by Ian Rankin
‘So,’ Rebus said, ‘you drove back into town.’
‘That’s right.’ MacFarlane took another sip of coffee. ‘I don’t know why, but I decided to check my answering machine for calls.’
‘You mean when you got home?’
MacFarlane shook his head. ‘No, from the car. I called home from my car-phone and got the answering machine to play back any messages.’
Rebus was impressed. ‘That’s clever,’ he said.
MacFarlane smiled again, but the smile soon vanished. ‘One of the messages was from Moira,’ he said. ‘She wanted to see me.’
‘At that hour?’ MacFarlane shrugged. ‘Did she say why she wanted to see you?’
‘No. She sounded … strange.’
‘Strange?’
‘A bit … I don’t know, distant maybe.’
‘Did you get the feeling she was on her own when she called?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘Did you call her back?’
‘Yes. Her answering machine was on. I left a message.’
‘Would you say you’re the jealous type, Mr MacFarlane?’
‘What?’ MacFarlane sounded surprised by the question. He seemed to give it serious thought. ‘No more so than the next man,’ he said at last.
‘Why would anyone want to kill her?’
MacFarlane stared at the table, shaking his head slowly.
‘Go on,’ said Rebus, sighing, growing impatient. ‘You were saying how you got her message.’
‘Well, I went straight to her flat. It was late, but I knew if she was asleep I could always let myself in.’
‘Oh?’ Rebus was interested. ‘How?’
‘I had a spare key,’ MacFarlane explained.
Rebus got up from his chair and walked to the far wall and back, deep in thought.
‘I don’t suppose,’ he said, ‘you’ve got any idea when Moira made that call?’
MacFarlane shook his head. ‘But the machine will have logged it,’ he said. Rebus was more impressed than ever. Technology was a wonderful thing. What’s more, he was impressed by MacFarlane. If the man was a murderer, then he was a very good one, for he had fooled Rebus into thinking him innocent. It was crazy. There was nothing to point to him not being guilty. But all the same, a feeling was a feeling, and Rebus most definitely had a feeling.
‘I want to see that machine,’ he said. ‘And I want to hear the message on it. I want to hear Moira’s last words.’
It was interesting how the simplest cases could become so complex. There was still no doubt in the minds of those around Rebus – his superiors and those below him – that John MacFarlane was guilty of murder. They had all the proof they needed, every last bit of it circumstantial.
MacFarlane’s car was clean: no bloodstained clothes stashed in the boot. There were no prints on the chopping-knife, though MacFarlane’s prints were found elsewhere in the flat, not surprising given that he’d visited that night, as well as on many a previous one. No prints either on the kitchen sink and taps, though the murderer had washed a bloody knife. Rebus thought that curious. And as for motive: jealousy, a falling-out, a past indiscretion discovered. The CID had seen them all.
Murder by stabbing was confirmed and the time of death narrowed down to a quarter of an hour either side of three in the morning. MacFarlane claimed that at that time he was driving towards Edinburgh, but had no witnesses to corroborate the claim. There was no blood to be found on MacFarlane’s clothing, but, as Rebus himself knew, that didn’t mean the man wasn’t a killer.
More interesting, however, was that MacFarlane denied making the call to the police. Yet someone – in fact, whoever murdered Moira Bitter – had made it. And more interesting even than this was the telephone answering machine.
Rebus went to MacFarlane’s flat in Liberton to investigate. The traffic was busy coming into town, but quiet heading out. Liberton was one of Edinburgh’s many anonymous middle-class districts, substantial houses, small shops, a busy thoroughfare. It looked innocuous at midnight, and was even safer by day.
What MacFarlane had termed a ‘flat’ comprised, in fact, the top two storeys of a vast, detached house. Rebus roamed the building, not sure if he was looking for anything in particular. He found little. MacFarlane led a rigorous and regimented life and had the home to accommodate such a lifestyle. One room had been turned into a makeshift gymnasium, with weightlifting equipment and the like. There was an office for business use, a study for private use. The main bedroom was decidedly masculine in taste, though a framed painting of a naked woman had been removed from one wall and tucked behind a chair. Rebus thought he detected Moira Bitter’s influence at work.
