by Ian Rankin
‘I’ve talked to the guards on the gate. They don’t remember seeing anyone suspicious. As one of them said, “All these bloody tourists look the same to me.”’
Rebus smiled at this, but then someone was tugging at his sleeve, a small handbagged woman with sunglasses and thick lipstick.
‘Sorry, could I ask you to move over a bit?’ Her accent was American, her voice a nasal sing-song. ‘Lawrence wants a picture of me with that gorgeous skyline behind me.’
Rebus smiled at her, even made a slight bow, and moved a couple of yards out of the way, Holmes following suit.
‘Thanks!’ Lawrence called from behind his camera, freeing a hand so that he could wave it towards them. Rebus noticed that the man wore a yellow sticker on his chest. He looked back to the woman, now posing like the film star she so clearly wasn’t, and saw that she too had a badge, her name – Diana – felt-tipped beneath some package company’s logo.
‘I wonder …’ Rebus said quietly.
‘Sir?’
‘Maybe you were asking the wrong question at the gate, Brian. Yes, the right idea but the wrong question. Come on, let’s go back and ask again. We’ll see how eagle-eyed our friends really are.’
They passed the photographer – his badge called him Larry rather than Lawrence – just as the shutter clicked.
‘Great,’ he said to nobody in particular. ‘Just one more, sweetheart.’ As he wound the film, Rebus paused and stood beside him, then made a square from the thumb and forefinger of both hands and peered through it towards the woman Diana, as though assessing the composition of the picture. Larry caught the gesture.
‘You a professional?’ he asked, his tone just short of awe.
‘Only in a manner of speaking, Larry,’ said Rebus, turning away again. Holmes was left standing there, staring at the photographer. He wondered whether to shrug and smile again, as he had done with the doctor. What the hell. He shrugged. He smiled. And he followed Rebus towards the gate.
Rebus went alone to the home of Sir Walter Scott, just off the Corstorphine Road near the zoo. As he stepped out of his car, he could have sworn he detected a faint wafting of animal dung. There was another car in the driveway, one which, with a sinking heart, he recognised. As he walked up to the front door of the house, he saw that the curtains were closed in the upstairs windows, while downstairs, painted wooden shutters had been pulled across to block out the daylight.
The door was opened by Superintendent ‘Farmer’ Watson.
‘I thought that was your car, sir,’ Rebus said as Watson ushered him into the hall. When he spoke, the superintendent’s voice was a whispered growl.
‘He’s still up there, you know.’
‘Who?’
‘Sir Walter, of course!’ Flecks of saliva burst from the corners of Watson’s mouth. Rebus thought it judicious to show not even the mildest amusement.
‘I left the doctor in charge.’
‘Dr Jameson couldn’t organise a brewery visit. What the hell did you think you were doing?’
‘I had … have an investigation on my hands, sir. I thought I could be more usefully employed than playing undertaker.’
‘He’s stiff now, you know,’ Watson said, his anger having diminished. He didn’t exactly know why it was that he could never stay angry with Rebus; there was something about the man. ‘They don’t think they can get him down the stairs. They’ve tried twice, but he got stuck both times.’
Rebus pursed his lips, the only way he could prevent them spreading into a wide grin. Watson saw this and saw, too, that the situation was not without a trace of humour.
‘Is that why you’re here, sir? Placating the widow?’
‘No, I’m here on a personal level. Sir Walter and Lady Scott were friends of mine. That is, Sir Walter was, and Lady Scott still is.’
Rebus nodded slowly. Christ, he was thinking, the poor bugger’s only been dead a couple of hours and here’s old Farmer Watson already trying to … But no, surely not. Watson was many things, but not callous, not like that. Rebus rebuked himself silently, and in so doing missed most of what Watson was saying.
‘—in here.’
And a door from the hallway was being opened. Rebus was being shown into a spacious living-room – or were they called drawing-rooms in houses like this? Walking across to where Lady Scott sat by the fireside was like walking across a dance hall.
‘This is Inspector Rebus,’ Watson was saying. ‘One of my men.’
