some guy I knew, he was into that stuff.’ Rebus was noticing that some of the hieroglyphs were actually pentangles, like the pendant Peter Grief had worn.

Lorna laughed. ‘Come on, Hugh. You were into that stuff.’ She looked at Rebus. ‘He still is. Not quite Jimmy Page’s league, but it’s why we moved to Roslin, to be near the chapel. Bloody New Age mumbo-jumbo, growing a ponytail and everything.’

‘I think the Inspector has heard enough character assassination for one day,’ Cordover said, his face growing ugly. Then the phone rang, and he turned away to answer it, sounding suddenly excited. His voice took on a transatlantic twang, forgetting all about Lorna, all about Rebus. Leaving the two of them together. She folded her arms.

‘He’s pathetic, isn’t he? What do I see in him?’

‘Not for me to say.’

She studied him. ‘So was I right? Do you drink?’

‘Only socially.’

‘You mean as opposed to antisocially?’ She laughed. ‘I can be social when I want to. It’s just that I seldom want to be when Hugh’s around.’ She glanced back to where her husband was making for the house. He was talking numbers — money or record pressings, Rebus couldn’t tell.

‘So where do you drink?’ she asked.

‘A few places.’

‘Name them.’

‘The Oxford Bar. Swany’s. The Malting.’

She wrinkled her nose. ‘Why is it I’m seeing bare floorboards and cigarette smoke, swearing and bluster and not many women?’

He couldn’t help smiling. ‘You know them then?’

‘I feel I do. Maybe we’ll bump into one another.’

‘Maybe.’

‘I feel like kissing you. That’s probably not allowed, right?’

‘Right,’ Rebus agreed.

‘Maybe I’ll do it anyway.’ Cordover had disappeared into the house. ‘Or would that be classed as assault?’

‘Not if no charges were brought.’

She leaned forward, pecked him on the cheek. When she stepped back, Rebus saw a face at a window. Not Cordover: Peter Grief.

‘Peter’s song,’ Rebus said. ‘The one about his father. I didn’t catch the title.’

‘“The Final Reproof”,’ Lorna Grieve told him. ‘As in condemning.’

In his car, Rebus got on his mobile and asked Derek Linford how things had gone at The Exchange.

‘Roddy Grieve was whiter than white,’ Linford said. ‘No bad deals, no cock-ups, no unhappy punters. Also, none of his colleagues were out drinking with him on Sunday night.’

‘Which tells us what exactly?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘A dead end then?’

‘Not quite: I did get a hot tip for an investment. How about you?’

Rebus glanced at the album on the passenger seat. ‘I’m not sure what I got, Derek. Talk to you later.’ He made another call, this time to a vinyl dealer in the city.

‘Paul? It’s John Rebus. Obscura’s Continuous Repercussions, signed by High Chord and Lorna Grieve.’ He listened for a moment. ‘It’s not mint, but it’s not bad.’ Listened again. ‘Get back to me if you can go any higher, eh? Cheers.’

He slowed the car so he could search in the glove compartment, found a Hendrix tape and slotted it home. ‘Love or Confusion’. Sometimes, you couldn’t be sure what the difference was.

Howdenhall was home to the city’s forensic science lab. Rebus wasn’t sure why Grant Hood and Ellen Wylie wanted to meet him there. Their message had been vague, hinting at some surprise. Rebus hated surprises. That kiss from Lorna Grieve... it hadn’t been a surprise exactly, but all the same. And if he hadn’t angled his head at the last moment, bottling out of some mouth-to-mouth... Jesus, and with Peter Grief watching from the window. Grief: Rebus had meant to ask about the name change. Grieve to Grief; verb to noun. But then he’d been brought up by his mother, so maybe his surname had been Collins. In which case, the change of name was still resonant, the young man laying claim to the missing half of his identity, his missed past.

Howdenhall: full of brainboxes, some of them looking barely out of their teens. People who knew about DNA and computer data. These days at St Leonard’s, you didn’t roll ink over a suspect’s fingers, you merely placed their palm to a computer pad. The prints flashed up on the screen, and Criminal Records came back to you immediately if there was a match. The process still amazed him, even after all these months.

Hood and Wylie were waiting for him in one of the meeting rooms. Howdenhall was still fairly new, and had a clean no-nonsense smell and feel to it. The large oval desk, made up of three movable sections, hadn’t had time to get scuffed or scored. The chairs were still comfortably padded. The two junior officers made to get up, but he waved them back down and seated himself across the table from them.

‘No ashtray,’ he remarked.

‘There’s no smoking, sir,’ Wylie explained.

‘I know that well enough. I just keep thinking I’ll wake up and it’ll all have been a bad dream.’ He looked around. ‘No coffee or tea either, eh?’

Hood sprang to his feet. ‘I can get you...’

Rebus shook his head. Still, it was good to see Hood so keen. Two empty polystyrene beakers on the table: he wondered who’d fetched them. Even money on Hood; Wylie at three to one.

‘Latest news?’ he asked.

‘Very little blood in the fireplace,’ Wylie said. ‘Chances are, Skelly was killed elsewhere.’

‘Which means less chance of the SOCOs coming up with anything useful.’ Rebus was thoughtful for a moment. ‘So why the secrecy?’ he asked.

‘No secrecy, sir. It’s just that when we found out Professor Sendak was going to be here this afternoon for a meeting...’

‘Seemed too good to miss, sir,’ Hood concluded.

‘And who’s Professor Sendak when he’s at home?’

‘Glasgow University, sir. Head of Forensic Pathology.’

Rebus raised an eyebrow. ‘Glasgow? Listen, if Gates and Curt find out, it’s your heads, not mine, okay?’

‘We cleared it with the Procurator Fiscal’s office.’

‘So what can this Sendak do that our own boffins can’t?’

There was a knock at the door.

‘Maybe we’ll let the professor explain,’ Hood said, not quite disguising the relief in his voice.

Professor Ross Sendak was approaching sixty, but still boasted a head of thick black hair. The shortest person in the room, he carried himself with weight and confidence, demanding respect. Introductions complete, he settled himself on a chair and spread his hands out on the table.

‘You think I can help you,’ he stated, ‘and perhaps you’re right. I’ll need the skull brought to Glasgow. Can that be arranged?’

Wylie and Hood shared a look. Rebus cleared his throat.

‘I’m afraid the Time Team here haven’t had time to brief me, Professor.’

Sendak nodded, took a deep breath. ‘Laser technology, Inspector.’ He reached into his briefcase, slid out a laptop computer and switched it on. ‘Forensic facial reconstruction. Your forensic colleagues here have already ascertained that the decedent’s hair was brown. That’s a start. What we would do in Glasgow is place the skull on a revolving plinth. We then aim a laser at the skull, feeding the information into a computer, building up details. From these, the facial contours are formed. Other information — the decedent’s general physique; his age at date of death — help with the final image.’ He turned the computer around so it was facing Rebus. ‘And what you get is something like this.’

Rebus had to get up. From where he was sitting, the screen seemed blank. Hood and Wylie did likewise, until all three of them were jockeying for position, the better to make out the face which flickered at them. By moving a few inches to right or left, the image faded, disappeared, but when in focus it was clearly the face of a young man. There was something of the mannequin about it, a deadness to the eyes, the one visible ear not quite right and the hair clearly an afterthought.

‘This poor devil rotted on a hillside in the Highlands. He was past normal means of ID by the time he was found. Animals and the elements had taken their toll.’

‘But you think this is what he looked like in life?’

‘I’d say it’s close. Eyes and hairstyle are speculative, but the overall structure of the face is true.’

‘Amazing,’ Hood said.