In the wardrobe were a few pieces of her clothing and a pair of her shoes. A snapshot of her had been framed and placed on MacFarlane’s bedside table. Rebus studied the photograph for a long time, then sighed and left the bedroom, closing the door after him. Who knew when John MacFarlane would see his home again?
The answering machine was in the living-room. Rebus played the tape of the previous night’s calls. Moira Bitter’s voice was clipped and confident, her message to the point: ‘Hello.’ Then a pause. ‘I need to see you. Come round as soon as you get this message. Love you.’
MacFarlane had told Rebus that the display unit on the machine showed time of call. Moira’s call registered at 3.50 a.m., about forty-five minutes after her death. There was room for some discrepancy, but not three-quarters of an hour’s worth. Rebus scratched his chin and pondered. He played the tape again. ‘Hello.’ Then the pause. ‘I need to see you.’ He stopped the tape and played it again, this time with the volume up and his ear close to the machine. That pause was curious and the sound quality on the tape was poor. He rewound and listened to another call from the same evening. The quality was better, the voice much clearer. Then he listened to Moira again. Were these recording machines infallible? Of course not. The time displayed could have been tampered with. The recording itself could be a fake. After all, whose word did he have that this was the voice of Moira Bitter? Only John MacFarlane’s. But John MacFarlane had been caught leaving the scene of a murder. And now Rebus was being presented with a sort of an alibi for the man. Yes, the tape could well be a fake, used by MacFarlane to substantiate his story, but stupidly not put into use until after the time of death. Still, from what Rebus had heard from Moira’s own answering machine, the voice was certainly similar to her own. The lab boys could sort it out with their clever machines. One technician in particular owed him a rather large favour.
Rebus shook his head. This still wasn’t making much sense. He played the tape again and again.
‘Hello.’ Pause. ‘I need to see you.’
‘Hello.’ Pause. ‘I need to see you.’
‘Hello.’ Pause. ‘I need—’
And suddenly it became a little clearer in his mind. He ejected the tape and slipped it into his jacket pocket, then picked up the telephone and called the station. He asked to speak to Detective Constable Brian Holmes. The voice, when it came on the line, was tired but amused.
‘Don’t tell me,’ Holmes said, ‘let me guess. You want me to drop everything and run an errand for you.’
‘You must be psychic, Brian. Two errands really. Firstly, last night’s calls. Get the recording of them and search for one from John MacFarlane, claiming he’d just killed his girlfriend. Make a copy of it and wait there for me. I’ve got another tape for you, and I want them both taken to the lab. Warn them you’re coming—’
‘And tell them it’s priority, I know. It’s always priority. They’ll say what they always say: give us four days.’
‘Not this time,’ Rebus said. ‘Ask for Bill Costain and tell him Rebus is collecting on his favour. He’s to shelve what he’s doing. I want a result today, not next week.’
‘What’s the favour you’re collecting on?’
‘I caught him smoking dope in the lab toilets last month.’
Holmes laughed. ‘The world’s goin
g to pot,’ he said. Rebus groaned at the joke and put down the receiver. He needed to speak with John MacFarlane again. Not about lovers this time, but about friends.
Rebus rang the doorbell a third time and at last heard a voice from within.
‘Jesus, hold on! I’m coming.’
The man who answered the door was tall, thin, with wire-framed glasses perched on his nose. He peered at Rebus and ran his fingers through his hair.
‘Mr Thomson?’ Rebus asked. ‘Kenneth Thomson?’
‘Yes,’ said the man, ‘that’s right.’
Rebus flipped open his ID. ‘Detective Inspector John Rebus,’ he said by way of introduction. ‘May I come in?’
Kenneth Thomson held open the door. ‘Please do,’ he said. ‘Will a cheque be all right?’
‘A cheque?’
‘I take it you’re here about the parking tickets,’ said Thomson. ‘I’d have got round to them eventually, believe me. It’s just that I’ve been hellish busy, and what with one thing and another …’
‘No, sir,’ said Rebus, his smile as cold as a church pew, ‘nothing to do with parking fines.’
