by Ian Rankin
“It’s fine.”
“They’re from Grangemouth, you know.”
“Must be all the chemicals in the water.” Rebus was thinking of the drive between Edinburgh and Tulliallan, passing the flare towers of Grangemouth in the distance, looking like some low-budget Blade Runner set. “You had a quiet weekend, then?”
“Mmm,” she said, mouth full of vegetables.
“Still seeing Brains?”
“His name’s Eric. We’re just friends. Did you see Jean at the weekend?”
“Yes, thanks.” He remembered the way it had turned out, with a patrol car leading him at speed through streets not far from here . . .
“Shall we call a truce on asking questions about one another’s love life?”
Rebus nodded his agreement, and they ate in silence. Afterwards, they cleared the coffee table and placed all the paperwork there. Siobhan said she had some lagers in the fridge. Turned out they were Mexican. Rebus frowned at the bottle, but Siobhan paid no attention; she knew he’d drink it anyway.
Then they got back to work.
“Who exactly was at the party that night?” Rebus asked. “Do we have a description of Montrose?”
“Always supposing he was there and the scribble didn’t belong to a Marlowe or Matthews . . .” She found the relevant pages in the folder. They’d interviewed everyone they could, but there were still some uncertainties. Bound to be, with the place so crowded and not all of the guests acquainted. She remembered Hood’s computer simulation. The gallery had sent out a hundred and ten invitations. Seventy-five had RSVP’d to accept, but not all of them had turned up on the night, and others, who hadn’t got round to replying, had turned up.
“Like Cafferty,” Rebus said.
“Like Cafferty,” Siobhan agreed.
“So how many were actually there on the night?”
She shrugged. “It’s not a precise science. If they’d bothered to sign the guest book, we might have had a better chance.”
“Montrose signed.”
“Or Matthews . . .”
He stuck out his tongue, then stretched his spine and groaned. “So what exactly did you do with all the guests?”
“We asked them who else they could remember being there: the names of anyone they’d known or talked to, physical descriptions of anyone else they could think of.”
Rebus nodded. It was the kind of painstaking detail that was oftentimes useless to a case, but very occasionally threw up some nugget. “And did you manage to put names to all the faces?”
“Not exactly,” she admitted. “One guest described someone in a tartan jacket. Nobody else seemed to have spotted it.”
“Sounds like they’d had a bit to drink.”
“Or had been to too many parties that night. There are a lot of vague descriptions . . . we did try to match each and every one of them . . .”
“Not easy,” Rebus admitted. “So what are we left with? Anyone put a name to Cafferty?”
“One or two, yes. He didn’t seem keen on striking up conversations.”
“You still see him as Montrose?”
“We could always ask.”
“We could,” Rebus agreed. “But maybe not yet.”
She pointed to a particular paragraph on one sheet. “These are all the descriptions that seem to be indicating Cafferty.”
Rebus read down the list. “Two of them have got him wearing a black leather jacket.”
“Which is what he usually wears.” Siobhan was nodding. “He had it on when he came to the station.”
“But another two have got him in a brown sports jacket . . .”
“They got through four dozen bottles of champagne,” Siobhan reminded him.
“And one person’s got him with darker hair . . . describes him as being ‘fairly tall.’ What’s Cafferty — five-nine? Would you say that was tall?”
“Maybe if the person describing him was on the short side . . . What’s your point?”
“My point is that we could be talking about two different people.”
“Cafferty and someone else?”
“Who happens to share some physical similarities.” Rebus was nodding. “Taller than Cafferty, with hair not turned so gray.”
“And wearing a brown jacket. That narrows things down nicely.” She saw that her sarcasm was lost on Rebus. He was deep in thought. “Our Mr. Montrose?” she asked.
“Maybe we’re just starting to see him, Siobhan. Only an outline, but definitely there . . .”
“So what now?” Siobhan looked suddenly tired. They’d been working flat out, and now she was home and feeling like a bath and an hour or two of mindless TV.
