by Ian Rankin
Derek Linford had succeeded not in spite of his background but because of it, each rung he climbed another jibe at his father, another way of letting his mother know he was all right. The old man - not so old really; fifty-eight - still lived in the council semi. Linford would drive past it occasionally, slowing to a crawl, not really caring if he was seen. A neighbour might wave, half-recognising the face. Would they pass the news on to his father? I see young Derek was round the other day. He still keeps in touch then...? He wondered how his father would react: with a grunt most likely, turning back to his sports pages, his quick crossword. When Derek was a teenager, doing well in all his subjects, his father would make show of asking him for the answers to crossword clues. He'd rack his brains, get them wrong... It took Derek a while to realise the old man was making them up. Seven letters, umbrella, c something p. Derek would have a go, then his father would sigh and say something like, 'No, you looper, it's capulet.'
No such word in the dictionary.
Derek's mother hadn't died in this hospital. She'd held his hand, her breathing ragged. She couldn't speak, but her eyes told him she wasn't sorry to go. Worn out, like some machine run to death. And like a machine she'd lacked care, lacked maintenance. The old man standing at the foot of the bed, flowers in his arms: carnations picked from a neighbour's garden. And books he'd brought from the library, books she could no longer read.
Was it any wonder he hated hospitals? Yet in his early days on the force he'd been made to spend long hours in them, waiting for victims and aggressors to be treated, waiting to take statements from patients and staff. Blood and dressings, swollen faces, twisted limbs. He'd watched an ear being stitched, had witnessed grey-white bone protruding from a shattered leg. Crash victims; muggings; rapes.
Was it any wonder?
Finally, he found the family room. It was supposed to be a quiet space for families who were 'awaiting news of a loved one', as the receptionist had put it. But as he pushed open the door, he was assailed by the death rattle of vending machines, a cloud of cigarette smoke, and the glare of daytime TV. Two middle-aged women were puffing away. Their eyes fixed on him for a moment, then returned to the chat show.
'Mrs Ure?'
The women looked up again. 'You don't look like a doctor.'
I'm not,' he told the speaker. 'Are you Mrs Ure?'
'We're both Mrs Ure. Sisters-in-law.'
'Mrs Archie Ure?'
The other woman, who hadn't spoken yet, stood up. That's me.' She saw she was holding a cigarette, stubbed it out.
'My name's Detective Inspector Derek Linford. I'd been hoping to have a word with your husband.'
'Get in the queue,' the sister-in-law said. 'I was sorry to hear... Is it serious?'
'He's had trouble with his heart before,' Archie Ure's wife said. 'Never stopped him working for what he believed in.'
Linford nodded. He'd done his reading, knew all about Archie Ure. Head of the council's planning executive, a councillor for more than two decades. He was Old Labour, popular with those who knew him, a thorn in the side of some 'reformers'. A year or so back he'd written several bitter articles for the Scotsman, had got into trouble with the party as a result. Chastened, he'd applied for an MSP post, the first to do so. He probably hadn't allowed for the possibility of an upstart like Roddy Grieve beating him for the nomination. He'd worked ceaselessly during the '79 campaign. Twenty years later, his reward was a runner-up spot for a constituency, and the promise of a place near the top of Labour's top-up list.
'Are they operating?' Linford asked. 'Christ, listen to him,' the sister-in-law said, glowering at him. 'How the hell would we know if they're operating? We're only the family, last to be told.' She stood up, too. Linford felt himself shrink back. Big women they were, addicted to Scotland's pantry: cigarettes and lard. Training shoes, elasticated waistbands. Matching YSL tops, probably knock-off if not fake. 'I just wanted to know--'
'What did you want to know?' This from the wife, rising to her friend's ire. She folded her arms. 'What d'you want Archie for?'
To ask questions... because he's a possible suspect in a murder. No, he couldn't tell her that. So he shook his head instead. 'It can wait.'
'Is it to do with Roddy Grieve?' she asked. He couldn't answer. 'Bloody thought it might be. He's the reason Archie's in here. Tell that slut of a widow of his to remember that. And if my Archie... if he...' She bowed her head, words choking. An arm went around her shoulder.