‘Oh?’ Thomson pushed his glasses back up his nose and looked at Rebus. ‘Then what’s the problem?’
‘It’s about Miss Moira Bitter,’ said Rebus.
‘Moira? What about her?’
‘She’s dead, sir.’
Rebus had followed Thomson into a cluttered room overflowing with bundles of magazines and newspapers. A hi-fi sat in one corner, and covering the wall next to it were shelves filled with cassette tapes. These had an orderly look to them, as though they had been indexed, each tape’s spine carrying an identifying number.
Thomson, who had been clearing a chair for Rebus to sit on, froze at the detective’s words.
‘Dead?’ he gasped. ‘How?’
‘She was murdered, sir. We think John MacFarlane did it.’ ‘John?’ Thomson’s face was quizzical, then sceptical, then resigned. ‘But why?’
‘We don’t know that yet, sir. I thought you might be able to help.’
‘Of course I’ll help if I can. Sit down, please.’
Rebus perched on the chair, while Thomson pushed aside some newspapers and settled himself on the sofa.
‘You’re a writer, I believe,’ said Rebus.
Thomson nodded distractedly. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Freelance journalism, food and drink, travel, that sort of thing. Plus the occasional commission to write a book. That’s what I’m doing now, actually. Writing a book.’
‘Oh? I like books myself. What’s it about?’
‘Don’t laugh,’ said Thomson, ‘but it’s a history of the haggis.’
‘The haggis?’ Rebus couldn’t disguise a smile in his voice, warmer this time: the church pew had been given a cushion. He cleared his throat noisily, glancing around the room, noting the piles of books leaning precariously against walls, the files and folders and newsprint cuttings. ‘You must do a lot of research,’ he said appreciatively.
‘Sometimes,’ said Thomson. Then he shook his head. ‘I still can’t believe it. About Moira, I mean. About John.’
Rebus took out his notebook, more for effect than anything else. ‘You were Miss Bitter’s lover for a while,’ he stated.
‘That’s right, Inspector.’
‘But then she went off with Mr MacFarlane.’
‘Right again.’ A hint of bitterness had crept into Thomson’s voice. ‘I was very angry at the time, but I got over it.’
‘Did you still see Miss Bitter?’
‘No.’
‘What about Mr MacFarlane?’
‘No again. We spoke on the telephone a couple of times. It always seemed to end in a shouting match. We used to be like, well, it’s a cliché, I suppose, but we used to be like brothers.’
‘Yes,’ said Rebus, ‘so Mr MacFarlane told me.’
‘Oh?’ Thomson sounded interested. ‘What else did he say?’
‘Not much really.’ Rebus rose from his perch and went to the window, holding aside the net curtain to stare out onto the street below. ‘He said you’d known each other for years.’
‘Since school,’ Thomson added.
Rebus nodded. ‘And he said you drove a black Ford Escort. That’ll be it down there, parked across the street?’
Thomson came to the window. ‘Yes,’ he agreed, uncertainly, ‘that’s it. But I don’t see what—’
‘I noticed it as I was parking my own car,’ Rebus continued, brushing past Thomson’s interruption. He let the curtain fall and turned back into the room. ‘I noticed you’ve got a car alarm. I suppose you must get a lot of burglaries around here.’
‘It’s not the most salubrious part of town,’ Thomson said. ‘Not all writers are like Jeffrey Archer.’
‘Did money have anything to do with it?’ Rebus asked. Thomson paused.
‘With what, Inspector?’
‘With Miss Bitter leaving you for Mr MacFarlane. He’s not short of a bob or two, is he?’
Thomson’s voice rose perceptibly. ‘Look, I really can’t see what this has to do with—’
‘Your car was broken into a few months ago, wasn’t it?’ Rebus was examining a pile of magazines on the floor now. ‘I saw the report. They stole your radio and your car phone.’
‘Yes.’
‘I notice you’ve replaced the car phone.’ He glanced up at Thomson, smiled, and continued browsing.
‘Of course,’ said Thomson. He seemed confused now, unable to fathom where the conversation was leading.
‘A journalist would need a car phone, wouldn’t he?’ Rebus observed. ‘So people could keep in touch, contact him at any time. Is that right?’