Lady Scott looked up from her handkerchief. ‘How do you do?’ She offered him a delicate hand, which he lightly touched with his own, in place of his usual firm handshake. Lady Scott was in her mid fifties, a well-preserved monument of neat lines and precise movements. Rebus had seen her accompanying her husband to various functions in the city, had come across her photograph in the paper when he had received his knighthood. He saw, too, from the corner of his eye, the way Watson looked at her, a mixture of pity and something more than pity, as though he wanted at the same time to pat her hand and hug her to him.
Who would want Sir Walter dead? That was, in a sense, what he had come here to ask. Still the question itself was valid. Rebus could think of adversaries – those Scott had crossed in his professional life, those he had helped put behind bars, those, perhaps, who resented everything from his title to the bright blue socks that had become something of a trademark after he admitted on a radio show that he wore no other colour on his feet …
‘Lady Scott, I’m sorry to intrude on you at a time like this. I know it’s difficult, but there are a couple of questions …’
‘Please, ask your questions.’ She gestured for him to sit on the sofa – the sofa on which Farmer Watson had already made himself comfortable. Rebus sat down awkwardly. This whole business was awkward. He knew the chess player’s motto: if in doubt, play a pawn. Or as the Scots themselves would say, ca’ canny. But that had never been his style, and he couldn’t change now. As ever, he decided to sacrifice his queen.
‘We found a note in Sir Walter’s binocular case.’
‘He didn’t own a pair of binoculars.’ Her voice was firm.
‘He probably bought them this morning. Did he say where he was going?’
‘No, just out. I was upstairs. He called that he was “popping out for an hour or two”, and that was all.’
‘What note?’ This from Watson. What note indeed. Rebus wondered why Lady Scott hadn’t asked the same thing.
‘A typed note, telling Sir Walter to be at the top of the Scott Monument at midday.’ Rebus paused, his attention wholly on Sir Walter’s widow. ‘There have been others, haven’t there? Other notes?’
She nodded slowly. ‘Yes. I found them by accident. I wasn’t prying, I’m not like that. I was in Walter’s office – he always called it that, his “office”, never his study – looking for something, an old newspaper I think. Yes, there was an article I wanted to reread, and I’d searched high and low for the blessed paper. I was looking in Walter’s office, and I found some … letters.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘He’d kept them quiet from me. Well, I suppose he had his reasons. I never said anything to him about finding them.’ She smiled ruefully. ‘I used to think sometimes that the unsaid was what kept our marriage alive. That may seem cruel. Now he’s gone, I wish we’d told one another more …’
She dabbed at a liquid eye with the corner of her handkerchief, wrapped as it was around one finger, her free hand twisting and twisting the corners. To Rebus, it looked as if she were using it as a tourniquet.
‘Do you know where these other notes are?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know. Walter may have moved them.’
‘Shall we see?’
The office was untidy in the best legal tradition: any available flat surface, including the carpet, seemed to be fair game for stacks of brown folders tied with ribbon, huge bulging manilla envelopes, magazines and newspapers, books and learned journals. Two walls consisted entirely of bookcases, from floor to near the ornate but
flaking ceiling. One bookcase, glass-fronted, contained what Rebus reckoned must be the collected works of the other Sir Walter Scott. The glass doors looked as though they hadn’t been opened in a decade; the books themselves might never have been read. Still, it was a nice touch – to have one’s study so thoroughly infiltrated by one’s namesake.
‘Ah, they’re still here.’ Lady Scott had slid a concertina-style folder out from beneath a pile of similar such files. ‘Shall we take them back through to the morning-room?’ She looked around her. ‘I don’t like it in here … not now.’
Her Edinburgh accent, with its drawn vowels, had turned ‘morning’ into ‘mourning’. Either that, thought Rebus, or she’d said ‘mourning-room’ in the first place. He would have liked to have stayed a little longer in Sir Walter’s office, but was compelled to follow. Back in her chair, Lady Scott untied the ribbon around the file and let it fall open. The file itself was made up of a dozen or more compartments, but only one seemed to contain any paperwork. She pulled out the letters and handed them to Watson, who glanced through them wordlessly before handing them to Rebus.
