by Ian Rankin
Mr Leighton,
We’ve got photos you wouldn’t want your wife to see, believe us.
Think about it. We’ll be in touch.
Then the second:
Mr Leighton,
£2,000 for the photos. That seems fair, doesn’t it? You really wouldn’t want your wife to see them. Get the money. We’ll be in touch.
And the third:
Mr Leighton,
We’ll be sending one reprint to show we mean business. You’d better get to it before your wife does. There are plenty more copies.
Rebus looked up, and caught Leighton staring at him. Leighton immediately looked away. Rebus had the feeling that if he stood behind the man and said ‘boo’ quite softly in his ear, Leighton would melt all down the chair. He looked like the sort of person who might make an enemy of his neighbours, complaining too strenuously about a noisy party or a family row. He looked like a crank.
‘You haven’t received the photo yet?’
Leighton shook his head. ‘I’d have brought it along, wouldn’t I?’
‘And you’ve no idea what sort of photo it might be?’
‘None at all. The last time somebody took my picture was at my niece’s wedding.’
‘And when was that?’
‘Three years ago. You see what I’m saying, Inspector? This doesn’t make any sense.’
‘It must make sense to at least one person, Mr Leighton.’ Rebus nodded towards the letters.
They had been written in blue ball-point, the same pen which had been used to address the envelopes. A cheap blue ball-point, leaving smears and blots of ink. It was anything but professional-looking. The whole thing looked like a joke. Since when did blackmailers use their own handwriting? Anyone with a rudimentary education in films, TV cop shows and thriller novels knew that you used a typewriter or letters cut out of newspapers, or whatever; anything that would produce a dramatic effect. These letters were too personal to look dramatic. Polite, too: that use of ‘Mr Leighton’ at the start of each one. A particular word caught Rebus’s attention and held it. But then Leighton said something interesting.
‘I don’t even have a wife, not now.’
‘You’re not married?’
‘I was. Divorced six years ago. Six years and one month.’
‘And where’s your wife now, Mr Leighton?’
‘Remarried, lives in Glenrothes. I got an invite to the wedding, but I didn’t go. Can’t remember what I sent them for a present …’ Leighton was lost in thought for a moment, then collected himself. ‘So you see, if these letters are written by someone I know, how come they don’t know I’m divorced?’
It was a good question. Rebus considered it for a full five seconds. Then he came to his conclusion.
‘Let’s leave it for now, Mr Leighton,’ he said. ‘There’s not much we can do till this photo arrives … if it arrives.’
Leighton looked numb, watching Rebus fold the letters and replace them in their envelopes. Rebus wasn’t sure what the man had expected. Fingerprints lifted from the envelopes by forensic experts? A tell-tale fibre leading to an arrest? Handwriting identified … saliva from the stamps and the envelope-flaps checked … psychologists analysing the wording of the messages themselves, coming up with a profile of the blackmailer? It was all good stuff, but not on a wet Monday morning in Edinburgh. Not with CID’s case-load and budget restrictions.
‘Is that it?’
Rebus shrugged. That was it. We’re only human, Mr Leighton. For a moment, Rebus thought he’d actually voiced his thoughts. He had not. Leighton still sat there, pale and disappointed, his mouth set like the bottom line of a balance sheet.
‘Sorry,’ said Rebus, rising.
‘I’ve just remembered,’ said Leighton.
‘What?’
‘Six wine glasses, that’s what I gave them. Caithness glass they were too.’
‘Very nice I’m sure,’ said Rebus, stifling a post-weekend yawn as he opened the office door.
But Rebus was certainly intrigued.
No wife these past six years, and the last photograph of Leighton dated back three years to a family wedding. Where was the material for blackmail? Where the motive? Means, motive and opportunity. Means: a photograph, apparently. Motive: unknown. Opportunity … Leighton was a nobody, a middle-aged civil servant. He earned enough, but not enough to make him blackmail material. He had confided to Rebus that he barely had £2,000 in his building society account.