‘Using the inset screen,’ Sendak went on, ‘we can reconfigure the face — change hairstyle, add a moustache or beard, even change eye colour. The variations can be printed out and used for a public appeal.’ Sendak pointed to the small grey square in the top right corner of the screen. It contained what looked like a children’s version of an identikit: the rough outline of a head, plus hats, facial hairstyles, glasses.

Rebus looked to Hood and Wylie. They were looking at him now, seeking his okay.

‘So how much is this going to cost?’ he asked, turning back to the screen.

‘It’s not an expensive process,’ Sendak said. ‘I appreciate that funds are being soaked up by the Grieve case.’

Rebus glanced towards Wylie. ‘Someone’s been whispering.’

‘It’s not like we’re spending money on anything else,’ Wylie argued. Rebus saw anger in her eyes. She was beginning to feel sidelined. Any other time of year, Skelly would have been big news, but not with Roddy Grieve as competition.

In the end, Rebus gave the nod.

Afterwards, there was just time for a coffee. Sendak explained that his Human Identification Centre had helped with war crimes cases in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. In fact, he was flying out to The Hague at the end of the week to testify in a war crimes trial.

‘Thirty Serb victims buried in a mass grave. We helped identify the victims and prove they were shot at close range.’

‘Sort of puts things into perspective, doesn’t it?’ Rebus said afterwards, eyes on Wylie. Hood was off finding a phone. He needed to talk to the Procurator Fiscal’s office again, tell them what was happening.

‘You’ll have to tell Prof. Gates what’s happening,’ Rebus went on.

‘Yes, sir. Will that be a problem?’

Rebus shook his head. ‘I’ll have a word. He won’t like the fact that Glasgow have got something he hasn’t... but he’ll live with it.’ He winked at her. ‘After all, we’ve got everything else.’

13

The Murder Room at St Leonard’s was fully operational — computers, civilian support, extra phone lines — with an additional Portakabin parked on the pavement outside Queensberry House. Chief Superintendent Watson was kept busy in a series of meetings with Fettes brass and politicians. He’d lost the head at one of the junior officers, shouting the odds before marching off to his office and slamming the door. Nobody’d seen him like that before. DS Frazer’s comment: ‘Get Rebus back here, we need to offer a sacrifice.’ Joe Dickie had nudged him: ‘Any news on overtime?’ He had a blank expenses form ready on his desk.

Gill Templer had been put in charge of press briefings. Her background was in liaison work. So far she’d managed to tamp down a couple of the wilder conspiracy theories. ACC Carswell had come to inspect the troops, given the tour by Derek Linford. Space at the station was cramped, and Linford didn’t even have his own office. Twelve CID officers were attached to the case, along with a further dozen uniforms. The uniforms were there to search the area around the locus and help with door-to-door. Secretarial support came extra, and Linford was still waiting to hear what budget the case would merit. He wasn’t stinting, not yet: he reckoned this was a flier, meaning it would justify any amount of staffing and overtime.

All the same, he liked to keep an eye on the money side. It didn’t help that he was playing away from home. He ignored the looks and comments, but they got to him all the same. Fettes bastard... thinks he can tell us how to run our station. It was all about territory. Not that Rebus seemed to mind. Rebus had given him the run of the place, had admitted that Linford was the better administrator. His exact words: ‘Derek, to be honest, no one’s ever accused me of being able to mind the store.’

Linford made a circuit of the room now: wall charts; staff rotas; crime scene photographs; telephone numbers. Three officers sat silently at their computers, tapping the latest gen into the database. An investigation like this was all about information, its gathering and cross-referencing. Detection lay in making connections, and it could be a painstaking business. He wondered if anyone else in the room felt the same electricity he did. Back to the rota: DS Roy Frazer was in charge of the Holyrood operation, managing the house-to-house inquiries, interviewing the demolition teams and builders. Another DS, George Silvers, was plotting the deceased’s final movements. Roddy Grieve had lived in Cramond, had told his wife he was going out for a drink. Nothing unusual in that, and he’d acted naturally. Had taken his mobile with him. Not that there’d been any reason to check up on him. At midnight she’d turned in for the night. Next morning when he wasn’t there, she’d begun to worry, but had decided to leave it an hour or two; might be some rational explanation... Sleeping it off somewhere.

‘Did that often happen?’ Silvers had asked.

‘Once or twice.’

‘And where did he end up sleeping?’

Answer: at his mother’s; or on a friend’s sofa.

Silvers didn’t look like he put much effort into anything. You couldn’t imagine him in a hurry. But he gave himself time to form questions and strategies.

Time, too, for the interviewee to start twitching.

Grieve’s press officer was a young man called Hamish Hall, and Linford had interviewed him. Playing it back in his head afterwards, Linford reckoned he’d come off second best in the encounter. Hall, in his sharp suit and with a sharp, bright face, had snapped out his answers, as if dismissing the questions. Linford had snapped another question back at him, taking him on rather than playing to his own strengths.

‘How did you get on with Mr Grieve?’

‘Fine.’

‘Never any problems?’

‘Never.’

‘And Ms Banks?’

‘Do you mean how did I get along with her, or how did she get along with Roddy?’ Light glinting from the circular chrome frames of his spectacles.

‘Both, I suppose.’

‘Fine.’

‘Yes?’

‘That’s my answer to both questions: we got along fine.’

‘Right.’

And on it went, like machine-gun fire. Hall’s background: party man, single-minded, economics degree. Economy his strong point when speaking, too.

‘Press agent... Is that like a spin doctor?’

A bending of the mouth. ‘That’s a cheap shot, Inspector Linford.’

‘Who else was in Mr Grieve’s retinue? I’m assuming there’d be local volunteers...?’

‘Not yet. Electioneering proper doesn’t start until April. That’s when we’d have needed canvassers.’

‘You had people in mind?’

‘Not my bailiwick. Ask Jo.’

‘Jo?’

‘Josephine Banks, his election agent. That’s what we called her: Jo.’ A glance at his watch, loud exhalation.

‘So what will you do now, Mr Hall?’

‘You mean when I leave here?’

‘I mean now your employer’s dead.’

‘Find another one.’ A genuine smile this time. ‘There’ll be no shortage of takers.’

Linford could see Hall five or ten years down the line, standing just behind some dignitary, maybe even the Prime Minister, murmuring something which the PM would utter aloud mere seconds later. Always in shot; always close to the power.

When the two men stood up, Linford shook Hall’s hand warmly, offered him a grin and a cup of tea or coffee.

‘Really appreciate... sorry to have... wish you all the best...’

Because you never knew. Five, ten years on, you just never could tell...

‘Tell me this is a joke.’

Ellen Wylie was examining the dimly lit interior of one of the downstairs interview rooms. It was half-filled with broken equipment: chairs with missing castors; golf-ball typewriters.

‘It’s been used for storage, as you can see.’

She turned to the desk sergeant, who’d unlocked the door for her and turned on the light. ‘I’d never have guessed.’

‘So where do we put all this stuff?’ Grant Hood asked.

‘Maybe you can work around it?’ the desk sergeant offered.

‘We’re working a murder inquiry,’ Wylie hissed at him. Then she looked around the room again, before turning to her partner. ‘And this is how they treat us, Grant.’

‘Well, it’s all yours,’ the desk sergeant said, removing the key from the lock and handing it to Hood. ‘Have fun.’

Hood watched him retreat, then held the key up in front of Wylie. ‘It’s all ours, he says.’

‘Can we complain to the management?’ Wylie kicked at one of the chairs, whose arm promptly fell off.

‘I know the brochure said sea view,’ her partner said, ‘but with any luck, we won’t be spending much time here.’

‘Those bastards upstairs have got a coffee-maker,’ Wylie said. Then she burst out laughing. ‘What am I saying? We haven’t even got any phones!’