Sir Walter had taken each note from its envelope, but had paper-clipped the envelopes to the backs of their respective notes. So Rebus was able to ascertain that the notes had been posted between three weeks and one week ago, and all bore a central London postmark. He read the three notes slowly to himself, then reread them. The first came quickly to its point.
I ENCLOSE A LETTER. THERE ARE PLENTY MORE WHERE IT CAME FROM. YOU WILL HEAR FROM ME AGAIN.
The second fleshed out the blackmail.
I HAVE ELEVEN MORE LETTERS. IF YOU’D LIKE THEM BACK, THEY WILL COST £2,000. GET THE MONEY.
The third, posted a week ago, finalised things.
PUT THE MONEY IN A CARRIER BAG. GO TO THE CAFE ROYAL AT 9 P.M. FRIDAY. STAND AT THE BAR AND HAVE A DRINK. LEAVE THE BAG THERE AND GO MAKE A PHONE CALL. SPEND TWO MINUTES AWAY FROM THE BAR. WHEN YOU COME BACK, THE LETTERS WILL BE THERE.
Rebus looked up at Lady Scott. ‘Did he pay?’
‘I’ve really no idea.’
‘But you could check?’
‘If you like, yes.’
Rebus nodded. ‘I’d like to be sure.’ The first note said that a letter was enclosed, obviously a letter concerning Sir Walter – but what kind of letter? Of the letter itself there was no sign. Twelve apparently incriminating or embarrassing letters for £2,000. A small price to pay for someone of Sir Walter’s position in society. What’s more, it seemed to Rebus a small price to ask. And if the exchange had taken place as arranged, what was the point of the last note, the one found in Sir Walter’s binocular case? Yes, that was a point.
‘Did you see the mail this morning, Lady Scott?’
‘I was first to the door, yes.’
‘And was there an envelope like these others?’
‘I’m sure there wasn’t.’
Rebus nodded. ‘Yes, if there had been, I think Sir Walter would have kept it, judging by these.’ He shook the notes – all with envelopes attached.
‘Meaning, John?’ Superintendent Watson sounded puzzled. To Rebus’s ears, it was his natural voice.
‘Meaning,’ he explained, ‘that the last note, the one we found on Sir Walter, was as it arrived at the house. No envelope. It must have been pushed through the letterbox. I’d say sometime yesterday or this morning. The blackmail started in London, but the blackmailer came up here for the payoff. And he or she is still here – or was until midday. Now, I’m not so certain. If Sir Walter paid the money’ – he nodded towards Lady Scott – ‘and I would like you to check on that, please, today if possible. If, as I say, Sir Walter paid, if he got the letters back, then what was this morning’s little game all about?’
Watson nodded, arms folded, looking down into his lap as though seeking answers. Rebus doubted they’d be found so close to home. He rose to his feet.
‘We could do with finding those letters, too. Perhaps, Lady Scott, you might have another look in your husband’s … office.’
She nodded slowly. ‘I should tell you, Inspector, that I’m not sure I want to find them.’
‘I can understand that. But it would help us track down the blackmailer.’
Her voice was as low as the light in the room. ‘Yes, of course.’
‘And in the meantime, John?’ Watson tried to sound like a man in charge of something. But there was a pleading edge to his voice.
‘Meantime,’ said Rebus, ‘I’ll be at the Castellain Hotel. The number will be in the book. You can always have me paged.’
Watson gave Rebus one of his dark looks, the kind that said: I don’t know what you’re up to, but I can’t let anyone else know that I don’t know. Then he nodded and almost smiled.
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Yes, off you go. I may stay on a little longer …’ He looked to Lady Scott for her assent. But she was busy with the handkerchief again, twisting and twisting and twisting …
The Castellain Hotel, a minute’s walk from Princes Street, was a chaos of tourists. The large pot-planted lobby looked as though it was on someone’s tour itinerary, with one large organised party about to leave, milling about as their luggage was taken out to the waiting bus by hard-pressed porters. At the same time, another party was arriving, the holiday company’s representative conspicuous by being the only person who looked like he knew what was going on.