‘Hardly enough to cover their demand,’ he had said, as though he were considering actually paying off the blackmailers, even though he had nothing to hide, nothing to fear. Just to get them off his back? Or because he did have something to hide? Most people did, if it came to it. The guilty secret or two (or more, many more) stored away just below the level of consciousness, the way suitcases were stored under beds. Rebus wondered if he himself were blackmail material. He smiled: was the Pope a Catholic? Was the Chief Constable a Mason? Leighton’s words came back to him: Hardly enough to cover their demand. What sort of civil servant was Leighton anyway? Rebus sought out the day-time telephone number Leighton had left along with his home address and phone number. Seven digits, followed by a three-figure extension number. He punched the seven digits on his receiver, waited, and heard a switchboard operator say, ‘Good afternoon, Inland Revenue.’ Rebus replaced the receiver with a guilty silence.
On Tuesday morning, Leighton phoned the station. Rebus got in first.
‘You didn’t tell me you were a taxman, Mr Leighton.’
‘What?’
‘A taxman.’
‘What does it matter?’
What did it matter? How many enemies could one taxman make? Rebus swallowed back the question. He could always use a friend in Her Majesty’s Inland Revenue, for personal as well as strictly professional use …
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Leighton was saying, though Rebus doubted it. ‘And it’s true that I work in the Collector’s office, sending out the demands. But my name’s never on the demands. The Inspector of Taxes might be mentioned by name, but I’m a lowly cog, Inspector.’
‘Even so, you must write to people sometimes. There might be somebody out there with a grudge.’
‘I’ve given it some thought, Inspector. It was my first thought. But in any case I don’t deal with Edinburgh.’
‘Oh?’
‘I deal with south London.’
Rebus noted that, phoning from his place of work, Leighton was less nervous-sounding. He sounded cool, detached. He sounded like a tax collector. South London: but the letters had local postmarks – another theory sealed under cover and posted into eternity, no return address.
‘The reason I’m calling,’ Leighton was saying, ‘is that I had another letter this morning.’
‘With a photo?’
‘Yes, there’s a photo.’
‘And?’
‘It’s difficult to explain. I could come to the station at lunchtime.’
‘Don’t bother yourself, Mr Leighton. I’ll come to the tax office. All part of the service.’
Rebus was thinking of back-handers, gifts from grateful members of the public, all the pubs where he could be sure of a free drink, chip shops that wouldn’t charge for a feed, all the times he’d helped out for a favour, the way those favours accumulated and were paid off … Tax forms asked you about tips received. Rebus always left the box blank. Had he always been accurate about amounts of bank interest? More crucially, several months ago he had started renting his flat to three students while he lived rent-free with Dr Patience Aitken. He had no intention of declaring … well, maybe he would. It helped to know a friendly taxman, someone who might soon owe him a favour.
‘That’s very good of you, Inspector,’ Leighton was saying.
‘Not at all, sir.’
‘Only it all seems to have been a mistake anyway.’
‘A mistake?’
‘You’ll see when I show you the photograph.’
&nbs
p; Rebus saw.
He saw a man and a woman. In the foreground was a coffee table, spread with bottles and glasses and cans, an ashtray full to overflowing. Behind this, a sofa, and on the sofa a man and a woman. Lying along the sofa, hugging one another. The photographer had caught them like this, their faces just beginning to turn towards the camera, grinning and flushed with that familiar mix of alcohol and passion. Rebus had been to these sorts of party, parties where the alcohol was necessary before there could be any passion. Behind the couple, two men stood in animated conversation. It was a good clear photo, the work of a 35 mm camera with either a decent flash-gun or else no necessity for one.
‘And here’s the letter,’ said Leighton. They were seated on an uncomfortable, spongy sofa in the tax office’s reception area. Rebus had been hoping for a sniff behind the scenes, but Leighton worked in an open-plan office with less privacy even than the reception area. Few members of the public ever visited the building, and the receptionist was at the other end of the hallway. Staff wandered through on their way to the coffee machine or the snack dispenser, the toilets or the post-room, but otherwise this was as quiet as it got.