‘Maybe so,’ Hood informed her, ‘but if I’m not mistaken, we’ve just cornered the global market in electric typewriters.’

Siobhan Clarke had insisted on somewhere ‘a bit fancy’ for their drink, and when she told him about her day, Derek Linford thought he understood. Her last couple of working hours had been spent questioning dossers.

‘Not easy,’ he said. ‘You were all right, though?’ She looked at him. ‘I mean, they didn’t bite?’

‘No, they were just...’ She tipped her neck back, inspecting the spectacular ceiling of The Dome Bar and Grill as if expecting the rest of the sentence to be painted there. ‘I mean, they weren’t even smelly for the most part. But it was the past.’ Now she nodded to herself.

‘How do you mean?’ He was using his swizzle-stick to chase a sliver of lime around his glass.

‘I mean the stories, all the tragedies and tiny mishaps and wrong turns that had brought them there. Nobody’s born homeless, not that I know of.’

‘I know what you mean. They needn’t be homeless, the majority of them. The support system’s out there.’ She was looking at him, but he didn’t notice. ‘I never give them money, it’s a sort of principle with me. Some of them probably make more a week than we do. You can make two hundred a day, just begging on Princes Street.’ He shook his head slowly, saw the look on her face. ‘What?’

She studied her own drink, a large gin and tonic to his lime juice and soda. ‘Nothing.’

‘What did I say?’

‘Maybe it’s just...’

‘Been a rough day?’

She glowered. ‘I was going to say, maybe it’s just your attitude.’

They sat in silence for a while after that. Not that anyone in The Dome minded. It was the cocktail hour: George Street suits; black two-pieces with matching tights. Everyone focused on their own little group: office blather. Clarke took a long swallow. There was never enough gin; you could order a double and still not feel the kick. At home, she poured half and half, gin to tonic. Lots of ice, and a wedge of lemon rather than something that looked like it had been pared with a razor blade.

‘Your accent changes,’ Linford said at last. ‘Modulates to suit the occasion. It’s a clever trick.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, you’ve got an English accent, right? But in some company, at the station for example, you manage to bring in some Scots.’

It was true: she knew she did it. She’d been a bit of a mimic even at school and college, knowing she did it so she’d fit in with whoever she was talking to, whichever peer group. Used to be, she could hear herself switching, but not now. The question she’d asked herself was: why the need to change, just to fit in? Was she that desperate, that lonely as a girl?

Was she?

‘Where were you born?’

‘Liverpool,’ she said. ‘My parents were lecturers. The week after I was born, they moved to Edinburgh.’

‘Mid-seventies?’

‘Late sixties, and flattery will get you nowhere.’ But she managed a smile. ‘We only stayed a couple of years, then it was Nottingham. I got most of my schooling there, finished off in London.’

‘Is that where your parents live now?’

‘Yes.’

‘Lecturers, eh? What do they make of you?’

It was a perceptive question, but she didn’t know him well enough to answer it. Just as she’d always let people assume that her New Town flat was a rental. When she’d eventually sold it and got her own mortgage on a place half the size, she’d put the money back into her parents’ bank account. She’d never explained to them why she’d done it. They’d only asked the once.

‘I came back here to go to college,’ she told Linford. ‘Fell in love with the city.’

‘And chose a career where you’d always see its mucky underwear?’

She chose to ignore this question, too.

‘So that makes you a settler... one of the New Scots. I think that’s what the Nationalists call them. You will be voting Scot Nat, I trust?’

‘Oh, are you SNP?’

‘No.’ He laughed. ‘I just wondered if you were.’

‘It’s a pretty underhand way of finding out.’

He shrugged, finished his drink. ‘Another?’

She was still studying him, feeling suddenly enervated. All the other drinkers, the nine-to-fives, were winding down, a few drinks before home. Why did people do that? They could get a drink at home, couldn’t they? Feet up in front of the telly. Instead of which, they stuck close to their office building and had a drink with their work-mates. Was it so hard to let go? Or was home something less than a refuge? You needed a drink before facing it, courage to confront the evening’s redundancy? Was that what she was doing here?

‘I think I’ll head off,’ she said suddenly. Her jacket was on the back of her chair. A while back, someone had been stabbed outside this place. She’d worked the case. Just another act of violence, another life wasted.

‘Got plans?’ He looked expectant, nervous, childlike in his ignorance and egotism. What could she tell him? Belle and Sebastian on the hi-fi; another gin and tonic; the last third of an Isla Dewar novel. Tough competition for any man.

‘What are you smiling at?’

‘Nothing,’ she said.

‘Must be something.’

‘Women have to have some secrets, Derek.’ She had her jacket on now, was wrapping her scarf around her neck.

‘I thought a bite to eat,’ he blurted out. ‘You know, make an evening of it.’

She looked at him. ‘I don’t think so.’ Hoping her tone would alert him to the missing final word: ever.

And she walked.

He’d offered to see her home, but she’d declined. Offered to call her a cab, but she lived a stone’s throw away. It wasn’t even seven thirty, and he was all at once alone. The noise around him was suddenly deafening, skull-crushing. Voices, laughter, chiming glasses. She hadn’t asked about his day. Hadn’t said much at all, really, except when prompted. His drink looked fake yellow, the colour of children’s sweets. Sticky-tasting and souring his stomach, corroding his teeth. He walked to the bar, ordered a whisky. Didn’t put any water in it. Looking around, he saw that another couple had already taken his table. Well, that was fine. He didn’t stand out so much here at the bar. Could belong to one of the office parties either side of him. But he didn’t, and he knew he didn’t. He was an outsider in this place, same as in St Leonard’s. When you worked as hard as he did, that was what happened: you got the promotions, but lost the intimacy. People steered a course past you, either out of fear or jealousy. The ACC had pulled him aside at the end of the St Leonard’s tour.

‘You’re doing good work, Derek. Keep at it. Few years down the road, who knows? Maybe you’ll look back at this one as the inquiry that made your name.’ And the ACC had winked and patted his arm.

‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.’

But then had come the postscript, the ACC readying to leave but half-turning towards him. ‘Family men, Derek, that’s what the public should see when they look at us. People they can respect, because we’re no different from them.’

Family men. He meant wife and kids. Linford had gone straight to his phone and called Siobhan’s mobile...

Balls to it. He left, nodded to the doorman even though he didn’t know him. Out into the horizontal wind, the night seizing him and taking a bite. His lungs complained when he breathed in. Left turn: he’d be home in ten minutes. Left turn, he’d be going home.

He turned right, heading for Queen Street, the top of Leith Walk. The Barony Bar on Broughton Street, he liked it there. Good beer, an old-fashioned place. You wouldn’t stand out in a place like that, drinking alone.

And afterwards, it only took him a couple of minutes to find Siobhan Clarke’s building. Addresses: no problem in CID. First time they’d met, he’d gone to the office next day, checked up on her. Her flat was on a quiet street, a terrace of four-storey Victorian tenements. Second floor: that was where she lived. 2FL: second floor, left side. He went to the terrace opposite. The main door was unlocked. Climbed the stairs, until he reached the half-landing between second and third floors. There was a window, looking out on to the street and the flats opposite. Lights burning in her windows, curtains open. Yes, there she was: briefest of glimpses as she walked across the room. Carrying something, reading it: a CD cover? Hard to tell. He wrapped his jacket around him. Temperature wasn’t much above freezing. The skylight above had a hole in it; cold gusts assailing him.

But still he watched.

14

‘When will his body be released?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘It’s awful, to have someone die and not be able to bury them.’

