by Ian Rankin
‘Well, I suppose I could get Chief Inspector Flower instead. He’s the bee’s knees just now, nabbing that MP’s son for cannabis growing …’
Rebus swallowed. ‘I’d prefer CI Ancram, sir.’
Carswell glowered. ‘It’s not your bloody decision, is it, Inspector?’
‘No, sir.’
Carswell sighed. ‘Ancram’s already been briefed. Let’s stick with him … if that’s all right with you?’
‘Thank you, sir.’ How did I get here, Rebus thought: thanking the man for putting Ancram on my tail … ‘Can I go now, sir?’
‘No.’ Carswell was looking in the folder again, while Rebus tried to get his heart-rate down. Carswell read a note, spoke without looking up.
‘What were you doing in Ratho this morning?’
‘Sir?’
‘A body was hauled out of the canal. I’ve had word you were there. Not exactly Craigmillar, is it?’
‘I was just in the area.’
‘Apparently you ID’d the body?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You’re a handy man to have around.’ Heavy with irony. ‘How did you know him?’
Blurt it out or clam up? Neither. Dissemble. ‘I recognised him as one of our snitches, sir.’
Carswell looked up. ‘Whose in particular?’
‘DI Flower’s.’
‘Were you looking to poach him?’ Rebus kept his mouth shut, letting Carswell draw his own conclusions. ‘On the very morning he took a tumble into the canal … strange coincidence?’
Rebus shrugged. ‘These things happen, sir.’ He fixed his eyes on Carswell’s. They stared one another out.
‘Dismissed, Inspector,’ Carswell said.
Rebus didn’t blink until he was back in the corridor.
He phoned St Leonard’s from Fettes, his hand shaking. But Gill wasn’t there, and nobody seemed to know where she was. Rebus asked the switchboard to page her, then asked to be put through to CID. Siobhan answered.
‘Is Brian there?’
‘I haven’t seen him for a couple of hours. Are you two cooking something up?’
‘The only thing cooking around here is my fucking goose. When you see him, tell him to call. And pass the same message along to Gill Templer.’
He broke the connection before she could say anything. Probably she’d have offered to help, and the one thing Rebus didn’t want right now was anyone else involved. Lying to protect himself … lying to protect Gill Templer … Gill … he had questions for her, urgent questions. He tried her home number, left a message on the answering machine, then tried Holmes’s home number: another machine, same message. Call me.
Wait. Think.
He’d asked Holmes to read up on the Spaven case, and that meant going through the files. When Great London Road police station had been burnt to the ground, a lot of files had gone up with it, but not the older stuff, because by then the older files had been shipped out to make space. They were stored with all the other ancient cases, all the clanking old skeletons, in a warehouse near Granton Harbour. Rebus had guessed Holmes would sign them out, but maybe not …
It was a ten-minute drive from Fettes to the warehouse. Rebus did it in seven. He allowed himself a grin when he saw Holmes’s car in the car park. Rebus walked over to the main door, pulled it open, and was in a vast, dark, echoing space. Regimented rows of green metal shelves ran the length of the warehouse, filled with heavy-duty cardboard boxes, inside which lay the mouldering history of the Lothian and Borders force – and the City of Edinburgh force until its demise – from the 1950s to the 1970s. Documents were still arriving: tea-chests with labels hanging from them sat waiting to be unpacked, and it looked like a changeover was taking place – lidded plastic boxes replacing heavy-duty board. A small elderly man, very trim, with a black moustache and jam-jar glasses, was marching towards Rebus.
‘Yes, can I help you?’
The man defined ‘clerical’. When he wasn’t looking at the floor, he was staring off somewhere past Rebus’s right ear. He wore a grey nylon overall over a white shirt with frayed collar and green tweed tie. Pens and pencils protruded from his top pocket.
Rebus showed his warrant card. ‘I’m looking for a colleague, DS Holmes, I think he may be looking through some old casenotes.’
The man was studying the warrant card. He walked over to a clipboard and wrote down Rebus’s name and rank, plus date and time of arrival.
‘Is that necessary?’ Rebus asked.
