by Ian Rankin
“At the very least we can get a search warrant,” Templer was saying, “see if it throws up any tidbits. I want you to organize it, Siobhan. That missing painting could be hanging in Neilson’s bedroom for all we know.”
“I don’t think it would be to his taste,” Siobhan commented, knowing it sounded lame.
Templer stared at her. “Why is it that every time I try to do you a good turn, you try to pull the rug out from under me?”
“Sorry, ma’am.”
Templer studied her, then sighed. “Any luck with Cafferty?”
“At least he didn’t bring a lawyer with him.”
“Might just mean he doesn’t rate the competition.”
Siobhan pursed her lips. “If that’s everything, ma’am . . . ?”
“Well, it isn’t. I want to go through the warrant for Neilson’s arrest. Shouldn’t take us too long. Let Mr. Cafferty sweat for a while . . .”
“I never could work with a woman boss,” Cafferty told Hynds. “Always needed to be my own man, know what I mean?”
Hynds had taken Siobhan’s seat. He was the one sitting with arms folded now, while Cafferty leaned over the desk, palms pressed downwards. Their faces were so close, Hynds could have taken a bet on which toothpaste the gangster used.
“Not a bad job, though, is it?” Cafferty ran on. “Being a copper, I mean. Don’t get as much respect as in the old days . . . maybe not as much fear either. Boil down to the same thing sometimes, don’t they, fear and respect?”
“I thought respect was something you earned,” Hynds commented.
“Same with fear, though, isn’t it?” Cafferty raised a finger to stress the point.
“You’d know better than me.”
“You’re right there, son. I can’t see you putting the frighteners on too many folk. I’m not saying that’s a fault, mind. It’s just by way of an observation. I should think DS Clarke’s a scarier proposition than you when she’s roused.”
Hynds thought back to the few times she’d snapped at him, the way she could suddenly change. He knew he was to blame; he had to think before he opened his trap . . .
“She’s had a pop at you, has she?” Cafferty was asking, almost conspiratorially. He leaned farther still across the desk, inviting some confidence or other.
“You don’t half talk a lot for a man who’s supposed to be under a death threat.”
Cafferty offered a rueful smile. “The cancer, you mean? Well, let me ask you something, Davie: if you had only so long to live, wouldn’t you want to make the most of every moment? In my case . . . maybe you’re right . . . maybe I do talk too much.”
“I didn’t mean . . .”
Hynds’s apology was cut short when the door burst open. He stood up, thinking it would be Siobhan.
It wasn’t.
“Well now,” John Rebus said, “isn’t this a surprise?” He looked at Hynds. “Where’s DS Clarke?”
Hynds frowned. “Isn’t she out there?” He thought for a moment. “DCS Templer wanted her. Maybe they’re in her office.”
Rebus put his face close to Hynds’s. “What’re you looking so guilty about?” he asked.
“I’m not.”
Rebus nodded towards Cafferty. “He’s the serpent in the tree, DC Hynds. Whatever he says, it isn’t worth hearing. Got that?”
Hynds gave a vague nod.
“Got that?” Rebus repeated, baring his teeth. The nod this time was vigorous. Rebus patted Hynds’s shoulder, then took the seat he’d just vacated. “Morning, Cafferty.”
“Long time, no see.”
“You just keep popping up, don’t you?” Rebus said. “Like a greasy spot on some adolescent’s arse.”
“Would that make you the adolescent or the arse?” Cafferty asked. He was leaning back in his chair, spine straight, arms by his sides. Hynds noticed that the two men’s postures were almost identical.
Rebus was shaking his head. “It would make me the man with the Clearasil,” he said, causing Hynds to smile. He was the only man in the room who did. “You’re in this up to your neck, aren’t you?” Rebus went on. “Circumstantial evidence alone would see you in a courtroom.”
“And out again the same afternoon,” Cafferty countered. “This is harassment, plain and simple.”
“DS Clarke isn’t that way inclined.”
“No, but you are. I wonder who it was put her up to dragging me in here.” He raised his voice a little. “Are you a betting man, DC Hynds?”