Rebus nodded. He was in the sitting room of the house in Ravelston. Derek Linford was seated beside him on the sofa. Alicia Grieve looked small and frail in the armchair opposite. Her daughter-in-law, who’d just been speaking, was perched on the arm. Seona Grieve was dressed in black, but Alicia wore a flowery dress, the splashes of colour contrasting with her ash-grey face. To Rebus, her skin seemed like an elephant’s, the way the folds fell from her face and neck.

‘You have to understand, Mrs Grieve,’ Linford said, his voice pouring like treacle, ‘in a case like this, there’s a need to keep the body. The pathologist may be called on to—’

Alicia Grieve was rising to her feet. ‘I can’t listen any more!’ she trilled. ‘Not here, not now. You’re going to have to go.’

Seona helped her up. ‘It’s all right, Alicia. I’ll talk to them. Would you like to go upstairs?’

‘The garden... I’m going into the garden.’

‘Mind you don’t slip.’

‘I’m not helpless, Seona!’

‘Of course not. I’m just saying...’

But the old woman was making for the door. She didn’t say anything, didn’t look back. Closed the door after her. They could hear her feet shuffling away.

Seona slipped into the chair her mother-in-law had vacated. ‘Sorry about that.’

‘No need to apologise,’ Linford said.

‘But we will need to talk to her,’ Rebus cautioned.

‘Is that absolutely necessary?’

‘I’m afraid so.’ He couldn’t tell her: because your husband might have confided in his mother; because maybe she knows things we don’t.

‘How about you, Mrs Grieve?’ Linford asked. ‘How are you managing?’

‘Like an alcoholic,’ Seona Grieve said with a sigh.

‘Well, a drink often helps—’

‘She means’, Rebus interrupted, ‘she’s taking things one day at a time.’

Linford nodded, as though he’d known this all along.

‘Incidentally,’ Rebus added, ‘does anyone in the family have a drink problem?’

Seona Grieve looked at him. ‘You mean Lorna?’

He stayed silent.

‘Roddy didn’t drink much,’ she went on. ‘The odd glass of red wine, maybe a whisky before dinner. Cammo... well, Cammo seems unaffected by drink, unless you know him well. It’s not that he slurs or starts singing.’

‘What then?’

‘His behaviour changes, just ever so slightly.’ She looked down at her lap. ‘Let’s say his morals become hazy.’

‘Has he ever...?’

She looked at Rebus. ‘He tried once or twice.’

Linford, no subtlety on display, glanced meaningfully towards Rebus. Seona Grieve caught the look and snorted.

‘Clutching at straws, Inspector Linford?’

He flinched. ‘How do you mean?’

‘Crime of passion, Cammo killing Roddy so he can get to me.’ She shook her head.

‘Are we being too simplistic, Mrs Grieve?’

She considered Rebus’s question. Took her time over it. So he lobbed in another.

‘You say he didn’t drink much, your husband, and yet he went out drinking with friends?’

‘Yes.’

‘Sometimes stayed out overnight?’

‘What are you trying to say?’

‘It’s just that we can’t find anyone who was out drinking with him the night he died.’

Linford checked his notebook. ‘So far, we’ve found one bar in the West End, they think he was there early on in the evening, drinking by himself.’

Seona Grieve didn’t have anything to say to that. Rebus sat forward. ‘Did Alasdair drink?’

‘Alasdair?’ Caught unawares. ‘What’s he got to do with this?’

‘Any idea where he might be?’

‘Why?’

‘I’m wondering if he knows about your husband. Surely he’d want to be here for the funeral.’

‘He hasn’t phoned...’ She turned thoughtful again. ‘Alicia misses him.’

‘Does he ever get in touch?’

‘A card now and then: Alicia’s birthday, never misses that.’

‘But no address?’

‘No.’

‘Postmarks?’

She shrugged. ‘All over, mostly abroad.’

There was something in the way she said it that made Rebus state: ‘There’s something else.’

‘I just... I think he gets people to post them for him, when they’re on the move.’

‘Why would he do that?’

‘In case we’re trying to find him.’

Rebus sat forward a little further, cutting down the distance between himself and the widow. ‘What happened? Why did he leave?’

She shrugged again. ‘It was before my time. Roddy was still married to Billie.’

‘Had that marriage broken up before you met Mr Grieve?’ Linford asked.

Her eyes narrowed. ‘What exactly are you implying?’

‘To get back to Alasdair,’ Rebus said, hoping his tone would dissuade Linford from further queries, ‘you’ve no idea why he left?’

‘Roddy talked about him now and again, usually when a card arrived.’

‘Cards to him?’

‘No, to Alicia.’

Rebus looked around him, but someone had removed Alicia Grieve’s birthday cards. ‘Did he send one this year?’

‘He’s always late. It’ll arrive in a week or two.’ She looked towards the door. ‘Poor Alicia. She thinks I’m staying here as a sort of sanctuary.’

‘Whereas, in reality, you’re looking after her?’

She shook her head. ‘Not looking after exactly, but I am worried about her. She’s grown fragile. This is the only room you’ve been in. That’s because it’s practically the only room left that’s habitable. The rest, they fill with old papers and magazines — she won’t let them be thrown out. All sorts of rubbish, and when the room gets full, she moves into another. This room will go the same way, I suppose.’

‘Can’t her children do anything?’ Linford again.

‘She won’t let them. Refuses even to have a cleaner. “Everything’s in its place for a reason,” that’s what she says.’

‘Maybe she has a point,’ Rebus said. Everything in its place — the body in the fireplace; Roddy Grieve in the summer house — for a reason. There had to be an explanation; it was just that they couldn’t see it yet. ‘Does she still paint?’ he asked.

‘Not really. She tinkers. Her studio is at the bottom of the garden, that’s probably where she’s gone.’ Seona looked at her watch. ‘God, and I need to buy some food...’

‘You’d heard the rumours about your husband and Josephine Banks?’

The question had come from Linford. Rebus turned towards him, eyes burning, but Linford was concentrating on the widow.

‘Someone sent me a letter.’ She tugged the sleeve of her blouse down over her watch; suddenly defensive, where before she’d been opening up.

‘You trusted your husband?’

‘Completely. I know what it’s like in politics.’

‘Any idea who might have sent the letter?’

‘I threw it straight in the bin. We agreed that was the best place for it.’

‘How did Ms Banks react?’

‘She thought about hiring a detective. We talked her out of it. Anything we did would have made it all seem legitimate. We’d have been playing his game.’

‘Whose game?’

‘Whoever was spreading the rumour.’

‘You’re sure it was a he?’

‘A question of probability, Inspector Linford. Most of the people in politics are male. It’s sad but it’s true.’

‘I notice’, Rebus said, ‘there were two women standing against your husband in the selection process.’

‘Labour policy.’

‘Did you know any of the other candidates?’

‘Of course. The Labour Party’s one big happy family, Inspector.’

He smiled, as was expected. ‘I hear Archie Ure wasn’t best pleased with the result.’

‘Well, Archie’s been in politics a hell of a sight longer than Roddy. He thought it was his birthright.’

Jo Banks had used the selfsame word: birthright.

‘And the two women on the shortlist?’

‘Young and intelligent... they’ll get what they want eventually.’

‘So what happens now, Mrs Grieve?’

‘Now?’ She was staring at the pattern in the carpet. ‘Archie Ure was the runner-up. I suppose they’ll go with him.’ Staring hard at the carpet, as if some message were imprinted there.

Linford cleared his throat and turned towards Rebus, indicating that for him the interview was complete. Rebus tried to think of some brilliant final question, but came up empty.

‘Just give me back my husband,’ Seona Grieve said, leading them into the hall. Alicia was standing there at the foot of the stairs, a china cup in her hand. She’d folded a slice of bread into the cup and squashed it down.