‘A bit longer than the others,’ Leighton said, handing the letter over.
Mr Leighton,
Here is the photo. We have plenty more, plus negatives. Cheap at £2,000 the lot, and your wife will never know. The money should be in fives and tens, nothing bigger. Put it in a William Low’s carrier-bag and go to Greyfriars Kirkyard on Friday at 3 p.m. Leave the bag behind Greyfriars Bobby’s gravestone. Walk away. Photos and negatives will be sent to you.
‘Not exactly the quietest spot for a handover,’ Rebus mused. Although the actual statue of Greyfriars Bobby, sited just outside the kirkyard, was more popular with tourists, the gravestone was a popular enough stop-off. The idea of leaving a bagful of money there surreptitiously was almost laughable. But at least now the extortion was serious. A time and place had been mentioned as well as a sum, a sum to be left in a Willie Low’s bag. Rebus more than ever doubted the blackmailer’s professionalism.
‘You see what I mean?’ Leighton said. ‘I can only think that if it isn’t a joke, then it’s a case of mistaken identity.’
True enough, Leighton wasn’t any of the three men in the photo, not by any stretch of the will or imagination. Rebus concentrated on the woman. She was small, heavy, somehow managing to fit into a dress two sizes too small for her. It was black and short, rumpled most of the way to her bum, with plenty of cleavage at the other end. She also wore black tights and black patent-leather shoes. But somehow Rebus didn’t think he was looking at a funeral.
‘I don’t suppose’, he said, ‘this is your wife?’
Leighton actually laughed, the sound of paper shredding.
‘Thought not,’ Rebus said quietly. He turned his attention to the man on the sofa, the man whose arms were trapped beneath the weight of the smirking woman. There was something about that face, that hairstyle. Then it hit Rebus, and things started to make a little more sense.
‘I didn’t recognise him at first,’ he said, thinking out loud.
‘You mean you know him?’
Rebus nodded slowly. ‘Only I’ve never seen him smile before, that’s what threw me.’ He studied the photo again, then stabbed it with a finger. The tip of his finger was resting on the face of one of the other men, the two behind the sofa. ‘And I know him,’ he said. ‘I can place him now.’ Leighton looked impressed. Rebus moved his finger on to the recumbent woman. ‘What’s more, I know her too. I know her quite well.’
Leighton didn’t look impressed now, he looked startled, perhaps even disbelieving.
‘Three out of four,’ Rebus said. ‘Not a bad score, eh?’ Leighton didn’t answer, so Rebus smiled reassuringly. ‘Don’t you worry, sir. I’ll take care of this. You won’t be bothered any more.’
‘Well … thank you, Inspector.’
Rebus got to his feet. ‘All part of the service, Mr Leighton. Who knows, maybe you’ll be able to help me one of these days …’
Rebus sat at his desk, reading the file. Then, when he was satisfied, he tapped into the computer and checked some details regarding a man who was doing a decent stretch in Peterhead jail. When he’d finished, there was a broad grin on his face, an event unusual enough in itself to send DC Siobhan Clarke sauntering over in Rebus’s direction, trying not to get too close (fear of being hooked), but close enough to register interest. Before she knew it, Rebus was reeling her in anyway.
‘Get your coat,’ he said.
She angled her head back towards her desk. ‘But I’m in the middle of—’
‘You’re in the middle of my catchment, Siobhan. Now fetch your coat.’
Never be nosy, and always keep your head down: somehow Siobhan Clarke hadn’t yet learned those two golden rules of the easy life. Not that anything was easy when John Rebus was in the office. Which was precisely why she liked working near him.
‘Where are we going?’ she said.
Rebus told her on the way. He also handed the file to her so she could read it through.
‘Not guilty,’ she said at last.
