by Ian Rankin
‘No,’ he said to Jilly Phillips, ‘not just now. She’s probably upset, and it wouldn’t do much good for me to go asking her questions under the circumstances. There was one thing, though.’
‘Yes, Inspector?’
‘This after-school drama group of yours, the one that meets on Tuesdays, it doesn’t happen to have a nickname, does it?’
‘Not that I know of.’ Jilly Phillips furrowed her brow. ‘But, Inspector?’
‘Yes?’
‘You’re under some kind of misapprehension. The drama group meets on Fridays, not Tuesdays. And we meet before lunch.’
Rebus drove out of the school grounds and parked by the side of the busy main road. The drama group met during school hours, so what had Suzanne done on Tuesdays after school, while her parents thought she was there? At least, McKenzie had said he’d thought that’s what she’d done on Tuesdays. Suppose he’d been lying? Then what?
A maroon-coloured bus roared past Rebus’s car. A 135, on its way to Princes Street. He started up the car again and followed it along its route, all the time thinking through the details of Suzanne’s suicide. Until suddenly, with blinding clarity, he saw the truth of the thing, and bit his bottom lip fiercely, wondering just what on earth he could–should–do about it.
Well, the longer he thought about doing something, the harder it would become to do it. So he called Holmes and asked him for a large favour, before driving over to the house owned by Sir Jimmy Frazer.
Frazer was not just part of the Edinburgh establishment–in many ways he was that establishment. Born and educated in the city, he had won hard-earned respect, friendship and awe on his way to the top. The nineteenth-century walled house in which his family made its home was part of his story. It had been about to be bought by a company, an English company, and knocked down to make way for a new apartment block. There were public protests about this act of vandalism and in had stepped Sir Jimmy Frazer, purchasing the house and making it his own.
That had been years ago, but it was a story still heard told by hard men to other hard men in watering holes throughout the city. Rebus examined the house as he drove in through the open gates. It was an ugly near-Gothic invention, mock turrets and spires, hard, cold and uninviting. A maid answered the door. Rebus introduced himself and was ushered into a large drawing-room, where Sir Jimmy’s wife, tall and dark haired like her daughter, waited.
‘I’m sorry to trouble you, Lady—’ Rebus was cut short by an imperious hand, but an open smile.
‘Just Deborah, please.’ And she motioned for Rebus to sit.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry to trouble you, but—’
‘Yes, your call was intriguing, Inspector. Of course, I’ll do what I can. It’s a tragedy, poor Suzanne.’
‘You knew her then?’
‘Of course. Why ever shouldn’t we know her? She visited practically every Tuesday.’
‘Oh?’ Rebus had suspected as much, but was keen to learn more.
‘After school,’ Lady Deborah continued. ‘Hazel and Suzanne and a few other chums would come back here. They didn’t stay late.’
‘But what exactly did they do?’
She laughed. ‘I’ve no idea. What do girls of that age do? Play records? Talk about boys? Try to defer growing up?’ She gave a wry smile, perhaps thinking of her own past. Rebus checked his wristwatch casually. Five to four. He had a few minutes yet.
‘Did they,’ he asked, ‘confine themselves to your daughter’s room?’
‘More or less. Not her bedroom, of course. There’s an old playroom upstairs. Hazel uses that as a kind of den.’
Rebus nodded. ‘May I see it?’
Lady Deborah seemed puzzled. ‘I suppose so, though I can’t see—’
‘It would help,’ Rebus interrupted, ‘to give me an overall picture of Suzanne. I’m trying to work out the kind of girl she was.’
‘Of course,’ said Lady Deborah, though she sounded unconvinced.
Rebus was shown to a small, cluttered room at the end of a long corridor. Inside, the curtains were closed. Lady Deborah switched on the lights.
‘Hazel won’t allow the maid in here,’ Lady Deborah explained, apologising for the untidiness. ‘Secrets, I suppose,’ she whispered.
Rebus did not doubt it. There were two small sofas, piles of pop and teenage magazines scattered on the floor, an ashtray full of dog-ends (which Lady Deborah pointedly chose to ignore), a stereo against one wall and a desk against another, on which sat a personal computer, its screen switched on but blank.