“Nobody in their right mind would bet with the devil,” Rebus stated, closing Hynds’s mouth almost before he’d opened it. “Tell me, Cafferty, what’s the Weasel going to do without his chauffeur?”
“Get a new one, I expect.”
“Donny was a bouncer for you, too, wasn’t he? Probably handy for selling stuff to all those young clubgoers.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You didn’t just lose a driver, did you? You didn’t even just lose some muscle.” Rebus paused. “You lost a dealer.”
Cafferty laughed drily. “I’d love to spend twenty minutes in your head, Rebus. It’s a regular fun house.”
“Funny you should mention that,” Rebus said. “It’s the title of a Stooges album: Fun House . . .” Cafferty turned to stare at Hynds, as if offering him the chance to concur that Rebus was a couple of waltzers shy of a fairground.
“It’s got a track on it that just about sums you up,” Rebus was saying.
“Oh aye?” Cafferty winked in Hynds’s direction. “What’s that then?”
“Just a one-word title,” Rebus informed him. “ ‘Dirt.’ ”
Cafferty turned his attention slowly towards the man seated opposite him. “Do you know the only thing that’s stopping me reaching across this desk and crushing your windpipe like an empty fucking chip bag?”
“Do tell.”
“It’s the feeling I get that you’d actually enjoy it. Would I be correct in that assumption?” He turned his head towards Hynds again. “What do you reckon, Davie? Think DI Rebus here likes a bit of domination? Maybe that piece of his in Portobello does the leather and stilettos routine . . .”
The chair crashed as Rebus flew to his feet. Cafferty rose too. Rebus’s arms had snaked across the space between them, grabbing the narrow lapels of Cafferty’s black leather jacket. One of Cafferty’s own hands had a grip on Rebus’s shirtfront. Hynds took a step forwards, but knew it would be like a toddler refereeing a cockfight. None of them noticed the door opening. Siobhan plunged in, taking hold of both men’s arms.
“That’s enough! Break it up, or I hit the panic button!”
Cafferty’s face seemed to have drained of blood, while Rebus’s had filled, almost as if there’d been a transfusion of sorts between the two men. Siobhan couldn’t tell who eased off first, but she managed to separate them.
“You better get out of here,” she told Cafferty.
“Just when I’m starting to enjoy myself?” Cafferty looked confident enough, but his voice was shaky.
“Out,” Siobhan ordered. “Davie, make sure Mr. Cafferty doesn’t hang around.”
“Unless it’s by his neck,” Rebus spat. Siobhan slapped him on the chest but didn’t say anything until Cafferty and Hynds had left the room.
Then she exploded.
“What the hell are you playing at?”
“Okay, I lost the rag at him . . .”
“This was my interview! You had no right to interfere.”
“Jesus, Siobhan, listen to yourself, will you?” Rebus picked up his chair and slumped back down onto it. “Every time Gill talks to you, you come out sounding like you’ve just left the college.”
“I’m not going to let you twist this around, John!”
“Then sit down and let’s talk about it.” He had a thought. “Maybe in the car park . . . I could do with a smoke.”
“No,” she said determinedly, “we’ll talk here.” She sat down in Cafferty’s chair, pulled it in towards t
he desk. “What did you say to him anyway?”
“It was what he said to me.”
“What?”
“He knows about Jean . . . knows where she lives.” Rebus saw the effect of his words on Siobhan. What he couldn’t tell her was that Cafferty’s utterance had been only part of the problem. There was also the small matter of a message from the comms room. The note was folded in Rebus’s breast pocket. It told him that Dickie Diamond’s car had been spotted parked in the New Town, already with a ticket on its windshield and looking abandoned . . . So Diamond, wherever he was, hadn’t obeyed orders.
The real catalyst, however, was Rebus’s own sense of frustration. He’d wanted Cafferty in St. Leonard’s so he could probe how much the man knew about the SDEA’s secret cache. But when it had come down to it, there’d been no way of asking, not without coming straight out with it.
The only person who might know . . . who might have access . . . was the Weasel. But the Weasel was no snitch — he’d said it himself. And he’d also confided that Cafferty and him were not as close as had once been the case.