'Come on now, Isla. It'll be fine.' The sister-in-law looked at Linford. 'Got what you came for?'
He turned away, but then stopped. 'What did she mean? About Roddy Grieve being to blame?'
'With Grieve dead, it should have been Archie standing.'
'Yes?'
'Only now the widow's put her name forward, and knowing those bastards on the selection committee, she'll be the one. Oh aye, shafted again, Isla. As it was, so shall it be. Shafted all the way to the grave.'
'Frankly, they'd be lunatics not to.'
After the hospital, the wine bar on the High Street came as some relief. Linford sipped his chilled Chardonnay and asked Gwen Mollison why that should be. Mollison was tall with long fair hair, probably mid-thirties. She wore steel-rimmed glasses which magnified her long-lashed eyes, and toyed with her mobile phone as it sat on the table between them, just next to a bulging Filofax. She kept looking around, as though expecting to be able to greet a friend or acquaintance. Here, Linford had done his reading, too. Mollison was number three in the council's housing department. She didn't quite have Roddy Grieve's pedigree, or Archie Ure's longevity, which was why she'd lost to them, but great things were expected of her. Good working-class roots; New Labour to her core. She spoke well in public, presented well. Today she was wearing a cream linen trouser suit, maybe Armani. Linford recognised a kindred spirit and had laid his own mobile a foot and a half from hers.
'It's a PR coup,' Mollison explained. She had a glass of Zinfandel in front of her, but had asked for mineral water as an accompaniment, and had concentrated on that so far. Linford appreciated the tactic: you were a drinker, not an abstainer, but somehow you contrived to drink only water.
'I mean,' Mollison went on, 'the sympathy vote's out there. And Seona has friends in the party: she's been every bit as active as Roddy ever was.'
'Do you know her?'
Mollison shook her head - not in answer to the question but to dismiss it as irrelevant. 'I don't think the party would have gone to her; might've looked like bad taste. But when she phoned them, they weren't slow to see the possibilities.' She angled her phone, testing the signal strength. There was jazz music in the background. Only half a dozen other people in the place: mid-afternoon hiatus. Linford had skipped lunch. He'd finished one bowl of rice crackers; they weren't about to bring another.
'Are you disappointed?' he asked.
Mollison shrugged. 'There'll be other chances.' So confident; so controlled. No telling where she'd be in a few years. Linford had already handed over one of his business cards, the good ones, embossed. He'd added his home phone number on the back, smiled at her: 'Just in case.' A little later, she'd caught him stifling a yawn, had asked if she was boring him.
'Just a late night,' he'd explained.
'It's Archie I feel sorry for,' she went on now. 'This might've been his last chance.'
'But he's going on the regional list, isn't he?'
'Well, they have to, or else it looks like they're snubbing him. But you don't understand, that list is weighted against whichever party gets most first-past-the-post seats.'
'I think you've lost me.'
'Even if Archie was top of the list, he probably wouldn't get in.'
Linford mulled that over; decided he still didn't get it. 'You're being very magnanimous,' he said instead.
'Am I?' She smiled at him. 'You don't understand politics. If I'm graceful in defeat, that counts for me next time. You have to learn to lose.' She shrugged again. Padded shoulders, giving some bulk t
o her thin frame. 'Anyway, shouldn't we be talking about Roddy Grieve?'
Linford smiled. 'You're not a suspect, Ms Mollison.'
'That's good to hear.'
'Not unless Mrs Grieve meets with some accident.'
Mollison laughed, a sudden trill which had the other drinkers looking at them. She clamped a hand over her mouth, took it away. 'God, I shouldn't laugh, should I? What if something did happen to her?'
'Such as?'
'I don't know... Say she gets hit by a car.'
'Then I'll want to talk to you again.' He opened his notebook, reached for his pen. It was a Mont Blanc; she'd commented on it earlier, looking impressed. 'Maybe I should take down your number,' he said with a smile.
The final candidate on the shortlist, Sara Bone, was a social worker in south Edinburgh. He caught up with her at a daycare centre for the elderly. They sat in the conservatory, surrounded by potted plants wilting from neglect. Linford said as much.
