Resurrection Men (2002) (35 page)

“I get the picture,” Siobhan snarled. There were three cars between her and Dempsey, and one of them also took the access road. They were heading for North Queensferry, a picturesque place on the banks of the Forth, with the rail bridge towering above the houses and shops. Dempsey was signaling to turn up a steep incline which was little more than the width of a single car. Siobhan drove past, then pulled over. When the traffic behind her had passed, she reversed to the bottom of the hill. Dempsey had reached the summit and was disappearing over the brow. Siobhan followed. A hundred yards farther on, Dempsey had turned into a driveway. Siobhan waited a few moments, then drove past. She couldn’t see much because of the tall hedge in front. In her favor, Dempsey couldn’t see her either. The bungalow was pretty much at the eastern edge of the village, the steep climb giving it height, so that it looked down on the main street and surroundings. Siobhan would bet there were spectacular uninterrupted views from the back garden.

At the same time, it was a very private place, and North Queensferry was nicely anonymous. Another train was crossing the bridge: with her window open, Siobhan could hear it. Heading across Fife to Dundee and beyond. Fife was what separated Edinburgh from Dundee. She wondered if that was why Dempsey had chosen to make it her home: neither one place nor the other, but within reach of both. It felt right to her: Dempsey wasn’t just visiting someone; she was home.

She also got the feeling Dempsey lived alone. No other cars outside the bungalow, and no garage . . . Hadn’t Dempsey said something about owning other MGs, about having them stored in her garage? Well, wherever that garage was, it wasn’t here. Always supposing the cars existed at all. Why would she have lied? To impress her visitor . . . to stress that the name of her company was down to her passion for the sports cars which bore that brand . . . There could be multiple reasons. People lied to police officers all the time.

If they had something to hide . . . If they were talking for the sheer sake of talking, because as long as
they
were talking, they weren’t being asked any awkward questions. Dempsey had sounded confident enough, calm and collected, but that could have been all front.

What could she be hiding, this woman who hid herself away from the world? She drove a car that wanted you to look at it . . . wanted you to admire the shiny surface, the promise of performance. But here was this other side to its owner: the woman who dressed immaculately only to spend her days alone in an office, enduring only a little physical contact with the outside world. Her employees called her “Mrs.” . . . she didn’t let them get too close, didn’t want them to think she was single, available. And when she came home it was to this quiet haven, to a house hidden behind walls and a hedge.

There was a whole side to Ellen Dempsey which she kept away from the world. Siobhan wondered what it might consist of. Would she find any answers in Dundee? Dempsey had
friends,
people even Cafferty was wary of. Was she fronting for some Dundee villains? Where had the money come from to kick-start her business? A fleet of cars didn’t exactly come cheap, and it was a bit of a step up from “a couple of taxis in Dundee” to the operation she now ran at Lochend. A woman with a past . . . a woman who could spot CID and gave work to ex-cons . . .

Ellen Dempsey didn’t just have a past, Siobhan realized. She had a police record of her own. It was the simplest explanation. What was it Eric Bain had told her?
Reduce it to binary.
His way of saying, keep it simple. Maybe she was trying to make everything too complex. Maybe the Marber case was simpler than it seemed.

“Reduce it to binary, Siobhan,” she told herself. Then she started the car and headed for the bridge.

By the time Rebus drove home, it was almost half past seven. His mobile had stored a couple of messages: Gill and Siobhan. Then it started ringing.

“Gill,” he said, “I was just about to call you.” He was in a queue at traffic lights.

“Have you seen tonight’s final edition?” He knew what she was going to say. “You made the front page, John.”

Bingo . . .

“You mean they got a picture of me?” he pretended to guess. “Hope it was my good side.”

“I wasn’t aware that you
had
a good side.” A low blow, but he let her get away with it.

“Look,” he said, “it was my own stupid fault. I wanted out of the station for an hour, and they were all heading for the cars. I insisted on going, so don’t go blaming anyone else.”

“I’ve already spoken to Siobhan.”

“She told me to clear off, and that’s pretty much what I did.”

“Which is almost exactly what she told me, except that in her version it was
you
who decided to leave voluntarily.”

“She’s trying to make me look good, Gill. You know what Siobhan’s like.”

“You’re supposed to be off the Marber inquiry, John: remember that.”

“I’m also supposed to be the sort of cop who can’t take a telling: do you want me to blow my cover at Tulliallan?”

She sighed. “No luck so far then?”

“There’s a ray of light in the tunnel,” he admitted. The lights had changed, and he drove across the junction into Melville Drive. “Problem is, I’m not sure I want to go anywhere near it.”

“Dangerous?”

“I won’t know that till I get there.”

“For Christ’s sake, be careful.”

“It’s nice to know you care.”

“John . . .”

“Speak to you later, Gill.”

He didn’t bother responding to Siobhan, knew now what her message had been.