Seeing that a group was about to leave, Rebus panicked. But their lapel badges assured him that they were part of the Seascape Tours package. He walked up to the reception desk and waited while a harassed young woman in a tartan two-piece tried to take two telephone calls at the same time. She showed no little skill in the operation, and all the time she was talking her eyes were on the scrum of guests in front of her. Finally, she found a moment and a welcoming smile for him. Funny how at this time of year there were so many smiles to be found in Edinburgh …
‘Yes, sir?’
‘Detective Inspector Rebus,’ he announced. ‘I’d like a word with the Grebe Tours rep if she’s around.’
‘She’s a he,’ the receptionist explained. ‘I think he might be in his room, hold on and I’ll check.’ She had picked up the telephone. ‘Nothing wrong, is there?’
‘No, nothing, just want a word, that’s all.’
Her call was answered quickly. ‘Hello, Tony? There’s a gentleman in reception to see you.’ Pause. ‘Fine, I’ll tell him. ‘Bye.’ She put down the receiver. ‘He’ll be down in a minute.’
Rebus nodded his thanks and, as she answered another telephone call, moved back into the reception hall, dodging the bags and the worried owners of the bags. There was something thrilling about holidaymakers. They were like children at a party. But at the same time there was something depressing, too, about the herd mentality. Rebus had never been on a package holiday in his life. He mistrusted the production-line cheerfulness of the reps and the guides. A walk along a deserted beach: now that was a holiday. Finding a pleasant out-of-the-way pub … playing pinball so ruthlessly that the machine ‘tilted’ … wasn’t he due for a holiday himself ?
Not that he would take one: the loneliness could be a cage as well as a release. But he would never, he hoped, be as caged as these people around him. He looked for a Grebe Tours badge on any passing lapel or chest, but saw none. The Edinburgh Castle gatekeepers had been eagle-eyed all right, or one of them had. He’d recalled not only that a Grebe Tours bus had pulled in to the car park at around half past eleven that morning, but also that the rep had mentioned where the tour party was staying – the Castellain Hotel.
A small, balding man came out of the lift and fairly trotted to the reception desk, then, when the receptionist pointed towards Rebus, trotted over towards him, too. Did these reps take pills? potions? laughing gas? How the hell did they manage to keep it up?
‘Tony Bell at your service,’ the small man said. They shook hands. Rebus noticed that Tony Bell was growing old. He had a swelling paunch and was a little breathless after hi
s jog. He ran a hand over his babylike head and kept grinning.
‘Detective Inspector Rebus.’ The grin subsided. In fact, most of Tony Bell’s face seemed to subside.
‘Oh Jesus,’ he said, ‘what is it? A mugger, pickpocket, what? Is somebody hurt? Which hospital?’
Rebus raised a hand. ‘No need to panic,’ he reassured him. ‘Your charges are all quite safe.’
‘Thank Christ for that.’ The grin returned. Bell nodded towards a door, above which was printed the legend Dining-Room and Bar. ‘Fancy a drink?’
‘Anything to get out of this war zone,’ Rebus said.
‘You should see the bar after dinner,’ said Tony Bell, leading the way, ‘now that’s a war zone …’
As Bell explained, the Grebe Tours party had a free afternoon. He checked his watch and told Rebus that they would probably start returning to the hotel fairly soon. There was a meeting arranged for before dinner, when the next day’s itinerary would be discussed. Rebus told the rep what he wanted, and Bell himself suggested he stay put for the meeting. Yes, Rebus agreed, that seemed sensible, and meantime would Tony like another drink?
This particular Grebe Tours party was American. They’d flown in almost a month ago for what Bell called the ‘Full British Tour’ – Canterbury, Salisbury, Stonehenge, London, Stratford, York, the Lake District, Trossachs, Highlands, and Edinburgh.
‘This is just about the last stop,’ he said. ‘For which relief much thanks, I can tell you. They’re nice people mind, I’m not saying they’re not, but … demanding. Yes, that’s what it is. If a Brit doesn’t quite understand what’s been said to him, or if something isn’t quite right, or whatever, they tend to keep their gobs shut. But Americans …’ He rolled his eyeballs. ‘Americans,’ he repeated, as though it explained all.
It did. Less than an hour later, Rebus was addressing a packed, seated crowd of forty American tourists in a room off the large dining-room. He had barely given them his rank when a hand shot into the air.
‘Er … yes?’