‘Absolutely right, Inspector.’
Rebus threw the magazine back onto the pile and nodded slowly. ‘Great things, car phones.’ He walked over towards Thomson’s desk. It was a small flat. This room obviously served a double purpose as study and living-room. Not that Thomson entertained many visitors. He was too aggressive for many people, too secretive for others. So John MacFarlane had said.
On the desk there was more clutter, though in some appearance of organisation. There was also a neat word processor, and beside it a telephone. And next to the telephone sat an answering machine.
‘Yes,’ Rebus repeated. ‘You need to be in contact.’ Rebus smiled towards Thomson. ‘Communication, that’s the secret. And I’ll tell you something else about journalists.’
‘What?’ Unable to comprehend Rebus’s direction, Thomson’s tone had become that of someone bored with a conversation. He shoved his hands deep into his pockets.
‘Journalists are hoarders.’ Rebus made this sound like some great wisdom. His eyes took in the room again. ‘I mean, near-pathological hoarders. They can’t bear to throw things away, because they never know when something might become useful. Am I right?’
Thomson shrugged.
‘Yes,’ said Rebus, ‘I bet I am. Look at these cassettes, for example.’ He went to where the rows of tapes were neatly displayed. ‘What are they? Interviews, that sort of thing?’
‘Mostly, yes,’ Thomson agreed.
‘And you still keep them, even though they’re years old?’
Thomson shrugged again. ‘So I’m a hoarder.’
But Rebus had noticed something on the top shelf, some brown cardboard boxes. He reached up and lifted one down. Inside were more tapes, marked with months and years. But these tapes were smaller. Rebus gestured with the box towards Thomson, his eyes seeking an explanation.
Thomson smiled uneasily. ‘Answering machine messages,’ he said.
‘You keep these, too?’ Rebus sounded amazed.
‘Well,’ Thomson said, ‘someone may agree to something over the phone, an interview or something, then deny it later. I need them as records of promises made.’
Rebus nodded, understanding now. He replaced the brown box on its shelf. He still had his back to Thomson when the telephone rang, a sharp electronic sound.
&nb
sp; ‘Sorry,’ Thomson apologised, going to answer it.
‘Not at all.’
Thomson picked up the receiver. ‘Hello?’ He listened, then frowned. ‘Of course,’ he said finally, holding the receiver out towards Rebus. ‘It’s for you, Inspector.’
Rebus raised a surprised eyebrow and accepted the receiver. It was, as he had known it would be, Detective Constable Holmes.
‘Okay,’ Holmes said. ‘Costain no longer owes you that favour. He’s listened to both tapes. He hasn’t run all the necessary tests yet, but he’s pretty convinced.’
‘Go on.’ Rebus was looking at Thomson, who was sitting, hands clasping knees, on the arm of the chair.
‘The call we received last night,’ said Holmes, ‘the one from John MacFarlane admitting to the murder of Moira Bitter, originated from a portable telephone.’
‘Interesting,’ said Rebus, his eyes on Thomson. ‘And what about the other one?’
‘Well, the tape you gave me seems to be twice-removed.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means,’ said Holmes, ‘that according to Costain it’s not just a recording, it’s the recording of a recording.’ Rebus nodded, satisfied.
‘Okay, thanks, Brian.’ He put down the receiver.
‘Good news or bad?’ Thomson asked.
‘A bit of both,’ answered Rebus thoughtfully. Thomson had risen to his feet.
‘I feel like a drink, Inspector. Can I get you one?’
‘It’s a bit early for me, I’m afraid,’ Rebus said, looking at his watch. It was eleven o’clock: opening time. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘just a small one.’
‘The whisky’s in the kitchen,’ Thomson explained. ‘I’ll just be a moment.’
‘Fine, sir, fine.’
Rebus listened as Thomson left the room and headed off towards the kitchen. He stood beside the desk, thinking through what he now knew. Then, hearing Thomson returning from the kitchen, floor-boards bending beneath his weight, he picked up the wastepaper basket from below the desk, and, as Thomson entered the room, proceeded to empty the contents in a heap on the sofa.