‘She always forgets to turn that thing off,’ said Lady Deborah. Rebus could hear the telephone ringing downstairs. The maid answered it and then called up to Lady Deborah.
‘Oh dear. Please excuse me, Inspector.’
Rebus smiled and bowed slightly as she left. His watch said four o’clock. As prearranged, it would be Holmes on the phone. Rebus had told him to pretend to be anybody, to say anything, so long as he kept Lady Deborah occupied for five minutes. Holmes had suggested he be a journalist seeking some quotes for a magazine feature. Rebus smiled now. Yes, there was probably vanity enough in Lady Deborah to keep her talking with a reporter for at least five minutes, maybe more.
Still, he couldn’t waste time. He had expected to have to do a lot of searching, but the computer seemed the obvious place to start. There were floppy discs stored in a plastic box beside the monitor. He flipped through them until he came to one labelled GC DISC. There could be no doubt. He slipped the disc into the computer and watched as the display came up. He had found the records of The Gentlemen’s Club.
He read quickly. Not that there was much to read. Members must attend every week, at four o’clock on Tuesday. Members must wear a tie. (Rebus looked quickly in a drawer of the desk and found five ties. He recognised them as belonging to various clubs in the city: the Strathspey, the Forth Golf Club, Finlay’s Club. Stolen from the girls’ fathers of course, and worn to meetings of a secret little clique, itself a parody of the clubs their fathers frequented.)
In a file named ‘Exploits of the Gentlemen’s Club’, Rebus found lists of petty thefts, acts of so-called daring, and lies. Members had stolen from city centre shops, had carried out practical jokes against teachers and pupils alike, had been, in short, malicious.
There were many exploits attributed to Suzanne, including lying to her parents about what she did on Tuesday after school. Twenty-eight exploits in all. Hazel Frazer’s list totalled thirty at the bottom, yet Rebus could count only twenty-nine entries on the screen. And in a separate file, the agenda for a meeting yet to be held, was a single item, recorded as ‘New Business: can suicide be termed an exploit of the Gentlemen’s Club?’
Rebus heard steps behind him. He turned, but it was not Lady Deborah. It was Hazel Frazer. Her eyes looked past him to the screen, firstly in fear and disbelief, then in scorn.
‘Hello, Hazel.’
‘You’re the policeman,’ she said in a level tone. ‘I saw you at the school.’
‘That’s right.’ Rebus studied her as she came into the room. She was a cool one, all right. That was Hawthornden for you, breeding strong, cold women, each one her father’s daughter. ‘Are you jealous of her?’
‘Of whom? Suzanne?’ Hazel smiled cruelly. ‘Why should I be?’
‘Because,’ answered Rebus, ‘Suzanne’s is the ultimate exploit. For once, she beat you.’
‘You think that’s why she did it?’ Hazel sounded smug. When Rebus shook his head, a little of her confidence seeped away.
‘I know why she did it, Hazel. She did it because she found out about you and her father. She found out because you told her. I notice it’s too much of a secret for you to put on your computer, but you’ve added it to the list, haven’t you? As an exploit. I expect you were having an argument, bragging, being competitive. And it just slipped out. You told Suzanne you were her father’s lover.’
Her cheeks were becoming a deep strawberry red, while her lips drained
of colour. But she wasn’t about to speak, so Rebus went on at her.
‘You met him at lunchtime. You couldn’t meet near Hawthornden. That would be too risky. So you’d take a bus to Murrayfield. It’s only ten minutes ride away. He’d be waiting in his car. You told Suzanne and she couldn’t bear to know. So she killed herself.’ Rebus was becoming angry. ‘And all you can be bothered to do is write about her on your files and wonder whether suicide is an “exploit”.’ His voice had risen and he hardly registered the fact that Lady Deborah was standing in the doorway, looking on in disbelief.
‘No!’ yelled Hazel. ‘She did it first! She slept with Daddy months ago! So I did it back to her. That’s what she couldn’t live with! That’s why she—’
Then it happened. Hazel’s shoulders fell forward and, eyes closed, she began to cry, silently at first, but then loudly. Her mother ran to comfort her and told Rebus to leave. Couldn’t he see what the girl was going through? He’d pay, she told him. He’d pay for upsetting her daughter. But she was crying too, crying like Hazel, mother and child. Rebus could think of nothing to say, so he left.