The man looked like he’d never in his life been asked such a thing. ‘Paperwork,’ he snapped, looking around at the warehouse’s contents. ‘It’s all necessary, or I wouldn’t be here.’
And he smiled, the overhead lighting glinting from his lenses. ‘This way.’
He led Rebus down an alleyway of boxes, then took a right turn and finally, after a moment’s hesitation, a left. They came into a clearing, where Brian Holmes sat at what looked like an old school desk, inkwell intact. There was no chair, so he was using an upturned box. His elbows rested on the desk, head in hands. There was a lamp on the desk, bathing the scene in light. The clerk coughed.
‘Someone to see you.’
Holmes turned, stood up when he saw who it was. Rebus turned quickly to the clerk.
‘Thanks for your help.’
‘No trouble. I don’t get many visitors.’
The little man shuffled away, footsteps receding into the distance.
‘Don’t worry,’ Holmes said. ‘I’ve laid a trail of breadcrumbs so we can find our way back.’ He looked around. ‘Isn’t this the creepiest place you’ve ever been?’
‘It’s straight into the top five. Listen, Brian, there’s a problem.’ He held up his right hand. ‘Fan.’ Then his left. ‘Shit.’ He clapped both hands together. The sound reverberated through the warehouse.
‘Tell me.’
‘The CC Rider’s opening an inquiry into the Spaven case, prior to reopening the case itself. And he’s managed to put in charge someone I recently rubbed up the wrong way.’
‘Silly you.’
‘Silly me. So no doubt they’ll be down here some day soon to lift the casenotes. And I don’t want them lifting you.’
Holmes looked at the bulging files, the faded black ink on each cover. ‘The files could get lost, couldn’t they?’
‘They could. Two problems. One, that would look highly suspicious. Two, I’m assuming Mr Clipboard knows which files you’ve been consulting.’
‘That’s true,’ Holmes conceded. ‘And it went down on his sheet.’
‘Along with your name.’
‘We could try slipping him some cash.’
‘He doesn’t look the type. He’s not in this for money, is he?’
Holmes looked thoughtful. He also looked terrible: unevenly shaven, his hair uncombed and needing a trim. The bags under his eyes could have carried half a hundredweight of coal.
‘Look,’ he said at last, ‘I’m halfway through … more than halfway. If I burn the candle tonight, maybe speed up my reading, I could have it finished by tomorrow.’
Rebus nodded slowly. ‘What do you think so far?’ He was almost scared to touch the files, to flip through them. It wasn’t history, it was archaeology.
‘I think your typing hasn’t improved. Straight answer: there’s something dodgy going on, that much I can read between the lines. I can see exactly where you’re covering up, rewriting the true story to fit your version. You weren’t quite so subtle in those days. Geddes’ version reads better, more confident. He glosses over stuff, he’s not afraid to understate. What I’d like to know is, what was the story with him and Spaven in the first place? I know you told me they served together in Burma or somewhere; how did they come to fall out? See, if we knew that, we’d know how valid the chip on Geddes’ shoulder was, and maybe how far it would take him.’
Rebus clapped his hands again, this time in muffled applause.
‘That’s good going.’
‘So give me another
day, see what else I come up with. John, I want to do this for you.’
‘And if they catch you?’
‘I’ll talk my way out, don’t worry.’
Rebus’s pager sounded. He looked to Holmes.
‘Sooner you go,’ Holmes said, ‘sooner I can get back to it.’
Rebus patted him on the shoulder and headed back along the stacks. Brian Holmes: friend. Difficult to equate with the person who had roughed up Mental Minto. Schizophrenia, the policeman’s ally: a dual personality came in handy …
He asked the clerk if he could use a telephone. There was one on the wall. He called in.
‘DI Rebus.’
‘Yes, Inspector, apparently you’ve been trying to reach DCI Templer.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, I have a location for her. She’s in Ratho, at some restaurant.’
Rebus slammed down the phone, cursing himself for not thinking of it sooner.