‘I wanted something,’ she told her daughter-in-law. ‘But I’m not sure now why.’

As they left, Roddy Grieve’s widow was leading his mother up the stairs like a parent with a sleepy child.

Back at the car, Rebus told Linford: ‘You go on ahead.’

‘What?’

‘I want to stick around, do the Good Samaritan bit.’

‘Babysitting?’ Linford got in, started the engine. ‘Something tells me that’s not the whole story.’

‘I might have a word with the old woman while I’m at it.’

‘Just tell me you’re not playing Grab-a-Granny.’

Rebus winked. ‘We don’t all have young ladies lusting after us.’

The look on Linford’s face changed. He put the car into gear and drove off.

A grin spread over Rebus’s face. ‘Good on you, Siobhan, you went and dumped him.’

He went back up the path, rang the doorbell. Explained to Seona Grieve that he could spare twenty minutes or so if she wanted to pop out. She hesitated.

‘It’s just milk and bread, Inspector. We can probably manage till—’

‘Well, I’m here now, and my driver’s gone.’ He waved back towards the empty roadway. ‘Besides, the way Mrs Grieve is getting through that bread...’

He made himself comfy in the sitting room. She told him he was welcome to make tea or coffee, as long as he didn’t take milk. ‘But fair warning,’ she added, ‘the kitchen’s a bomb-site.’

‘I’ll be fine,’ he said, picking up a Sunday supplement from six months before. He heard the door close — she hadn’t bothered telling her mother-in-law, hadn’t seen the point. There was a newsagent’s a quarter of a mile away. She wouldn’t be long. Rebus waited a couple of minutes, then climbed the stairs. Alicia Grieve was standing in her bedroom doorway. She was still dressed, but wore a dressing-gown over her clothes.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I thought I heard someone leaving.’

‘Nothing wrong with your ears, Mrs Grieve. Seona’s just nipped out to the shop.’

‘Then why are you still here?’ She peered at him. ‘You are the policeman?’

‘That’s right.’

She shuffled past him, one hand reaching out to steady herself against the wall. ‘I’m looking for something,’ she told him. ‘It’s not in my bedroom.’

He could see into her room through the open door. It was chaotic. Clothes were piled on chairs and the floor, more spilling from the wardrobe and chest of drawers. Books and magazines, paintings stacked against the walls. There was a large patch of damp on the ceiling by the window.

She’d pushed open another door. The patterned carpet inside was faded to an almost uniform grey, where it wasn’t threadbare. Rebus followed her in. Was it a living room? An office? Impossible to tell. Cardboard boxes filled with memories and rubbish. Old letters, some not yet opened. Photograph albums spilling loose pictures across the floor. More magazines and newspapers, more paintings. Children’s toys and games from ages past. A collection of mirrors on one wall. A wigwam propped up against the far corner, its yellow canvas patched and crumbling. A child’s doll, sporting tunic and kilt, lay headless under a chair. Rebus picked it up, found the head resting in an open biscuit tin along with loose dominoes, playing cards, empty cotton reels. He fixed the head back on. The doll’s blue eyes looked neither pleased nor displeased.

‘What is it you’re looking for?’

She looked round. ‘What are you doing with Lorna’s doll?’

‘Its head had come off. I just—’

‘No, no, no.’ She grabbed the doll from him. ‘Its head didn’t come off, the little madam yanked it off.’ Which was what Alicia Grieve did now. ‘It was her way of telling us she’d broken with childhood.’

Rebus smiled. ‘How old was she?’ Expecting to hear nine or ten.

‘Twenty-five, twenty-six, something like that.’ Her mind was half on her visitor, half on the search.

‘What did you think when she took up modelling?’

‘I’ve always supported my children.’ It had the sound of a prepared line, a titbit she offered to journalists and the curious.

‘How about Cammo and Roddy? Were you political, Mrs Grieve?’

‘In my younger days I was. Labour, mostly. Allan was a Liberal, we had many a debate...’

‘Yet one of your sons is a Tory.’

‘Oh, Cammo could always be difficult.’

‘And Roddy?’

‘Roddy needs to step out from his brother’s shadow. You haven’t seen the way he runs after Cammo. Always watching, studying him. But Cammo has his own chums. Boys that age can be cruel, can’t they?’

She was drifting away from him, the years dancing in her eyes.

‘They’re grown men now, Alicia.’

‘They’ll always be boys to me.’ She started taking things out of a box, studying each item — binoculars, marmalade jar, football pennant — as though it might reveal itself to her.

‘Are you close to Roddy?’

‘Roddy’s a dear.’

‘He talks to you? Comes to you with problems?’

‘He’s...’ She broke off, looked confused. ‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’ Rebus nodded. ‘I told him, warned him often enough. Climbing over railings at his age.’ She shook her head. ‘Bound to be accidents.’

‘He’d done it before? Climbed the railings?’

‘Oh yes. It was a shortcut to school, you see.’

Rebus slid his hands into his pockets. She was travelling elsewhere now. ‘I did dally with the Nationalists in the fifties. They were a strange lot, maybe they still are. Kilts and Gaelic and a chip on the shoulder. We attended some good parties, though, lots of dancing. Sword and Shield...’

Rebus frowned. ‘I’ve heard of that. An offshoot of the Nationalists?’

‘It didn’t last long. Very little did in those days. An idea would blossom, then you’d have a few drinks and that would be the end of that.’

‘Did you know Matthew Vanderhyde?’

‘Oh, yes. Everyone knew Matthew. Is he still with us?’

‘I see him occasionally. Maybe not as often as I should.’

‘Matthew and Allan would argue politics with Chris Grieve...’ She broke off. ‘You know he’s not related?’ Rebus nodded, remembering the framed poem in the downstairs hall. ‘Allan would be doing Chris’s portrait, only the man wouldn’t sit still. Always moving, flinging out his arms to make a point.’ She flung out her own arms in imitation. The marmalade jar was in one hand, a roll of Christmas parcel-tape in the other. ‘Edwin Muir was a great foil for him. Then there was dear Naomi Mitchison. Do you know her work?’ Rebus was silent, as if speech might break the spell.

‘And the painters — Gillies, McTaggart, Maxwell.’ She smiled. ‘Sparks always flew. We were lucky with the Festival, it brought visitors to the galleries. The Edinburgh School, we called ourselves. It was a different country then, you know. Trapped between one world war and the threat of another. Hard to bring up children with the A-bomb hanging over your head. It affected my work, I think.’

‘Were your children interested in art?’

‘Lorna dabbled, maybe she still does. But not the boys. Cammo always had his cronies around him, almost like a Praetorian Guard. Roddy liked the company of grown-ups, always so deferential and willing to listen.’

‘And Alasdair?’

She angled her head. ‘Alasdair was a painter’s nightmare, an angelic tearaway. I never captured that. You always knew he was up to something, but you didn’t mind because it was Alasdair. Do you see?’

‘I think so.’ Rebus knew a few young villains like that: charming and cheeky, but always on the make and take. ‘He keeps in touch, doesn’t he?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘Why did he leave home?’

‘He wasn’t strictly at home. He had a flat of his own near the foot of the Canongate. When he’d gone, we found out it was a furnished rental, practically none of it was his. He took a suitcase of clothes, some books, and that was it.’

‘He didn’t say why he was leaving?’

‘No, just phoned out of the blue. Told me he’d be in touch.’

Rebus heard the front door open and close, the words ‘I’m back’ drifting up the stairs.

‘I’d better be going,’ he said.

Alicia Grieve looked as though she’d already dismissed him. ‘I wish I knew where it was,’ she said to herself, replacing the marmalade jar in its box. ‘Dear me, if only I knew...’

Seona Grieve was halfway up the stairs when he met her.