“Just to put your mind at rest, I thought we might pay Cafferty a visit.”
“Right now?”
“Could be we’ll catch him at home. But I want to drop in to Arden Street first, pick something up. Oh, and we’ll need to talk to Miss Meikle. Look and see if she’s in the phone book, will you?”
“Yes, boss,” Siobhan said, seeing bath and TV receding into the distance.
29
Rebus told her to wait for him in the car when they reached Arden Street. She peered up, saw the light come on in his living room. Less than five minutes later it went off again, and Rebus emerged from the building.
“Am I allowed to ask?” she said.
“Let’s save the surprise,” he answered with a wink.
As he drove them out of Marchmont, she noticed that he seemed interested in the rearview mirror.
“Someone behind us?” she guessed.
“I don’t think so.”
“But you wouldn’t be surprised if there was?”
“Lot of people seem to know my address,” he commented.
“Gray and McCullough?”
“To name but two.”
“And the others?”
“So far, one’s turned up dead and the other’s gone AWOL.”
She thought it through. “Dickie Diamond and the Weasel?”
“We’ll make a detective of you yet,” he told her.
She was silent for a few moments, until she thought of something. “You know where Cafferty lives?” She waited till he’d nodded. “Then you know more than I do.”
“That’s why I’m the senior officer,” he said with a smile. When she stayed quiet, he decided she deserved more than this. “I like to keep tabs on Mr. Cafferty. It’s by way of a hobby.”
“You know the rumors?”
He turned his head to her. “That I’m in his pocket?”
“That the pair of you are too similar.”
“Oh, we’re similar all right . . . like Cain and Abel were.”
Cafferty’s home was a large detached house at the end of a cul-de-sac behind the Astley Ainslie Hospital, in the Grange area of the city. The street suffered from poor lighting — probably the only time it came into contact with an adjective like “poor.”
“I think this is the one,” Rebus said.
Siobhan looked. There was no sign of Cafferty’s red Jaguar. There was a garage at the side of the house, however, so maybe it had been put to bed for the night. Behind the downstairs curtains, the lights were on. Curtains weren’t that usual in streets as des. res. as this one. The owners either used the original shutters or else left them open so that pedestrians could peer jealously through the windows. It was a solid-looking stone-built residence on at least three floors, matching bay windows to either side of the front door.
“Not bad for an ex-con,” Siobhan stated.
“Be a while before he has us as neighbors,” Rebus agreed.
“Unless he suddenly comes down in the world.”
There were three steps up to the front door, but when they tried the garden gate, it was locked. The gates to the driveway looked locked too. Movement-sensitive lights were suddenly bathing them in halogen. The curtains twitched, and a few seconds later the front door opened.
The man standing there was tall and wiry, with a tight black T-shirt
showing off thick shoulder muscles and a flat stomach. His stance was classic club doorman: legs apart, arms folded. You’re not coming in here, it said.
“Can Big Ger come out to play?” Rebus asked. He could hear a dog barking inside. Next moment, it came flying from between the bodyguard’s legs.
Siobhan snapped her fingers and made clicking noises with her tongue. “Hello there, Claret.” At the sound of its name, the spaniel pricked its ears up and waggled its tail all the way to the gate, where Siobhan had dropped to a crouch so it could sniff her fingers. Moments later, it was off again, sniffing its way across the lawn.
The bodyguard had turned into the house to speak to someone, perhaps surprised that Siobhan had known the dog’s name.
“Claret?” Rebus asked.
“I met her at Cafferty’s office,” she explained. Rebus watched Claret pause to pee on the lawn, then turned his attention to the doorway. Cafferty was standing there in a thick blue bathrobe, rubbing his hair dry with a matching towel.
“Brought your swimsuits?” he cried out, nodding to the bodyguard before retreating back inside. The bodyguard pressed a button and the gate clicked open. Claret decided to follow them indoors.
The wide hallway boasted four marble pillars and two Chinese urns, each a similar height to Siobhan.
“Need bloody big flowers to fill those,” Rebus said to the guard, who was leading them towards the back of the house.