The wooden walkway where McLure’s body had lain had been blown dry by the wind, leaving nothing to indicate that a death had occurred so recently. The ducks were skimming the water; one of the boats had just left with half a dozen passengers; diners in the restaurant chewed on their food and stared out at the two figures on the canal bank.
‘I was in meetings half the day,’ Gill said. ‘I didn’t hear about it until an hour ago. What happened?’
She had her hands deep in coat pockets, the coat a cream Burberry. She looked sad.
‘Ask the pathologist. There was a cut on McLure’s head, but that doesn’t tell us a lot. He could have hit it when he slipped.’
‘Or he could have been whacked and pushed in.’
‘Or he could have jumped.’ Rebus shivered; the death reminded him of the Mitchison options. ‘My guess is, all the autopsy will tell us is whether he was alive when he hit the water. Right now I’ll tell you he was probably alive, which still doesn’t answer the question: accident, suicide, or a whack and a push?’ He watched Gill turn away, begin to walk the towpath. He caught up with her. It was starting to rain again, small drops, sparse. He watched them land on her coat, darkening it by degrees.
‘Bang goes my big collar,’ she said, an edge to her voice. Rebus turned up the collar of her coat, and she caught the joke, smiled.
‘There’ll be others,’ he told her. ‘Meantime, a man’s dead – don’t forget that.’ She nodded. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘the ACC had me on the carpet this afternoon.’
‘The Spaven case?’
He nodded. ‘Plus he wanted to know what I was doing out here this morning.’
She glanced towards him. ‘What did you say?’
‘I didn’t say anything. But the thing is … McLure ties in to Spaven.’
‘What?’ He had her full attention now.
‘They palled around years back.’
‘Jesus, why didn’t you tell me?’
Rebus shrugged. ‘It didn’t seem an issue.’
Gill was thinking hard. ‘But if Carswell links McLure to Spaven …?’
‘Then my being out here on the very morning Feardie Fergie met the big cheerio is going to look just a tad suspicious.’
‘You have to tell him.’
‘I don’t think so.’
She turned to him, her hands gripping his lapels. ‘You’re protecting me from the fallout.’
The rain was growing heavier, drops sparkling in her hair. ‘Let’s just say I’m radiation-proof,’ he said, leading her by the hand into the bar.
They ate a snack, neither of them bringing an appetite with them. Rebus’s came with a whisky; Gill’s with Highland spring water. They sat facing one another at an alcove table. The place was a third full, nobody near enough to overhear.
‘Who else knew?’ Rebus said.
‘You’re the first person I’ve told.’
‘Well, they could find out anyway. Maybe Fergie’s nerve went, maybe he owned up. Maybe they just guessed.’
‘Plenty of maybes.’
‘What else have we got?’ He paused, chewing. ‘What about the other snitches you inherited?’
‘What about them?’
‘Snitches hear things, maybe Fergie wasn’t the only one who knew about this drugs thing.’
Gill was shaking her head. ‘I asked him at the time. He seemed confident it was being kept very quiet. You’re assuming he was killed. Remember, he has a history of bad nerves, mental problems. Maybe the fear just got too much for him.’
‘Do us both a favour, Gill, stick close to the investigation. See what the neighbours say: did he have any visitors this morning? Anyone out of the ordinary or suspicious? See if you can check his phone calls. My bet is it’ll go down as an accident, which means no one’s going to be working too hard on it. Push them, ask favours if you have to. Did he normally go for morning walks?’
She was nodding. ‘Anything else?’
‘Yes … who’s got the keys to his house?’
Gill made the calls, and they drank coffee until a DC turned up with the keys, fresh from the mortuary. Gill had asked about the Spaven case, Rebus giving only vague answers. Then they’d talked about Johnny Bible, Allan Mitchison … all shop-talk, steering a wide berth around anything personal. But at one point they’d locked eyes, shared a smile, knowing the questions were there, whether they asked them or not.
‘So,’ Rebus said, ‘what do you do now?’
‘About the gen McLure gave me?’ she sighed. ‘There’s nowhere to go with it, it was all so vague – no names or details, no date for the meeting … it’s gone.’
‘Well, maybe.’ Rebus lifted the keys, shook them. ‘Depends whether you want to come snooping or not.’