‘Is everything all right?’

‘Everything’s fine,’ he assured her. ‘Mrs Grieve’s just lost something, that’s all.’

Seona stared up towards the landing. ‘Inspector, she’s lost practically everything. It’s just that she doesn’t know it yet...’

15

It was an office much like any other.

Grant Hood and Ellen Wylie shared a look. They’d been expecting a builder’s yard — glaur and breeze-blocks, an Alsatian tethered and barking. Wylie even had wellies in the car, just in case. But this was the third floor of a 1960s office block halfway down Leith Walk. Wylie had asked Hood, would it be all right to nip into Valvona and Crolla’s after? He’d told her yes, no problem, but wasn’t it expensive?

‘Quality costs.’ That’s what she’d said, like an advertising slogan.

They were doing the rounds of Edinburgh’s building contractors, starting with the largest and longest established. Phone calls first, and if there was anyone in the firm who could help, then it was time for a visit.

Wylie: ‘Maybe John’s right when he calls us the Time Team. Never saw myself as an archaeologist.’

‘Twenty years, it’s hardly prehistory.’

Hood had found that their conversation flowed. No awkward pauses or slips of the tongue. They’d had one disagreement, over whether they were on a dead-end case.

Wylie: ‘We should be working the Grieve inquiry. That’s where all the attention is.’

Hood: ‘But if we get a result here, it’s something special, isn’t it? And it’s all ours.’

Wylie: ‘Any leads we get, I’ll bet we end up relegated. We’re DCs, Grant. That’s too low in the league to get any medals that might be going.’

‘You like football?’

‘I might.’

‘Who do you support?’

‘You first.’

Hood: ‘I’ve always been Rangers. You?’

Grinning: ‘Celtic.’

Sharing a laugh. Then Wylie again: ‘What is it they say about opposites attracting?’

A line Grant Hood carried with him as they sat in the waiting room. Opposites attracting.

Peter Kirkwall of Kirkwall Construction was in his early thirties and wore an immaculate pinstripe suit. It was impossible to picture him with a shovel in one of his smooth hands, yet there he was in a series of framed photographs around the walls of his office.

‘The first one’, he said, leading them as if through an exhibition, ‘is me at seven, mixing concrete in Dad’s yard.’ Dad being Jack Kirkwall, who’d founded the company back in the 1950s. He was in some of the photos, too. But the focus was on Peter: Peter bricklaying during a summer break from college; Peter with the plans of one of the city’s office blocks, his first Kirkwall project; Peter meeting dignitaries... and behind the wheel of a Mercedes CLK... and on the day of Jack Kirkwall’s retirement.

‘If you want it first-hand,’ he said, easing into his chair and business both, ‘you need to talk to Dad.’ He paused. ‘Coffee? Tea?’ Seemed pleased when they shook their heads: his was a busy schedule.

‘We appreciate you taking the trouble, sir,’ Wylie said, not above a bit of soft-soap. ‘Business good, is it?’

‘Phenomenal. What with the Holyrood redevelopment and the Western Approach corridor, Gyle, Wester Hailes, and now the plans for Granton...’ He shook his head. ‘We can hardly keep up. Every week we’re making bids on some project or other.’ He waved towards where some plans lay on the room’s conference table. ‘Know how my dad started? He built garages and extensions. Now it looks like we might get a finger in a pie as big as London Docklands.’ He rubbed his hands with what looked to Hood like glee.

‘But in the seventies, the firm worked on Queensberry House?’ Wylie was first with the question. It pulled Kirkwall back down to earth.

‘Yes, sorry. Once you get me started, I don’t know when to stop.’ He cleared his throat, composed himself. ‘I did look up our records...’ Reaching into a drawer, bringing out an old ledger, some notebooks and a card index. ‘Late in ’78, we were one of the firms renovating the hospital. Not me, of course, I was still at school. And now you’ve found a skeleton, eh?’

Hood handed over photographs of the two fireplaces. ‘The room to the far end of the basement. It was originally the kitchen.’

‘And that’s where the body was?’

‘We estimate it’s been there twenty years,’ Wylie said, easing into her role: talker to Hood’s silent type. ‘Which would coincide with the building works.’

‘Well, I’ve had my secretary dig up what she can.’ He smiled to let them know the pun was deliberate. Kirkwall — striped shirt, oval glasses, groomed black hair — was, Wylie presumed, trying for the sophisticated look. But there was something uncomfortable and ill-defined about him. She’d seen footballers turned TV pundits: they could wear the clothes but failed to carry the style.

‘It’s not much, I’m afraid,’ Kirkwall was saying, reaching into a drawer. He unrolled the plan so it faced them, weighting its corners with pieces of polished stone. ‘I collect one from each job I do,’ he explained. ‘Get it cleaned and varnished.’ Then: ‘This is Queensberry House. The blue shaded areas were our project, plus the red lines.’

‘It looks like exterior work.’

‘It was. Downpipes, cracks in the masonry, and one summer house to be built from scratch. It’s like that sometimes with public works, they like to spread the contract around.’

‘You obviously weren’t greasing enough palms at the council,’ Hood muttered.

Kirkwall glared at him.

‘So another firm was doing the internal work?’ Wylie was studying the plan.

‘Firm or firms. I’ve no record. Like I say, you’d have to ask Dad.’

‘Then that’s what we’ll do, Mr Kirkwall,’ Ellen Wylie said.

But first they hit Valvona’s, where Wylie did her shopping before asking if Hood fancied a bite to eat. He made show of checking his watch.

‘Come on,’ she said. ‘There’s an empty table, and I’ve been here often enough to know that must be a sign.’

So they ate salad and pizza and shared a bottle of mineral water. Around them, couples were doing the same thing. Hood smiled.

‘We don’t stick out,’ he commented.

She looked at his stomach. ‘Well, I don’t.’

He sucked in some gut and decided to leave the last slice of pizza. ‘You know what I mean,’ he said.

Yes, she knew. Being a cop, being around people who knew cops, you always felt they could spot you, and you came to think everyone had the knack.

‘Bit of a shock to find you’re not a social leper?’

Hood looked at his plate. ‘More of a shock to find I can actually leave food.’

Afterwards, they headed out to the house Jack Kirkwall had built for his retirement. It sat in countryside on the edge of South Queensferry, with both bridges visible in the distance. The house was angular with tall windows. When Wylie stated that it was like a scaled-down cathedral, Hood knew what she meant.

Jack Kirkwall welcomed them by insisting that he be remembered to John Rebus.

‘You know Inspector Rebus?’ Wylie asked.

‘He did me a good turn once.’ Kirkwall chuckled.

‘You might be able to return the favour, sir,’ Hood said. ‘Depending on how good your memory is.’

‘Nothing wrong with the napper,’ Kirkwall grumbled.

Wylie shot her partner a warning look. ‘What DC Hood meant, Mr Kirkwall, is that we’re in the dark and you’re our one ray of light.’

Kirkwall perked up, settled into an easy chair and motioned for them to be seated.

The sofa was cream leather and smelt brand new. The lounge was large and bright with inch-thick white shag pile and a whole wall of French windows. To Wylie’s eye, there seemed very little of Kirkwall’s past on display: no photos or old-looking ornaments or furniture. It was as though, in later life, he had decided to reinvent himself. There was something anonymous about it all. Then Wylie realised: it was a show house. Prospective clients could be shown around, Kirkwall Construction workmanship evident everywhere.

And no place for individual personality.

She wondered if that explained the sad depths to Jack Kirkwall’s face. No way was this his idea of retirement: in the choice of fabrics and furnishings she saw the son, Peter.

‘Your firm’, she said, ‘did some work at Queensberry House in 1979.’