There was, quite simply, no way for Rebus to know . . .
And that sense of impotence had boiled up within him, finally gushing out when Cafferty had mentioned Jean.
The bastard had played his trump card, knowing the effect it would have. The feeling I get that you’d actually enjoy it . . . a bit of domination . . .
“Gill wants to bring in Malcolm Neilson,” Siobhan was saying.
Rebus raised an eyebrow. “We’re charging him?”
“Looks like.”
“In which case, Cafferty’s off the hook?”
“Not until we cut the line. Problem is, if we do that we might lose a man overboard.”
Rebus smiled. “Don’t be so melodramatic.”
“I’m serious,” she said. “Go read Moby-Dick some time.”
“I don’t really see myself as Captain Ahab. He was Gregory Peck in the film, wasn’t he?”
Siobhan started shaking her head, eyes never leaving his. Rebus didn’t think she was disagreeing with the casting . . .
There was a noise in the corridor, then a knock at the door. Not Gill Templer this time, but a grinning Tam Barclay.
“Hynds said we’d find you here,” he told Rebus. “Want to come and take a look at what we found down in Leith?”
“I don’t know,” Rebus said. “Is it contagious?” But he allowed himself to be taken out of the room, past Ward and Sutherland, who were sharing a joke in the corridor, and into IR1, where Jazz McCullough and Francis Gray were standing, almost like zoologists studying some new and exotic creature in their midst.
The creature in question was supping tea from a Styrofoam cup. Its eyes never met Rebus’s, though by no means was it unaware of his sudden presence in the cramped room.
“Can you believe it?” Gray said, slapping his hands together. “First stop is the Bar Z, and who should we meet coming out as we’re going in?”
Rebus already knew the answer to that. It was seated not four feet from him. He’d known the answer from the moment Barclay had put his head round the door.
Richard Diamond, aka the Diamond Dog . . .
“Just to finish the introductions,” Barclay told Diamond, “this is DI Rebus. You might remember him as your arresting officer once upon a time.”
Diamond stared straight ahead. Rebus glanced in Gray’s direction. All Gray did was wink, as if to say Rebus’s secret was safe with him.
“We were just about to ask Mr. Diamond a few questions,” Jazz McCullough said, taking the seat opposite his prey. “Maybe we could start with the break-in and rape at a manse in Murrayfield . . .”
This got a reaction from Diamond. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
“It coincided with your disappearance, Mr. Diamond.”
“Did it bollocks.”
“Then why did you disappear? Funny that you pop up again just when we’ve started looking for you . . .”
“Man’s got a right to go where he wants,” Diamond said defiantly.
“Only if he has a good reason,” Jazz argued. “We’re curious as to what yours was.”
“What if I say it’s none of your business?” Diamond folded his arms.
“Then you’d be mistaken. We’re investigating the murder of your good friend Rico Lomax, over in Glasgow. CID came looking for you at the time, and suddenly nobody could find you. It wouldn’t take a conspiracy theorist to see a connection.”
The rest of the team had squeezed into the room, leaving the door open. Diamond looked around him, eyes failing to meet Rebus’s. “This is all getting a bit cozy, isn’t it?” he commented.
“Sooner you tell us, sooner you’ll be on your way back to anonymity.”
“Tell you what exactly?”
“Everything,” Francis Gray growled. “You and your good pal Rico . . . the caravan sites . . . the night he got whacked . . . his wife and Chib Kelly . . .” Gray opened his arms expansively. “Start wherever you like.”
“I don’t know who killed Rico.”
“Got to do better than that, Dickie,” Gray said. “He got hit . . . you ran.”
“I was scared.”
“Don’t blame you. Whoever wanted Rico out of the way might have been after you next.” He paused. “Am I right?”
Diamond nodded slowly.
“So who was it?”
“I’ve told you: I don’t know.”
“But you were scared anyway? Scared enough to leave town all this time?”
Diamond unfolded his arms, clasped his hands over his head. “Rico had made a few enemies down the years. Could have been any one of them.”
“What?” Jazz looked dismissive. “Don’t tell me they all had it in for you too?”