The pavements in Ratho were narrow. To keep his distance from Gill, Rebus walked on the road. They didn’t say anything, didn’t need to. This was their second evening together; Rebus felt comfortable sharing everything but close proximity.
‘That’s his car.’
Gill walked around the Volvo, peered in through the windows. On the dashboard a small red light was blinking: the automatic alarm. ‘Leather upholstery. Looks straight out of the showroom.’
‘Typical Feardie Fergie car though: nice and safe.’
‘I don’t know,’ Gill mused. ‘It’s the turbo version.’
Rebus hadn’t noticed. He thought of his own aged Saab. ‘Wonder what’ll happen to it …’
‘Is this his house?’
They walked up to the door, used a mortise and a yale to open it. Rebus turned on the hall lights.
‘Do you know if any of our lot has been in here?’ Rebus asked.
‘As far as I know, we’re the first. Why?’
‘Just trying out a scenario or two. Say someone came to see him here, and they frightened him. Say they told him to take a walk …’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, he still had the presence of mind to double-lock the door. So either he wasn’t that scared …’
‘Or whoever was with him double-locked the door, assuming that’s what McLure would normally do.’
Rebus nodded. ‘One more thing. Alarm system.’ He pointed to a box on the wall, its light a steady green. ‘It hasn’t been switched on. If he was in a flap, he might forget. If he thought he wasn’t coming back alive, he wouldn’t bother.’
‘He might not bother for a short stroll either though.’
Rebus conceded the point. ‘Final scenario: whoever double-locked the door forgot or plain didn’t know the alarm was there. See, door double-locked but alarm system off – it’s not consistent. And someone like Fergie, Volvo driver, my guess is he’d always be consistent.’
‘Well, let’s see if he had anything worth nicking.’
They walked into the living room. It was crammed to bursting with furniture and nick-nacks, some modern, a lot looking like they’d been handed down the generations. But though overfilled, the room was neat, dust-free, with expensive-looking rugs on the floor – far from fire-damaged stock.
‘Supposing someone
did come to see him,’ Gill said. ‘Maybe we should dust for prints.’
‘Definitely maybe. Get forensics on to it first thing.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Rebus smiled. ‘Sorry, ma’am.’
They kept their hands in their pockets as they walked through the room: the reflex to touch things was always strong.
‘No signs of a struggle, and nothing looks like it’s been put back in the wrong place.’
‘Agreed.’
Past the living room there was another, shorter hallway, leading to a guest bedroom and what had probably once been the lounge: only used when visitors called. Fergus McLure had turned it into an office. There was paperwork everywhere, and on a fold-out dining table sat a new-looking computer.
‘I suppose someone’s going to have to go through this lot,’ Gill said, not relishing the task.
‘I hate computers,’ Rebus said. He had noticed a fat notepad beside the keyboard. He slipped a hand from his pocket and picked it up by its edges, angling it into the light. There were indents in the paper from the last written sheet. Gill came over to see.
‘Don’t tell me.’
‘Can’t make it out, and I don’t think the pencil trick would help.’
They looked at one another, spoke their thoughts together.
‘Howdenhall.’
‘Check the bins next?’ Gill said.
‘You do it, I’ll look upstairs.’
Rebus went back into the front hall, saw more doors, tried them: a small old-fashioned kitchen, family pictures on the walls; a toilet; a box room. He climbed the stairs, his feet sinking into deep-pile carpeting which muffled all sound. It was a quiet house; Rebus got the feeling it had been quiet even when McLure had been there. Another guest bedroom, large bathroom – unmodernised like the kitchen – and main bedroom. Rebus gave his attention to the usual places: beneath the bed, mattress and pillows; bedside cabinets, chest of drawers, wardrobe. Everything was obsessively arranged: cardigans folded just so and layered by colour; slippers and shoes in a row – all the browns together, then the blacks. There was a small bookcase boasting an uninspired collection: histories of carpets and Eastern art; a photographic tour of the vineyards of France.
A life without complications.
Either that or the dirt on Feardie Fergie was elsewhere.
