Let It Bleed ir-7

by Ian Rankin

  When his own turn came to shoot, he missed with both barrels. Sir lain insisted he try again straight away.

  ‘You’re a tyro,’ he said, ‘you need the practice. I’m sure we all missed a few in the beginning.’

  This time, Rebus chipped a bit off the disc with his second shot.

  ‘See?’ said Sir Iain. ‘Now you’re getting the hang of it!’

  Maybe he was at that.

  Ears still ringing, Rebus joined the others at the Land Rover. There were flasks of Scotch broth, sandwiches in silver foil, hip-flasks of whisky and larger flasks of tea. Rebus’s sandwich was brown bread and smoked salmon. The salmon was sliced thick, and had been sprinkled with lemon juice and pepper. He took a small nip of whisky when the hip-flask came round, then drank two mugs of strong tea. With all the games he felt were going on, he wanted to clear his head. He wasn’t sure if he was a player, a counter, or the die. He’d been shown one thing, though — the game was dangerous, at stake his professional career, which was everything he lived for. Practically every man present had it within his power to push Rebus off the playing-board and off the force. He started to get angry: angry with himself for coming; angry with Sir Iain Hunter — so smug, so manipulative — for bringing him here. Rebus knew now that he hadn’t just been brought here so he could be warned off. He swallowed the anger down and held it in his gut. It was hotter than tea, stronger than whisky.

  They were almost back at the house when Sir Iain gripped Rebus’s elbow and led him towards the greenhouses.

  ‘We’ll catch you up!’ he called to the others. Then, to Rebus, still holding him by the elbow: ‘Have a nice chat with Robbie Mathieson?’ Rebus shrugged off Sir Iain’s hand. ‘And with Allan Gunner too, I noticed.’

  ‘Why am I here?’

  ‘I admire your directness. You’re here because I want to know if you’ve decided.’

  ‘Decided what?’

  ‘To stop your investigation.’

  ‘Are you willing to tell me why you’re so interested?’

  Sir Iain’s gaze hardened. ‘I’m willing to tell you one thing, if you’re willing to listen.’

  They were standing in front of one of the long greenhouses. Looking through the misted windows, Rebus could see trestle tables and empty flower-pots and seed-trays, but there was nothing growing in there, nothing at all.

  ‘I’m listening,’ he said.

  ‘Then I’ll tell you that Scottish jobs are at risk.’

  ‘At risk from what?’

  ‘From you, Inspector, if you continue stumbling blindly around. Let it take its course, that’s what I’m saying.’

  Rebus turned to him. ‘Let what take its course? You’re not telling me anything, how am I supposed to know what to do and what not to do?’

  ‘You know what to do,’ Hunter said calmly: ‘stop your little private investigation. If it goes any further, hundreds of jobs could disappear. Do you hear me? Hundreds. You wouldn’t want that on your conscience, I’m sure.’

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ Rebus said.

  Hunter looked at him with something near pity. ‘Yes, you do, Inspector.’

  He did, too. It was in Hunter’s voice, in the way his frame shivered when he spoke. He believed what he was saying, believed it with a passion. Hundreds of jobs.

  Sir lain started to walk towards the house. Rebus followed, making sure he never caught up.

  As agreed, Rebus and Gunner left the house separately but met up at a hotel in Auchterarder.

  ‘I don’t usually drink,’ Gunner confided, washing down two aspirin with an orange juice. They sat in a corner of the quiet lounge bar. For a Saturday, the main street was quiet. The shoppers would all be in Perth, keeping warm in department stores and superstores. The TV was showing Rio Bravo, John Wayne doing his John Wayne walk.

  ‘I don’t usually shoot,’ Rebus said.

  ‘So now we’ve both seen how the other half lives.’ Gunner put down his glass and took a deep breath. ‘Let’s get down to business. Whatever you think, Inspector, I wasn’t there to “scare you off”. I got my invite in the mail, same as you did. I’ve been thinking, and my conclusion is that Sir lain wanted to play us off against one another. Or perhaps he thought that my presence would serve to unnerve you.’