'Quite the opposite,' she informed him. 'They're suffering from over-attention. Everybody thinks they need a drop of water. Too much is as bad as not enough.'
She was a small woman - a shade over five feet - with a mother's face framed by a youthful haircut, short and feathered.
'Horrible,' was what she said when he asked her about Roddy Grieve's death. 'The world just seems to get worse and worse.'
'Could an MSP do anything to help?'
'I'd hope so,' she said.
'But now you're not going to get the chance?'
'Much to the relief of my clients.' She nodded towards the building's interior. 'They were all saying how much they would miss me.'
'It's nice to be wanted,' Linford said, feeling that he was wasting his time with this woman...
He called Rebus. The two met at Cramond. The normally leafy suburb had a grey, pinched look to it: winter wasn't welcome here. They stood on the pavement by Linford's BMW. Rebus, having listened to Linford's report, was thoughtful.
'How about you?' Linford asked. 'How was St Andrews?'
'Fine. I took a walk down by the seashore.'
'And?'
'And what?'
'And did you talk to Billie Collins?'
'That's why I was there.'
'And?'
'And she shed about as much light as an asbestos candle.'
Linford stared at him. 'You wouldn't tell me anyway, would you? She could confess, and I'd be the last to know.'
'It's how I work.'
'Keeping things to yourself?' Linford's voice was rising.
'You're awfully tense, Derek. Not been getting any lately?'
Linford's face flushed. 'Sod you.'
'Come on, you can do better than that.'
'I don't need to. You're not worth it.'
'Now that's a comeback.'
Rebus lit a cigarette, smoked in the uncompanionable silence. He could still see St Andrews as it had been to him nearly half a century before. He knew it represented something extraordinary, but couldn't have said what. The words didn't quite exist. It was as though loss and permanence had mingled and become some new entity. the one tasting of the other.
'Should we talk to her?'
Rebus sighed, sucked again on the cigarette. The smoke was blowing back into Linford's face. The wind, Rebus thought, is on my side. 'I suppose so,' he said at last. 'Now we're here.'
'It's good to hear such enthusiasm. I'm sure our respective bosses would be thrilled.'
'Oh, I've always cared what the brass think.' He looked at Linford. 'You don't get it, do you? I'm the best thing that could have happened to you.' Linford hooted. 'Think about it,' Rebus went on. 'Case solved, you take the credit. Case unsolved, you lay the blame on me. Either way, your boss and mine will go for it. You're their blue-eyed boy.' He flicked the cigarette on to the road. 'Every time I refuse to share information with you, you should make a note. Gives you ammo for later. Every time I piss you off or head off on my own tangent, same thing.'
'Why are you telling me this? Does pariah status give you some kind of thrill?'
'I'm not the pariah here, son. Think about it.' Rebus unbuttoned his jacket, affected a Wild West drawl. 'Now let's go visit the widow lady.'
Left Linford lurching in his wake.
The door was opened by Hamish Hall, Roddy Grieve's press officer.
'Oh, hello again,' he said, ushering them inside. It was a neat semi-detached, brick-built and of 1930s vintage. Lots of doors seemed to lead off the entrance hall. Hamish squeezed past them and they followed, through the dining room and into a recent addition, a conservatory, much smarter, Linford noted, than the one out at the daycare centre. An electric fan-heater was humming briskly in one corner. Cane furniture, including a glass-topped table, and seated at the table Seona Grieve and Jo Banks, a mound of paperwork before them. The few pot plants looked expertly tended.
'Oh, hello,' Seona Grieve said.
'Coffee?' Hamish asked. Both detectives nodded, and he headed into the kitchen.
'Sit down if you can find a space,' Seona Grieve said. Jo Banks got up and scooped newspapers and folders from a couple of the chairs. Rebus picked up one folder, examined it: In Prospect - A Briefing Pack on the Scottish Parliament for Prospective Candidates. Notes had been scribbled in most of the margins; Roddy Grieve's writing, most probably.
'And to what do we owe this pleasure?' Seona Grieve asked.
'Just a few follow-up questions,' Linford told her, easing his notebook out of his pocket.