‘The hospital?’ She nodded. ‘Started work in ’78, finished it in ’79. What a hellish time that was.’ He peered at them. ‘Likely you’re too young to remember. That winter there was a rubbish strike, teachers’ strike, even the mortuary was on strike.’ He snorted at the memory, looked to Hood. Tapping his head, he said: ‘See, son? Nothing wrong with the napper. Remember it like it was yesterday. We started in December, finished in March. The eighth, to be precise.’

Wylie smiled. ‘That’s incredible.’

Kirkwall accepted her praise. He was a big man, broad-shouldered, chisel-jawed. He’d probably never been handsome, but she could imagine him having power and presence.

‘Know why I remember?’ He shook his head. ‘You’ll be too young.’

‘The referendum?’ Hood guessed.

Kirkwall looked deflated. Wylie gave another warning look: they needed him on their side.

‘It was March first, wasn’t it?’ Hood continued.

‘Aye, it was. And we won the vote but lost the war.’

‘A temporary setback,’ Wylie felt bound to add.

He glared at her. ‘If you can call twenty years temporary. We had dreams...’ Wylie thought he was turning wistful, but he surprised her. ‘Just think what it would have meant: inward investment, new homes and businesses.’

‘A building boom?’

Kirkwall was shaking his head at the thought of so much opportunity wasted.

‘The boom’s happening now, according to your son,’ Wylie said.

‘Aye.’

She doubted she’d ever heard so much bitterness in a single syllable. Had Jack Kirkwall gone willingly, or had he been pushed?

‘We’re interested in the hospital’s interior,’ Hood said. ‘Which firms had the contracts?’

‘Roofing was Caspian,’ Kirkwall said tonelessly, still lost in thought. ‘Scaffolding was Macgregor. Coghill’s did a lot of the inside work: replastering, a few new partition walls.’

‘Was this in the basement?’

Kirkwall nodded. ‘A new laundry room and a boiler.’

‘Do you remember any of the original walls being exposed?’ Wylie handed over the photo of the fireplaces. ‘Like this?’ Kirkwall looked, shook his head. ‘But the work in the basement was done by a firm called Coghill’s?’

Kirkwall nodded again. ‘Gone now. Firm went bust.’

‘Is Mr Coghill still around?’

Kirkwall shrugged. ‘Shouldn’t have gone bust really. Good firm. Dean knew his stuff.’

‘The building trade’s a tough game,’ Wylie agreed.

‘It’s not that.’ He looked at her.

‘What then?’

‘I might be speaking out of turn.’ He considered this. ‘But at my age, who cares?’ Took a deep, noisy breath. ‘It’s just that, way I heard it, Dean fell foul of Mr Big.’

Wylie and Hood responded as one voice. ‘Mr Big?’

The Oxford Bar was busy when Rebus arrived. He’d already had one drink at The Maltings, leaving before the evening influx of students, and two drinks at Swany’s on Causewayside. In Swany’s he’d bumped into an old colleague, recently retired.

‘You look too young,’ Rebus had chided him.

‘Same age as you, John,’ had been the reply.

But Rebus didn’t have thirty years in; had joined the force in his mid-twenties. Two or three more years, he could be a gentleman of leisure. Rebus got a round in, then sneaked out into the cold blast of winter. Headlamps piercing the darkness; recent rainfall threatening ice. A fifteen-minute walk home. Across the street, a taxi filling up at the petrol station.

Retirement. The word bouncing around in his skull. Jesus, but what would he do with himself? One man’s retirement was another’s redundancy. He thought of the Farmer, then waved down the taxi, asked to be taken to the Oxford Bar.

No sign of Doc and Salty, Rebus’s usual drinking partners, but plenty of faces he knew. The place was buzzing, bodies crammed in the front room. Football on the TV: a game from down south. A regular called Muir was standing close by the door. He nodded a greeting.

‘Your wife has a gallery, doesn’t she?’ Rebus asked. Muir nodded again. ‘Ever sell any stuff by Alicia Rankeillor?’

Muir snorted. ‘If only. Rankeillor’s stuff, as you call it, fetches tens of thousands. Every city in the western world wants something of hers in its collection — preferably something from the forties or fifties. Even her limited prints fetch a grand or two apiece.’ Muir looked up. ‘Don’t know anyone who wants to sell, do you?’

‘I’ll let you know.’

The Two Margarets were behind the bar, busy in their confinement. Rebus’s IPA arrived, and he ordered a whisky to go with it. Music from the back room. He could just make it out: acoustic guitar, young woman on vocals. But here was his favourite duet: a pint and a dram. He added water to the whisky, removing the edge. A deep swallow, coating his throat. One of the Margarets was back with his change.

‘Friend of yours through the back.’

Rebus frowned. ‘Singing?’

She smiled, shook her head. ‘Up by the cigarette machine.’

He looked. Saw a wall of bodies. The ciggie machine was in an alcove, up three steps and next to the toilets. Fruit machine there, too. But all he could see were men’s backs, meaning someone had an audience.

‘Who is it?’

Margaret shrugged. ‘Said she knew you.’

‘Siobhan?’

Another shrug. He craned his neck. A new round was being got in. The backs half-turned. Rebus saw faces he knew: regulars. Glazed smiles and cigarette smoke. And behind them, relaxed, leaning against the fruit machine, Lorna Grieve. A tall drink was raised to her lips. It looked like neat whisky or brandy, three measures at least. She smacked her lips; her eyes met his and she smiled, raising her glass. He smiled back, raised his own glass to her. A sudden flash of memory: as a kid, he’d been coming home from school. Passing a street corner by the sweet shop, a crowd of older boys hemming in a girl from his class. He couldn’t see what was going on. Her eyes, suddenly catching his between the heads of two of the boys. Not panicked, but not enjoying herself either...

Lorna Grieve touched one of her suitors on the arm, said something to him. His name was Gordon, a Fifer like Rebus. Probably young enough to be her son.

Now she was walking forwards, negotiating the steps. Squeezing through the crowd, touching arms and shoulders and backs; each touch enough to aid her progress.

‘Well, well,’ she said, ‘fancy seeing you here.’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘just fancy.’ He’d finished the whisky. She asked if he wanted another. He shook his head, lifted the pint.

‘I don’t think I’ve ever been here,’ she said, leaning into the bar. ‘I’ve just been hearing about the old owner, how he wouldn’t serve women or people with English accents. I think I might have liked him.’

‘He was an acquired taste.’

‘The best kind, don’t you think?’ Her eyes were on him. ‘I’ve been hearing about you, too. I may have to stop calling you Monkey Man.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Because from what I’ve been told, not many people make a monkey out of you.’

He smiled. ‘Bars are great places for tall stories.’

‘There you go, Lorna.’ It was Gordon, presenting her with another drink. Armagnac: Rebus had watched Margaret pouring. ‘All right, John? You never told us you knew famous people.’

Lorna Grieve accepted the compliment; Rebus stayed quiet.

‘And if I’d known there were honeys like you in Edinburgh,’ she told Gordon, ‘I wouldn’t have moved out to the sticks. And I certainly wouldn’t have married a grim old beast like Hugh Cordover.’

‘Don’t knock High Chord,’ Gordon said. ‘I saw Obscura supporting Barclay James Harvest at the Usher Hall.’

‘Were you still at school?’

Gordon considered the question. ‘I think I was fourteen.’

Lorna Grieve looked at Rebus. ‘We’re dinosaurs,’ she informed him.

‘We were dinosaurs when Gordon here was just primordial soup,’ he agreed.

But she wasn’t at all like a dinosaur. Her clothes were colourful and flowing, her hair immaculate, and her make-up striking. Surrounded by men in work suits, she was a butterfly in the company of fluttering grey moths.