“Your name’s Joe, isn’t it?” Siobhan said suddenly. The guard stared at her. “I recognize you from a club I sometimes visit with my mates.”
“I don’t do that anymore,” Joe said. Siobhan had turned to Rebus.
“Joe here was the doorman . . . always a smile for the ladies.”
“Is that right, Joe?” Rebus said. “What’s your other name?”
“Buckley.”
“And how does Joe Buckley like working for the east coast’s most notorious gangster?”
Buckley looked at him. “I like it fine.”
“Plenty of chances to put the frighteners on people, eh? Is that in the job description, or just one of the perks?” Rebus was smiling. “Know what happened to the poor sod you’ve replaced, Joe? He’s going down for murder. Just something for you to bear in mind. Club bouncer might have been the smarter career move.”
Through a door and down some steps they found themselves at another door, which led into a vast conservatory, most of the space taken up by an eight-meter swimming pool. Cafferty stood behind the poolside bar, dropping ice into three glasses.
“An evening ritual,” he explained. “You still drink whiskey, Strawman?”
Strawman: his nickname for Rebus. Because of a mix-up years back in court, the prosecutor thinking Rebus was another witness, a Mr. Stroman.
“Depends what you’ve got.”
“Glenmorangie or Bowmore.”
“I’ll take a Bowmore — without the ice.”
“No ice,” Cafferty acknowledged, emptying Rebus’s glass. “Siobhan, what about you?”
“DS Clarke,” she corrected him, noting that Buckley had left them.
“Still on duty, eh? I’ve got some bitter lemon — might suit that scowl on your face.”
They could hear Claret scratching at the door behind them. “Basket, Claret! Basket!” Cafferty growled. “This is the one part of the house that’s out of bounds,” he told them. Then he lifted a bottle of bitter lemon from the fridge.
“Vodka and tonic,” Siobhan said.
“That’s more like it.” Cafferty grinned as he poured. His hair was thin and spiky where he’d rubbed it with the towel. The robe, capacious as it was, barely stretched around him, so that the tufts of gray hair on his chest were exposed.
“I take it you’ve got zoning permission for this?” Rebus asked, gazing at the surroundings.
“Is that what you’re reduced to? Zoning violations?” Cafferty laughed and handed them their drinks, nodding towards a table. They sat down.
“Cheers,” he said, raising his glass of whiskey.
“Good health,” Rebus said, his face set like stone.
Cafferty swallowed a mouthful and exhaled. “So what brings you out at this time of night?”
“Do you know anyone called Montrose?” Rebus asked, swirling his own drink around the inside of the glass.
“As in Château Montrose?” Cafferty asked.
“I wouldn’t know.”
“It’s one of the better Bordeaux reds,” Cafferty explained. “But then you’re not a wine man, are you?”
“So you don’t know anyone called Montrose?” Rebus asked again.
“No, I don’t.”
“And it’s not a name you’ve used yourself?” As Cafferty shook his head, Rebus produced a notebook and pen. “So you wouldn’t mind writing it down?”
“I’m not so sure about that, Strawman. I have to be careful of entrapment, don’t I?”
“Just to compare to a handwriting sample. You can make it a scrawl if you prefer . . .” Rebus pushed the notebook and pen across the table. Cafferty looked at him, then at Siobhan.
“Maybe if you were to explain . . .”
“There was someone calling themselves Montrose at the preview,” Siobhan told him. “They signed the guest book.”
“Ahh. . .” Cafferty nodded. “Well, as I know damned fine it wasn’t me . . .” He turned the notebook round, opened it at a clean page, and wrote the word Montrose. It looked nothing like the signature on the guest book.
“Want me to have another go?” Cafferty didn’t wait for an answer, writing the name a further four times, each one slightly different. Still none of them looked like the signature.
“Thank you.” Rebus took the notebook back. Cafferty was about to pocket the pen until Rebus reminded him that it wasn’t his.
“Am I off the hook?” Cafferty asked.