Descending the stairs, he tried not to think about what he had just unleashed. Two families broken now instead of one, and to what end? Merely to prove, as he had always known anyway, that a pretty face was no mirror of the soul and that the spirit of competition still flourished in Scotland’s well-respected education system. He dug his hands deep into his jacket pockets, felt something there and drew out Suzanne’s note. The crumpled note, found discarded in her bin, sticky on one side. He stopped halfway down the stairs, staring at the note without really seeing it. He was visualising something else, something almost too horrible, too unbelievable.
Yet he believed it.
Thomas McKenzie was surprised to see him. Mrs McKenzie had, he said, gone to stay with a sister on the other side of the city. The body had been taken away, of course, and the bathroom cleaned. McKenzie was without jacket and tie and had rolled up his shirt-sleeves. He wore half-moon glasses and carried a pen with him as he opened the door to Rebus.
In the drawing-room, there were signs that McKenzie had been working. Papers were strewn across a writing desk, a briefcase open on the floor. A calculator sat on the chair, as did a telephone.
‘I’m sorry to disturb you again, sir,’ Rebus said, taking in the scene. McKenzie had sobered up since the morning. He looked like a businessman rather than a grieving father.
McKenzie seemed to realise that the scene before Rebus created a strange impression.
‘Keeping busy,’ he said. ‘Keeping the mind occupied, you know. Life can’t stop because…’ He fell silent.
‘Quite, sir,’ Rebus said, seating himself on the sofa. He reached into his pocket. ‘I thought you might like this.’ He held the paper towards McKenzie, who took it from him and glanced at it. Rebus stared hard at him, and McKenzie twitched, attempting to hand back the note.
‘No, sir,’ said Rebus, ‘you keep it.’
‘Why?’
‘It will always remind you,’ said Rebus, his voice cold and level, ‘that you could have saved your daughter.’
McKenzie was aghast. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean,’ said Rebus, his voice still lacking emotion, ‘that Suzanne wasn’t intending to kill herself, not really. It was just something to attract your attention, to shock you into… I don’t know, action I suppose, a reaction of some kind.’
McKenzie positioned himself slowly so that he rested on the armrest of one of the upholstered chairs.
‘Yes,’ Rebus went on, ‘a reaction. That’s as good a way of putting it as any. Suzanne knew what time you got up every morning. She wasn’t stupid. She timed the slashing of her wrists so that you would find her while there was still time to save her. She also had a sense of the dramatic, didn’t she? So she stuck her little note to the bathroom door. You saw the note and you went into the bathroom. And she wasn’t dead, was she?’
McKenzie had screwed shut his eyes. His mouth was open, the teeth gritted in remembrance.
‘She wasn’t dead,’ Rebus continued, ‘not quite. And you knew damned well why she’d done it. Because she’d warned you she would. She had told you she would. Unless you stopped seeing Hazel, unless you owned up to her mother. Perhaps she had a lot of demands, Mr McKenzie. You never really got on with her anyway, did you? You didn’t know what to do. Help her, or leave her to die? You hesitated. You waited.’
Rebus had risen from his seat now. His voice had risen, too. The tears were streaming down McKenzie’s face, his whole body shuddering. But Rebus was relentless.
‘You walked around a bit, you walked into her room. You threw her note into the waste-bin. And eventually, eventually you reached for a telephone and made the calls.’
‘It was already too late,’ McKenzie bawled. ‘Nobody could have saved her.’
‘They could have tried!’ Rebus was yelling now, yelling close to McKenzie’s own twisted face. ‘You could have tried, but you didn’t. You wanted to keep your secret. Well by God your secret’s out.’ The last words were hissed and with them Rebus felt his fury ebb. He turned and started to walk away.
‘What are you going to do?’ McKenzie moaned.
‘What can I do?’ Rebus answered quietly. ‘I’m not going to do anything, Mr McKenzie. I’m just going to leave you to get on with the rest of your life.’ He paused. ‘Enjoy it,’ he said, closing the doors of the drawing-room behind him.