'We heard you were stepping into your husband's shoes,' Rebus added.
'My feet are much smaller than Roddy 's,' the widow said.
'Maybe so,' Rebus went on, 'but we've not got a motive yet for his death. DI Linford here thinks maybe you've just supplied us with one.'
Linford looked ready to remonstrate, but Jo Banks beat him to it. 'You think Seona would kill Roddy, just to become an MSP? That's ludicrous!'
'Is it?' Rebus scratched his nose. 'I don't know, I tend to agree with DI Linford. It is a motive. Had you thought of running before?'
Seona Grieve straightened her back. 'You mean before Roddy was killed?'
'Yes.'
She thought about it, then nodded. 'I suppose I had, yes.'
'What stopped you?'
'I'm not sure.'
'This is totally out of order,' Jo Banks said. Seona Grieve touched her arm.
'It's all right, Jo. Best just put their minds at rest.' She glared at Rebus. 'It was when I realised that one of them, Ure, Mollison or Bone, would take Roddy's place... I thought: I could do it, maybe better than any of them, so why not ask?'
'Good for you,' Jo Banks said. 'It's in memory of Roddy. It's what he would have wanted.'
They had the sound of words used previously. Rebus wondered: maybe Jo Banks had come to the widow with the idea. Just maybe...
'I can see your point, Inspector,' Seona Grieve informed Rebus. 'But if I'd wanted to, I could have stood. Roddy wouldn't have minded. I didn't need him dead for me to stand.'
'And yet he's dead, and here you are.'
'Here I am,' she agreed.
'With the whole of the party behind her,' Jo Banks cautioned. 'So if you're thinking of making any accusations..."
'They just want to find Roddy's killer,' Seona Grieve told her. 'Isn't that right, Inspector?'
Rebus nodded.
'Then we're still on the same side, aren't we?'
Rebus nodded again, but judging from the look on Jo Banks' face, he wasn't so sure she'd agree.
By the time Hamish arrived with a tray bearing coffee pot and cups, Seona Grieve was asking for a progress report and Linford was hauling out the usual flannel about 'pursuing leads' and 'inquiries still to make'. None of which looked to be convincing the two women, despite the effort he was putting in. Seona Grieve met Rebus's eyes and inclined her head a little, telling him she knew what he was thinking. Then she turned to Linford, interrupting him.
'It's an American phrase, I think. Never kid a kidder.
.. Or is it never shit a shitter?' She looked to Hamish as if for help, but he merely shrugged and went on handing out the coffees. 'Sounds to me, DI Linford, as though you've made precious little progress.'
'Clutching at straws, more like,' Jo Banks muttered. 'We still have every confidence...' Linford began. 'Oh, I can see that. I can see you're positively brimming with the stuff. Because that's what's got you where you are today. I'm a teacher, DI Linford. I've seen plenty of boys like you. They leave school and feel it in their bones that they can do anything they set their minds to. With most of them, it doesn't last long. But you...' She wagged a ringer, then turned towards Rebus, who was blowing on the scalding coffee. 'DI Rebus, on the other hand...'
'What?' The question coming from Linford. 'DI Rebus has no confidence in anything very much any more. An accurate assessment?' Rebus blew on the coffee, said nothing. 'DI Rebus is jaded and cynical about most things. Weltschmerz, do you know that word, Inspector?'
'I think I ate some last time I was abroad,' Rebus said. She smiled at him; a smile without happiness. 'World-weariness.'
'Pessimism,' Hamish agreed.
'You won't be voting, will you, Inspector?' Seona Grieve asked. 'Because you don't see the point.'
'I'm all for job creation schemes,' Rebus said. Jo Banks let out a hiss of air; Hamish snorted good-naturedly. 'But there's something I can't figure out. If I've got a problem, who do I go to - my MSP, my list MSP, or my MP? Maybe my MEP or councillor? That's what I mean about job creation.'
'Then why am I doing this?' Seona Grieve said quietly, her hands in her lap. Jo Banks reached out and touched her hand.
'Because it makes sense,' she said.
When Seona Grieve looked up at Rebus, there were tears in her eyes. Rebus looked away.