  Rebus nodded agreement. ‘One other option,’ he added. ‘We were both there to scare someone else. Mathieson didn’t like it that policemen were present.’

  ‘What are they so worried about?’

  ‘Hunter told me it has to do with jobs.’

  ‘Jobs? What kind of jobs?’

  Rebus shook his head. How far could he trust Gunner? The man was the first person who’d tried to take him out of the game. ‘Are you going to own up about McAnally?’

  Gunner examined his fingernails. ‘You’re right in just about every detail. I had McAnally moved to Saughton and into Charters’ cell. Then he went and got cancer, and wasn’t getting any information out of Charters, so I arranged for his early release.’

  ‘And he went straight to Councillor Gillespie and blew his head off in front of him.’

  ‘I don’t know why he did that.’

  ‘Why was McAnally in Charters’ cell?’

  ‘To see if he could talk himself into Charters’ confidence. I wanted to see what Charters was hiding. I knew he was hiding something, but couldn’t think what to do about it until Flower suggested McAnally.’

  ‘And what is Charters hiding exactly?’

  ‘Money, what else? I don’t mean he’s hiding it literally, though perhaps he is. But back in the mid-eighties he was coining it, and we weren’t sure where the cash was coming from. He had about half a dozen companies — legit, as far as the Fraud Unit could tell — but they made more money than they should have.’

  ‘I thought that’s what Thatcherism was all about. Was one of his companies called Mensung?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And were all his companies involved in retraining?’

  ‘That sort of thing. Their paperwork was so convoluted — positively labyrinthine — that even our specialists couldn’t find a clear path through it. They were all agreed on one thing. Derry Charters had a genius for muddying the water. You could track a company of his for months and not get to the bottom of its financial status.’

  ‘I’ve heard he helped finance PanoTech at one time.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Is it true?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Did one of Charters’ investors tell you?’ Rebus nodded. ‘Probably a story he spun them. He could be very persuasive.’

  ‘But all this was eight, nine years ago.’

  ‘Yes, and since then he’s cleaned up his act, or had done until he burnt people’s fingers with Albavise.’

  ‘So why are you still chasing him over a piece of ancient history?’

  ‘A couple of reasons. One, I spent a lot of my time and effort in the Fraud Unit chasing him, without getting a result. It represents probably the only blot on my record. Two, our best guess when we investigated him was that he was fiddling millions.’ He had Rebus’s full attention. ‘Millions,’ he repeated. ‘And for me, that makes him worth the chase.’

  ‘Where did he fiddle these millions from?’

  But Gunner just shrugged. Rebus was thoughtful for a moment. The bar was filling, and the TV had been switched over to show the football scores. Not that many games were being played: the pitches were dangerously hard.

  ‘I’ve read the case against him on Albavise. Any chance that I can see the other paperwork?’

  Gunner studied him. ‘There’s a hell of a lot, and it’s in no particular order. You think you can spot something our financial gurus couldn’t?’

  Rebus shrugged. ‘Just for my peace of mind. I’d like to talk to Charters, too.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘His cellmate’s committed suicide. It looks strange if nobody’s been near to ask him about McAnally’s state of mind prior to release. I mean, who’d know better
than him?’

  Gunner nodded. ‘Fair point.’

  ‘Speaking of McAnally, how much did you pay him?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He was working for you, feeding you information, I’m assuming he was paid.’

  ‘He didn’t give us anything of relevance. We gave him a few pounds here and there, nothing more.’ Rebus was seeing Tresa McAnally’s flat in his mind: new door, new decor, new TV. ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘It did to Wee Shug,’ Rebus said quietly. Someone had given him the money, money he’d passed on to Tresa, almost like life insurance. Who did Wee Shug know with money apart from his cellmate?

  Gunner finished his drink. ‘I wonder what Sir Iain will be up to tonight.’

  ‘The way he was tucking into the hooch, sleeping it off, I’d imagine. Does he drive to Edinburgh and back every day?’

  ‘He only uses Ruthie at weekends. When he’s at work, he has a flat in the New Town.’

  ‘Whereabouts exactly?’