“Did you talk to a man at the party . . . slightly taller than you, maybe similar build . . . brown sports jacket, darkish hair?”
Cafferty seemed to ponder this. Claret had at last shut up. Maybe the bodyguard had dragged her off to her basket.
“I don’t remember,” he said at last.
“Maybe you’re not really trying,” Rebus said accusingly.
Cafferty tutted. “And I was just about to offer you a spare pair of swimming trunks . . .”
“Tell you what,” Rebus said, “you jump in again, and I’ll fetch the toaster from the kitchen.”
Cafferty looked at Siobhan. “Do you think he means it, DS Clarke?”
“Hard to say with DI Rebus. Tell me, Mr. Cafferty, you know Ellen Dempsey, don’t you?”
“We’ve had this conversation before, I seem to remember.”
“Maybe, but back then I didn’t know that she’d worked for you in Dundee.”
“Worked for me?”
“A stint in a sauna,” Siobhan explained. She was thinking of what Bain had told her . . . about how Cafferty’s tentacles might stretch as far as Fife and Dundee. “I think maybe you were the owner.”
Cafferty just shrugged.
“In which case,” Siobhan went on, “you might have come into contact with a local CID officer, name of McCullough?”
Cafferty shrugged again. “When you’re a businessman,” he told her, “a lot of palms seem to want crossing with silver.”
“Care to expand?”
Cafferty chuckled and shook his head.
Rebus shifted in his seat. “Okay, here’s another one for you to try. Any chance you can account for your whereabouts this past weekend?”
Siobhan couldn’t mask her surprise at the question.
“The whole forty-eight hours?” Cafferty asked. “If I put my mind to it. But you’d probably just be jealous.”
“Try me,” Rebus said.
Cafferty sat back in his wicker chair. “Saturday morning: I test-drove a new car. An Aston Martin. I’m still thinking about it . . . Lunch here, then a round of golf over at Prestonfield. Evening I was at a party . . .
the neighbors two doors along. Lovely couple, both lawyers. That was me till around midnight. Sunday we took Claret for a walk around Blackford Hill and the Hermitage. Then I had to go to Glasgow to lunch with an old friend — I can’t mention her name, she’s still married. Hubbie’s in Brussels on business, so we booked one of the rooms above the restaurant.” He winked at Siobhan, who was concentrating on her drink. “Got back here about eight . . . watched some telly. Joe had to wake me up around midnight and tell me to go to bed.” He offered a thoughtful smile. “I think I will buy that Aston, you know . . .”
“Not much room for the Weasel in the back,” Rebus stated blithely.
“That hardly matters, as he no longer works for me.”
“Had a falling-out?” Siobhan couldn’t help but be curious.
“A business matter,” Cafferty said, the glass to his lips, eyes staring above the rim and straight into Rebus’s.
“Care to tell us which loch we can expect to fish him out of?” Rebus asked.
Cafferty tutted again. “Now you’re definitely not getting that swim.”
“Just as well . . .” Rebus was putting down his glass, getting to his feet. “I’d only go and pee in your pool.”
“I’d be disappointed if you didn’t, Strawman.” Cafferty rose as if to see them out but then called his bodyguard’s name. Buckley must have been standing right behind the door. It opened immediately.
“Our visitors are leaving, Joe,” Cafferty instructed.
Rebus stood his ground a moment longer. “You haven’t asked why I was interested in your weekend.”
“So go ahead and tell me.”
Rebus shook his head slowly. “Doesn’t matter,” he said.
“Always playing your little games, Strawman,” Cafferty chuckled. As they left, he was back at the bar, throwing more ice into his glass.
Outside, bathed once more in halogen as they walked down the path, Siobhan had a question.
“What’s all this about last weekend?”
“Not your problem.”
“It is if we’re working as a team.”
“Since when have I been a team player, Siobhan?”
“I thought that was what Tulliallan was for.”
Rebus just snorted, opened the gate. “Claret’s a funny name for a brown and white spaniel,” he commented.