He stood on the steps of the house, trembling, his heart pounding. In a suicide, who was to blame, who the victim? He still couldn’t answer the question. He doubted he ever would. His watch told him it was five minutes to five. He knew the pub near the circus, a quiet bar frequented by thinkers and amateur philosophers, a place where nothing happened and the measures were generous. He felt like having one drink, maybe two at most. He would raise his glass and make a silent toast: to the lassies.
Monstrous Trumpet
John Rebus went down onto his knees.
‘I’m begging you,’ he said, ‘don’t do this to me, please.’
But Chief Inspector Lauderdale just laughed, thinking Rebus was clowning about as per usual. ‘Come on, John,’ he said. ‘It’ll be just like Interpol.’
Rebus got back to his feet. ‘No it won’t,’ he said. ‘It’ll be like a bloody escort service. Besides, I can’t speak French.’
‘Apparently he speaks perfect English, this Monsieur…’ Lauderdale made a show of consulting the letter in front of him on his desk.
‘Don’t say it again, sir, please.’
‘Monsieur Cluzeau.’ Rebus winced. ‘Yes,’ Lauderdale continued, enjoying Rebus’s discomfort, ‘Monsieur Cluzeau. A fine name for a member of the gendarmerie, don’t you think?’
‘It’s a stunt,’ Rebus pleaded. ‘It’s got to be. DC Holmes or one of the other lads…’
But Lauderdale would not budge. ‘It’s been verified by the Chief Super,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry about this, John, but I thought you’d be pleased.’
‘Pleased?’
‘Yes. Pleased. You know, showing a bit of Scots hospitality.’
‘Since when did the CID job description encompass “tourist guide”?’
Lauderdale had had enough of this: Rebus had even stopped calling him ‘sir’. ‘Since, Inspector, I ordered you to do it.’
‘But why me?’
Lauderdale shrugged. ‘Why not you?’ He sighed, opened a drawer of his desk and dropped the letter into it. ‘Look, it’s only a day, two at most. Just do it, eh? Now if you don’t mind, Inspector, I’ve got rather a lot to do.’
But the fight had gone out of Rebus anyway. His voice was calm, resigned. ‘When does he get here?’
Again, there was a pause while that missing ‘sir’ hung motionless in the air between them. Well, thought Lauderdale, the sod deserves this. ‘He’s already here.’
‘What?’
‘I mean, he’s in Edinburgh. The letter took a bit of a time to get here.’
‘You mean it sat in someone’s office for a bit of time.’
‘Well, whatever the delay, he’s here. And he’s coming to the station this afternoon.’
Rebus glanced at his watch. It was eleven-fifty. He groaned.
‘Late afternoon, I’d imagine,’ said Lauderdale, trying to soften the blow now that Rebus was heading for the canvas. This had been a bit of a mess all round. He’d only just received final confirmation himself that Monsieur Cluzeau was on his way. ‘I mean,’ he said, ‘the French like to take a long lunch, don’t they? Notorious for it. So I don’t suppose he’ll be here till after three.’
‘Fine, he can take us as he finds us. What am I supposed to do with him anyway?’
Lauderdale tried to retain his composure: just say it once, damn you! Just once so I know that you recognise me for what I am! He cleared his throat. ‘He wants to see how we work. So show him. As long as he can report back to his own people that we’re courteous, efficient, diligent, scrupulous, and that we always get our man, well, I’ll be happy.’
‘Right you are, sir,’ said Rebus, opening the door, making ready to leave Lauderdale’s newly refurbished office. Lauderdale sat in a daze: he’d said it! Rebus had actually ended a sentence with ‘sir’!
‘That should be easy enough,’ he was saying now. ‘Oh, and I might as well track down Lord Lucan and catch the Loch Ness monster while I’m at it. I’m sure to have a spare five minutes.’
Rebus closed the door after him with such ferocity that Lauderdale feared for the glass-framed paintings on his walls. But glass was more resilient than it looked. And so was John Rebus.
Cluzeau had to be an arse-licker, hell-bent on promotion. What other reason could there be? The story was that he was coming over for the Scotland–France encounter at Murrayfield. Fair enough, Edinburgh filled with Frenchmen once every two years for a weekend in February, well-behaved if boisterous rugby fans whose main pleasure seemed to be dancing in saloon bars with ice-buckets on their heads.