Gray, Jazz and Allan Ward would be waiting for him as arranged, but he’d already prepared his story. He didn’t want them hitting the warehouse . . . not because it would or wouldn’t work, but because it was
wrong.
He knew now that he could go to Strathern, tell him that he was able to lead the three men into a trap. He still doubted Strathern would go for it. It wasn’t
clean;
it didn’t answer the question. All the trio had to do was say they’d merely been following Rebus’s lead.

He’d parked at the top end of Arden Street, but the trio had found a space right outside his tenement door. The headlamps flashed at him, letting him know they were there. One of the rear doors opened on his approach.

“Let’s go for a drive, John,” Gray said from the front. Jazz was driving, leaving Allan Ward in the rear beside Rebus.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“How did it go at the compound?”

Rebus looked into the rearview, where he could connect with Jazz’s eyes. “It’s a non-starter, lads,” he sighed.

“Tell us.”

“For a start, they’ve got twenty-four-hour security on the gate. Plus there’s an alarm system on the fence as well as some serious-looking razor wire. Then there’s the warehouse itself, which is locked tight and almost certainly alarmed, too. But Claverhouse has been cleverer than I’d have credited. He’s filled the interior with packing crates, dozens of them.”

“And the merchandise is in one of them?” Jazz guessed.

Rebus nodded, aware of the driver’s eyes still on him. “And he’s not about to say which one.”

“So all it needs is a lorry,” Gray piped up. “Take the whole damned lot of them.”

“Takes time to load a lorry, Francis,” Jazz told his friend.

“We don’t need a lorry,” Ward pitched in, leaning forward. “We just take whichever case feels the heaviest.”

“That’s good thinking, Allan,” Jazz said.

“It still takes time,” Rebus argued. “A hellish lot of time.”

“And meantime the forces of law and order are streaming towards the scene?” Jazz guessed.

Rebus knew he hadn’t quite managed to dissuade them. His head was swimming.
They don’t have Bernie Johns’s money, always supposing there
was
any money to begin with. All they’ve got is this dream I’ve offered them, and they want to make it real. Which makes me the mastermind . . .
He started shaking his head without realizing he was doing it. But Jazz noticed.

“You don’t rate our chances, John?”

“There’s one more problem,” Rebus said, thinking fast. “They’re moving the stuff over the weekend. Claverhouse is antsy that Cafferty will try something.”

“Tomorrow’s Friday,” Ward said unnecessarily.

“Not much time to procure a lorry,” Gray grumbled. He pulled down on his seat belt, making some slack so he could turn to face Rebus. “You come to us with this big fucking plan of yours, and this is what it turns into?”

“It’s not John’s fault,” Jazz said.

“Then whose is it?” Ward asked.

“It was a nice idea, but it wasn’t to be,” Jazz told him.

“It was a half-cocked idea that we should have kiboshed from the start,” Gray snarled, still giving Rebus the full force of his scowl. Rebus turned to peer out of the window.

“Where are we going?”

“Back to Tulliallan,” Ward explained. “Tennant gave the word: that’s the end of our wee holiday.”

“Hang on, I haven’t got any of my stuff with me.”

“So?”

“So there are things I need . . .”

Jazz signaled, pulled over. They were approaching Haymarket. “All right making your own way back from here, John?”

“If that’s what’s on offer,” Rebus said, opening his door. Gray’s hand closed like a vise around his forearm.

“We’re very disappointed in you, John.”

“I thought we were a team, Francis,” Rebus told him, twisting free of his grip. “You want to walk into that warehouse, it’s fine by me. But they’ll catch you and they’ll put you away.” He paused. “Maybe another scheme will come along.”

“Aye, right,” Gray said. “Don’t call us and we won’t call you . . .” He leaned back and pulled Rebus’s door closed. The car took off again, leaving Rebus watching from the pavement.

That was it then. He’d blown it. He was never going to win them back, never going to find out the truth about Bernie Johns. And on top of all that, it might just turn out that they were on to him . . .

“Fuck it,” he said, wishing he’d never said yes to Strathern. He’d never meant for them to agree to his scheme. It was a way of getting them to open up about themselves. Instead of which, they were closing ranks, excluding him. The course had one more week to run. He could pull out now, or see it through to the end. It was something he’d have to consider. If he failed to see it through, whatever suspicions the trio harbored would appear confirmed. He turned and found that he was standing outside a pub. What better way to ponder the conundrum than over a pint and a double malt? With any luck, the place would do food too. They’d call him a cab afterwards to see him home. His problems would all have disappeared . . .

“I’ll drink to that,” he told himself, pushing open the door.

24

I
t was two in the morning when the phone woke him. He was lying on the living room floor, next to the hi-fi, CD cases and album sleeves spread around him. He crawled on hands and knees to his chair and picked up the receiver.

“Yes?” he croaked.

“John? It’s Bobby.”

Rebus took a moment to realize who Bobby was: Bobby Hogan, Leith CID. He tried focusing on his watch.

“How soon can you get down here?” Hogan was asking.

“Depends where ‘here’ is.” Rebus was doing a stock check: head cloudy but bearable; stomach queasy.

“Look, you can go back to bed if you like.” Hogan starting to sound aggrieved. “I thought maybe I was doing you a favor . . .”