  ‘Royal Circus, I think.’

  Royal Circus, thought Rebus, where Haldayne collected some of his parking tickets. Life was just full of coincidences, if you happened to believe, as Rebus himself did not, in coincidence.

  31

  Early Sunday morning, a sleepy-eyed detective sergeant from Lothian & Borders Police Headquarters turned up at Rebus’s flat.

  ‘You’d better give me a hand,’ he said.

  Rebus followed him down to where a patrol car idled kerbside. He peered in through the passenger side window.

  ‘Maybe we’d better hire a winch.’

  It took them four trips to transfer the boxes from the car to Rebus’s living-room. Rebus put the binbags behind the sofa to make room on the floor.

  ‘Sign here,’ the DS said. He had a typed chitty: RECEIPT OF ALL CASE-NOTES (8 BOXES) CONCERNING DERWOOD CHAR TERS. Rebus signed.

  ‘Date and time, too,’ said the DS.

  ‘You’ll be wanting a tip next,’ Rebus muttered.

  ‘If you’re offering.’

  ‘Well, here’s one for you: when lifting, bend your knees, not your back.’

  He phoned Siobhan Clarke.

  ‘Why me?’ she said.

  ‘Because Brian Holmes has a home life.’

  ‘That could be construed as discrimination. When do you want me there?’

  ‘Say an hour.’

  He tidied the living room a bit, depositing the bin bags in the hall and setting the file boxes in a row on the floor. Then he collected up all the dirty mugs, glasses and dishes and took them through to the kitchen. He emptied the coffee-jar and put it back under the radiator, and opened the living-room window an inch to air the place. The sun was out, showing that the windows hadn’t been cleaned since the autumn. Rebus decided enough was enough.

  ‘She’s coming here to work,’ he told himself, ‘not for a candlelit supper.’

  They got two breaks, both late in the afternoon.

  The first was a client’s name: Quinlon.

  ‘I’ve come across that name before,’ Rebus said. It took him a while to place it. ‘The civil servant, Rory McAllister, he mentioned someone called Quinlon; a building contractor. There’d been some shady business between the SDA and him — it was one of the things held against the SDA when they were deciding its fate.’ Rebus flipped back a page in the notes. ‘And Charters’ client happened to be a building contractor.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, somehow the media got to hear about the SDA and Quinlon, and that story helped sink the SDA. Who was going to gain by the SDA’s demise?’

  ‘Charters?’

  ‘Yes, because the financial slate was going to be wiped clean, and there’d be no possibility of a future investigation into where the SDA millions had gone.’

  ‘You think Charters grassed on his client?’

  ‘I wouldn’t put anything past him.’

  The second break came soon after.

  It was clear from the case-notes that the Fraud Unit had been focusing on Charters. When his ‘associates’ were mentioned, they were dismissed as fronts or moneymen. Nobody thought the directors had anything to do with whatever swindles Charters was perpetrating.

  Which was why they weren’t mentioned often, and in the case of Mensung, not at all. But then Rebus picked up the photocopy of a letter sent by Charters to the SDA. The Mensung logo was at the top, together with the non-existent Leith Walk address — referred to as ‘Mensung House’. At the foot of the letter was the company’s registration number.

  ‘You couldn’t find Mensung in Companies House, right? ’

  ‘Right,’ said Clarke. ‘I had their archivist take a good look.’

  ‘Well, either they were registered, or this is a phony number.’

  ‘The records could have been mislaid.’

  ‘Now wouldn’t that be a coincidence.’ The final line of the sheet was blurred. Rebus peered at the row of names, the names of Mensung’s directors.

  Because he knew what he was looking for, he could pick out the name Charters quite easily; the others were more difficult. It took real effort to decipher J Joseph Simpson’s name.

  ‘Figures,’ Rebus said. He wanted another word with Simpson anyway, but this explained why he’d lied about Mensung’s address: the company had been dodgy, under investigation, and Simpson had been a director. It wasn’t the kind of thing you wanted to publicise when you were still in business.

  As for the third and last name …

  ‘Can you make that out?’ Rebus asked, passing the sheet to Siobhan Clarke.