Diamond shrugged, said nothing. There was silence in the room until Gray broke it.
“John, you got anything you want to ask Mr. Diamond?”
Rebus nodded. “Do you think Chib Kelly could have been behind the killing?”
Diamond looked like he was thinking this over. “Could be,” he said at last.
“Any way of proving it?” Stu Sutherland broke in.
Diamond shook his head. “That’s your job, lads.”
“If Rico really was your friend,” Barclay said, “you’d want to help us.”
“What’s the point? It was a long time ago.”
“Point is,” Allan Ward answered, not wanting to be left out, “the killer’s still out there somewhere.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Diamond replied. He brought his hands down from his head. “Like I say, I don’t think I can help you.”
“What about the caravans?” Jazz asked. “Did you know one of them got torched?”
“If I did, I’d forgotten it.”
“You used to go out there, didn’t you?” Jazz continued. “You and your girlfriend Jenny. A bit of a ménage à trois going on there, way she tells it.”
“That what she told you?” Diamond seemed amused.
“You’re saying she’s lying? See, we were starting to wonder if there mightn’t have been some jealousy there . . . you being jealous of Rico? Or maybe Rico’s wife found out he was playing away from home . . . ?”
“I can see you’ve got an active fantasy life,” Diamond told Jazz. Francis Gray seemed to have heard enough.
“Do me a favor, will you, Stu — shut that door.”
Sutherland complied. Gray was standing behind Diamond’s chair. He leaned down and brought one arm around until he was fixing Diamond to the chair by his chest. Then he tilted the chair back, so their faces weren’t more than three inches apart. Diamond struggled, but he wasn’t going anywhere. Allan Ward had taken hold of him by both wrists, pressing them against the tabletop.
“Something we forgot to say,” Gray hissed at the prisoner. “Reason they put us on this case is, we’re the lowest of the low, the absolute fucking zero as far as the Scottish police force goes. We’re here because we don’
t care. We don’t care about you, we don’t care about them. We could kick your teeth down your throat, and when they came to tell us off, we’d be laughing and slapping our thighs. Time was, buggers like you could end up inside one of the support pillars for the Kingston Bridge. See what I’m saying?” Diamond was still struggling. Gray’s arm had slid upwards, and was now around his throat, the crook of the elbow crushing his larynx.
“He’s turning beet red,” Tam Barclay said nervously.
“I don’t care if he’s turning fucking blue,” Gray retorted. “If he gets an aneurysm, the drinks are on me. All I want to hear from this slimy, watery trail of shite is something approximating the truth. What about it, Mr. Richard Diamond?”
Diamond made a gurgling sound. His eyes were protruding from their sockets. Gray kept the pressure up, while Allan Ward burst out laughing, as if this was the most enjoyment he’d had in weeks.
“Let the man answer you, Francis,” Rebus said.
Gray glanced towards Rebus, then released the pressure. Dickie Diamond started coughing, mucus dribbling from his nose.
“That’s repulsive,” Ward said, letting go the hands. Diamond instinctively reached for his own throat, reassuring himself that it was still intact. Then his fingers went to his eyes, wiping away the water that had been squeezed from them.
“Bastards,” he coughed hoarsely. “Stinking bunch of bastards . . .” He got a handkerchief from his pocket, blew his nose. The door had been closed only a couple of minutes, but the place was like a sauna. Stu Sutherland opened it again, letting some air in. Gray, still behind Diamond, had straightened up, and was standing with an arm on each of the seated man’s shoulders.
“Easier all round if you just start talking,” Jazz said quietly: suddenly playing sympathetic cop to Gray’s monster.
“All right, all right . . . somebody get me a can of juice or something.”
“After we’ve listened to your story,” Gray insisted.
“Look . . .” Diamond tried meeting their eyes, lingering longest on Rebus. “All I know is what was being said at the time.”
“And what was that?” Jazz asked.
“Chib Kelly. . .” Diamond paused. “You were right about him. He was after Fenella. She found out about Rico playing away from home and told Chib. Next thing, Rico’s dead . . . simple as that.”