‘And I’m Robbie Coltrane,’ said Rebus. They were both talking about a case from a few months before. A veteran hard man had been charged with the attempted armed hold-up of a security van. There had been evidence as to his guilt – just about enough evidence – and his alibi had been shaky. He’d told police of having spent the day in question in a bar near his mother’s home in Muirhouse, probably the city’s most notorious housing scheme. Plenty of witnesses came forward to agree that he had been there all day. These witnesses boasted names like Tam the Bam, Big Shug, the Screwdriver, and Wild Eck. The look of them in the witness-box, police reasoned, would be enough to convince the jury of the defendant’s guilt. But there had been one other witness …
‘Miss June Redwood,’ quoted DC Clarke, rereading the case-notes.
‘Yes,’ said Rebus, ‘Miss June Redwood.’
An innocent, dressed in a solemn two-piece as she gave her evidence at the trial. She was a social worker, caring for the most desperate in Edinburgh’s most desperate area. Needing to make a phone call, and sensing she’d have no luck with Muirhouse’s few public kiosks, she had walked into the Castle Arms, probably the first female the regulars had seen in the saloon bar since the landlord’s wife had walked out on him fifteen years before. She’d asked to use the phone, and a man had wandered over to her from a table and, with a wink, had asked if she’d like a drink. She’d refused. She could see he’d had a few – more than a few. His table had the look of a lengthy session about it – empty pint glasses placed one inside another to form a leaning tower, ashtray brimming with butts and empty packets, the newspaper’s racing page heavily marked in biro.
Miss Redwood had given a quietly detailed account, at odds with the loud, confident lies of the other defence witnesses. And she was sure that she’d walked into the bar at 3 p.m., five minutes before the attack on the security van took place. The prosecution counsel had tried his best, gaining from the social worker the acknowledgement that she knew the accused’s mother through her work, though the old woman was not actually her client. The prosecutor had stared out at the fifteen jury members, attempting without success to plant doubt in their minds. June Redwood was a rock-solid witness. Solid enough to turn a golden prosecution case into a verdict of ‘not guilty’. The accused had walked free. Close, as the fairground saying went, but definitely no goldfish.
Rebus had been in court for the verdict, and had left with a shrug and a low growl. A security guard lay in hospital suffering from shotgun wounds. Now the case would have to be looked at again, if not by Rebus then by some other poor bugger who would go through the same old steps, knowing damned fine who the main suspect was, and knowing that he was walking the streets and drinking in pubs, and chuckling at his luck.
Except that it wasn’t luck: it was planning, as Rebus now knew.
DC Clarke finished
her second reading of the file. ‘I suppose you checked on Redwood at the time?’
‘Of course we did. Not married, no boyfriends. No proof – not even the faintest rumour – that she knew Keith.’
Clarke looked at the photo. ‘And this is her?’
‘It’s her, and it’s him – Keith Leyton.’
‘And it was sent to …?’
‘It was addressed to a Mr K. Leighton. They didn’t get the spelling right. I checked in the phone book. Keith Leyton’s ex-directory. Either that or he doesn’t have a phone. But our little tax collector is in there under K. Leighton.’
‘And they sent the letters to him by mistake?’
‘They must know Keith Leyton hangs out in Muirhouse. His mum lives in Muirhouse Crescent.’
‘Where does Kenneth Leighton live?’
Rebus grinned at the windscreen. ‘Muirwood Crescent – only it’s not in Muirhouse, it’s in Currie.’
Siobhan Clarke smiled too. ‘I don’t believe it,’ she said.
Rebus shrugged. ‘It happens. They looked in the phone book, thought the address looked right, and started sending the letters.’
‘So they’ve been trying to blackmail a criminal …’
‘And instead they’ve found a taxman.’ Now Rebus laughed outright. ‘They must be mad, naïve, or built like a hydro-electric station. If they’d really tried this bampot caper on with Leyton, he’d have dug a fresh grave or two in Greyfriars for them. I’ll give them one thing, though.’
‘What’s that?’
‘They know about Keith’s wife.’
‘His wife?’
Rebus nodded. ‘She lives near the mum. Big woman. Jealous. That’s why Keith would keep any girlfriend secret – that’s why he’d want to keep her a secret. The blackmailers must have thought that gave them a chance that he’d cough up.’