  ‘Starts with an M,’ she suggested. ‘Murchieson?’

  ‘Murchieson?’

  ‘I don’t know, maybe Matthews, something like that.’

  Rebus took the sheet back from her. Matthews … Murchieson … ‘Mathieson,’ he said, staring at the slewed writing. ‘Could it be Mathieson?’

  She shrugged. ‘As in …?’

  ‘I met a man yesterday called Robbie Mathieson. He runs PanoTech.’

  ‘Silicon Glen’s homegrown success story?’

  Rebus nodded. ‘We’ve all just been supplied with PanoTech computers, haven’t we?’

  ‘Everybody from the chief constable down.’

  Which meant that Allan Gunner would have one, too. ‘Who do you suppose would decide something like that?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like which manufacturer was going to supply us?’

  ‘It would be the director of Corporate Services, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘But the DCC would have a say.’

  ‘Probably. Is it relevant?’

  Rebus wondered. PanoTech put the computers together in Gyle Park West, and Gyle Part West was one of Councillor Gillespie’s files. Mensung was another. There was the story that Derry Charters had something to do with the early financing of PanoTech. And PanoTech’s boss just happened to be at Sir Iain Hunter’s, looking worried about something. And Allan Gunner was there too …

  Wheels within wheels, he thought. Scotland was a machine, a big machine if you looked at it from the outside. But from the inside, it assumed a new form — small, intimate, not that many moving parts, and all of them interconnected quite intricately. Rebus knew he was still outside the machine, but he knew now that one reason why he’d been invited to the shooting party was that Sir Iain Hunter was inviting him in. They could make him part of the machine, a chip on the motherboard. All it took was friends in the right places.

  After that, anything could happen.

  They worked solidly till five-thirty.

  ‘I hope I’m being treated to dinner,’ Clarke said, stretching her spine.

  ‘Who’s taking you?’

  ‘You are,’ she said.

  Rebus shook his head. ‘I’ve other plans tonight, sorry.’

  ‘Well, thanks a lot. I give up my precious Sunday to help you, and then you boot me out.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘Got a date?’

  She was attempting a peculiarly Scottish tactic: bei
ng serious while pretending levity.

  ‘I’m working,’ Rebus said.

  ‘Working?’

  ‘I’ve got to talk to someone.’

  ‘Anyone I know?’

  Rebus shook his head. ‘But don’t think I don’t appreciate your help.’ He saw her to the door.

  When the bell rang two minutes later, he thought she must have forgotten something. But it wasn’t Siobhan Clarke standing on his doorstep. It was Gill Templer.

  ‘Mind if I come in?’ she said, walking past him.

  ‘I was just on my way out.’

  ‘This won’t take long. I tried phoning, but it was engaged all afternoon.’

  ‘I had it off the hook,’ Rebus said, following her into the living room. She looked at the boxes of documents.

  ‘I see you’re really taking your furlough seriously.’

  ‘Come on, Gill, it was foisted on me. You were there, remember.’

  ‘I remember. The chief super had been getting incredible flak; in his shoes, I’d have done the same thing.’

  ‘This isn’t sounding like a social call.’

  ‘That’s because it isn’t one. The Lord Provost is your latest victim. He called the chief super and said you’d been rude to him.’

  ‘Did he mention specifics?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I didn’t think he would.’

  ‘The Farmer will probably call you in the morning himself. I’d imagine it’ll be an official reprimand, maybe even a suspension.’ She turned to him, her eyes blazing. ‘How could you do this to me?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m your immediate superior! I’m in the post barely a week, and already you’ve caused the most unholy ructions. How do you think that makes me look?’

  ‘It’s got nothing to do with you.’

  ‘Yes it bloody well has! It’s got everything to do with me. You’re one of my officers. How am I supposed to work, to get a feel for the job, when all the chief super does is fret about what grenade you’re going to chuck next?’

  Rebus nodded his understanding. ‘That’s what this is about. You’re pissed off because the Farmer’s not paying you enough attention. You want to create a good impression, and you’re not making any impression at all.’