‘What are you doing here?’ he asked.

‘Drinking.’

‘Did you drive in?’

‘The band gave me a lift.’ She peered at him. ‘I didn’t just come here to see you, you know.’

‘No?’

‘Don’t flatter yourself.’ She brushed invisible flecks from her scarlet jacket. Beneath was an orange silk blouse, and on her legs faded denims, frayed where they touched her ankles. Black suede moccasins on her feet. No jewellery anywhere.

Not even a wedding ring.

‘I like new things, that’s all,’ she was explaining. ‘And currently my life is so dreary’, looking at her surroundings, ‘that this counts as new.’

‘Poor you.’

Her glance was arch and wry at the same time. Gordon shuffled his feet and said he’d see her upstairs. She nodded unconvincingly.

‘Have you been drinking all day?’ he asked.

‘Jealous?’

He shrugged. ‘I’ve been there often enough.’ He turned so he was facing her. ‘How does the Ox measure up?’

Her nose wrinkled. ‘It’s very you,’ she said.

‘Is that good or bad?’

‘I haven’t decided yet.’ She studied him. ‘There’s a darkness in you.’

‘Probably all the beer.’

‘I’m serious. We all come from darkness, you have to remember that, and we sleep during the night to escape the fact. I’ll bet you have trouble sleeping at night, don’t you?’ He didn’t say anything. Her face grew less animated. ‘We’ll all return to darkness one day, when the sun burns out.’ A sudden smile lit her eyes. ‘“Though my soul may set in darkness, It will rise in perfect light.”’

‘A poem?’ he guessed.

She nodded. ‘I forget the rest.’

The door creaked open. Two expectant faces: Grant Hood and Ellen Wylie. Hood looked ready for a drink, but he wasn’t coming in. Wylie spotted Rebus, motioned for him to step outside.

‘Back in a minute,’ he told Lorna Grieve, touching her arm before squeezing his way past the other drinkers. The night air was fresh after the pub fug. Rebus took in several deep gulps.

‘Sorry to bother you, sir,’ Wylie said.

‘You wouldn’t be here if there wasn’t a good reason.’ He slipped his hands into his pockets. There was ice in the gutters now. The narrow street was badly lit. Cars were parked down one side, windscreens rimed with frost. Sudden clouds in the air when the three detectives spoke.

‘We went to see Jack Kirkwall,’ Hood explained.

‘And?’

‘You two know each other?’ Wylie asked.

‘A case few years back.’

Hood and Wylie exchanged a look. ‘You tell him,’ Hood said. So Wylie told the story, and at the end Rebus was thoughtful.

‘He’s flattering me,’ he said at last.

‘He said you’d tell us about Mr Big,’ she repeated.

Rebus nodded. ‘That’s what some in CID called him. Not very original.’

Hood: ‘But the name fitted?’

Rebus nodded, moved aside to let a couple into the bar. The singer had started up again: he could hear her through the back room’s closed window.

My mind returns, she sang, to things I should have left behind.

‘His name was Callan, first name Bryce.’

‘I thought Big Ger Cafferty ran Edinburgh?’

Rebus nodded. ‘But only after Callan retired, moved to the Costa del Sol or somewhere. He’s never been away, though.’

Wylie: ‘How do you mean?’

‘You still hear stories, how a piece of Cafferty’s action heads out to Spain. Bryce Callan’s almost grown...’ He sought the word. More lyrics from the back room:

My mind returns, to things best left unsaid.

‘Mythical?’ Wylie suggested.

He nodded, stared at the window of the barber’s shop across the lane. ‘Because we never put him away, I suppose.’

‘How would Dean Coghill have fallen foul of him?’

Rebus shrugged. ‘Protection maybe. There’s a lot can go wrong on a building site, and those projects... even then they’d be worth thousands. A few days lost could mean everything.’

Hood was nodding. ‘So we need to find Coghill.’

‘Always supposing he’ll speak to us,’ Wylie warned.

‘Let me do some checking on Bryce Callan,’ Rebus said.

The past is here now, insistent, carved from darkness,

So please beware, take care now where you tread...

‘Meantime,’ he went on, ‘you better try to get hold of Coghill’s employee files. We need to know who was working on the site.’

‘And if any of them disappeared,’ Hood added.

‘I’m assuming you’ve made a start on MisPer records.’

Wylie and Hood shared a look, said nothing.

‘It’s shit work,’ Rebus acknowledged, ‘but it’s got to be done. Two of you on it, takes half the time.’

Wylie: ‘Can we limit the search to late ’78, first three months of ’79?’

‘To start with, yes.’ He looked towards the pub. ‘Buy the pair of you a drink?’

Wylie was quick to shake her head. ‘I think we’ll head for the Cambridge, bit quieter there.’

‘Fair enough.’

‘In there’, nodding towards the door of the Ox, ‘looks too much like the broom cupboard we’re having to work out of.’

‘I’d heard,’ Rebus said. Wylie’s look was accusatory.

‘Sir,’ she said, ‘the woman in there...’ Wylie looked down at her feet. ‘Was it who I thought it was?’

Rebus nodded. ‘Just a coincidence,’ he said.

‘Of course.’ She nodded slowly, began to move off. She still hadn’t made eye contact. Hood made to catch up with her. Rebus pushed open the door a crack but waited. Wylie and Hood with their heads together, Hood asking who the woman had been. If the story got around St Leonard’s, Rebus would know who’d started it.

And that would be the end of the Time Team.

He woke at 4 a.m. The bedside lamp was still on. The duvet had been kicked to the foot of the bed. The sound of an engine turning over outside. He stumbled to the window, just in time to see a dark shape disappearing into the back of a taxi. He weaved naked into the living room, reaching for handholds, his balance shot. She’d left him a gift: a four-track demo by the Robinson Crusoes. It was titled Shipwrecked Heart. Made sense, band having the name they did. ‘Final Reproof’ was the last song on it. He stuck it on the hi-fi, listened for a minute or two with the volume down low. Empty bottle and two tumblers on the floor by the sofa. There was still half an inch of whisky in one of them. He sniffed it, took it into the kitchen. Poured it down the sink and filled the glass with cold water, gulped it down. Then another, and another after that. No way he was getting away from this one without a hangover, but he’d do his best. Three paracetamol tablets and more water, then another glassful to take through to the bathroom with him. She’d showered: there was a wet towel hanging from the rail. Showered first, then called the taxi. Had he woken her with his snoring? Had she ever been asleep? He ran a bath, looked at himself in the shaving mirror. Slack skin covered his face, looking for somewhere else to go. He bent down, dry-retched into the sink, almost bringing the tablets back up. How much had they drunk? He couldn’t begin to count. Had they come back here straight from the Ox? He didn’t think so. Back in the bedroom, he searched his pockets for clues. Nothing. But the fifty quid he’d gone out with had been reduced to pennies.

‘Dear Christ.’ He squeezed shut his eyes. His neck felt stiff; so did his back. In front of the bathroom mirror again he stared into his eyes. ‘Did we do it?’ he asked himself. The answer came back: definitely maybe. Screwed shut his eyes again. ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, John, what have you done?’

Answer: slept with Lorna Grieve. Twenty years ago, he’d have been doing cartwheels. But then twenty years ago, she hadn’t been part of a murder inquiry.

He turned off the taps, eased himself into the water and slid down, knees bent, so that his whole head went under. Maybe, he thought, if I just lie here like this it’ll all go away. His first mistake on booze had been over thirty years before, outside a school dance.

A bloody long apprenticeship, he thought, coming up for air. Whatever happened now, he felt tied to the Grieves, one more thread of their history.

And if Lorna put the story around, he’d be history, too.