“I’ll know that when you tell me what it is.”

“A floater. Pulled him out of the docks not fifteen minutes ago. And though I haven’t seen him in a while, he looks awfully like our old pal the Diamond Dog . . .”

Rebus stared down at the album sleeves, not really seeing them.

“You still awake, John?”

“I’ll be there in twenty minutes, Bobby.”

“He’ll be on his way to the mortuary by then.”

“Even better. I’ll meet you there.” Rebus paused. “Any chance of this being an accident?”

“At this stage, we’re supposed to be keeping an open mind.”

“You won’t be too bothered if I don’t do the same?”

“I’ll see you at the Dead Center, John . . .”

“Dead Center” was what they called the mortuary. One of the workers there had come up with the phrase, telling everyone that he was proud to work “at the dead center of Edinburgh.” The building was tucked away on the Cowgate, one of the city’s more secretive streets. Few pedestrians ever found themselves there, and the traffic was intent on being elsewhere. Things might change when the parliament opened its new building, less than a ten-minute walk away. More traffic, more tourists. At this time of night, Rebus knew the drive would take him five minutes. He wasn’t sure his blood alcohol level would pass muster, but after a quick shower he made for his car anyway.

He didn’t know what he was thinking or how he was feeling about Dickie Diamond’s death. Hard to say how many enemies had been harboring their festering thoughts, just waiting for the night when they clapped eyes on Diamond again.

He cut across to Nicolson Street and headed for the city center, turning right at Thin’s Bookshop and taking the steep turn down to the Cowgate. A couple of taxis: a few drunks.
Dead center,
he was thinking. He knew the easiest way into the mortuary this time of night was the staff entrance, so he parked outside, making sure he wasn’t blocking the loading bay. For a long time, they’d had to carry out actual autopsies at one of the city’s hospitals, due to the lack of a decent air-filtering system in the mortuary’s autopsy suite, but that had been remedied now. Rebus walked into the building and saw Hogan in the corridor ahead of him.

“He’s in here,” Hogan said. “Don’t worry, he wasn’t long in the water.” Good news: the body underwent terrible changes after lengthy submersion. The short corridor led directly into the loading area, which itself led directly to the holding area — a wall of little doors, each one opening to reveal a trolley. One trolley was sitting out, a polythene-wrapped body lying on it. Dickie Diamond was still wearing the same clothes. His wet hair was slicked back from his face, and there was some kind of algae stuck to one cheek. His eyes were closed, mouth open. The attendants were readying to take him upstairs in the elevator.

“Who’s doing the cutting?” Rebus asked.

“They’re both on tonight,” Hogan told him. Meaning: Professor Gates and Dr. Curt, the city’s chief pathologists. “It’s been a busy one: drug overdose in Muirhouse, fatal fire in Wester Hailes.”

“And four naturals,” an attendant reminded him. People dying of old age, or in the hospital. Mostly they ended up here.

“Shall we go up?” Hogan asked.

“Why not?” Rebus said.

As they climbed the stairs, Hogan asked about Diamond. “You lot were just interrogating him, weren’t you?”

“Interviewing him, Bobby.”

“As a suspect or a witness?”

“The latter.”

“When did you let him go?”

“This afternoon. How long had he been dead when you fished him out?”

“I’d say about an hour. Question is: did he drown?”

Rebus shrugged. “Do we know if he could swim?”

“No.”

They’d entered a glass-fronted viewing area. There were a couple of benches for them to sit on. On the other side of the glass, people moved around in surgical gowns and green Wellingtons. There were two stainless-steel slabs, with drainage holes and old-fashioned wooden blocks for the head to rest on. Gates and Curt waved a greeting, Curt gesturing for the two detectives to come join the fun. They shook their heads, pointing to the benches to let him know they were fine where they were. The body bag had been removed, and now Dickie Diamond’s clothes were being discarded, placed in their own plastic bags.

“How did you ID him?” Rebus asked.

“Phone numbers in his pocket. One was for his sister. I recognized him anyway, but she did the formal ID downstairs just before you got here.”

“How was she?”

“She didn’t seem too surprised, to be honest. Maybe she was just in shock.”

“Or maybe she’d been expecting it?”

Hogan looked at him. “Something you want to tell me, John?”

Rebus shook his head. “We reopened the case, went sniffing. Malky, the nephew, told Dickie what was happening. He came haring up here. We picked him up.” He shrugged. “End of story.”

“Not as far as someone was concerned,” Hogan said, peering through the glass as one of the attendants lifted something from the clothing. It was the revolver Diamond had pointed at Rebus. The attendant held it up for them to see.

“Managed to miss that in your search, Bobby,” Rebus said.

Hogan stood up, called out through the glass. “Where was it?”

“Down the back of his underpants,” the attendant called back, voice muffled by the face mask he was wearing.

“Can’t have been too comfortable,” Professor Gates added. “Maybe he’d a bad case of piles and was resorting to threats.”

When Hogan sat down again, Rebus noticed that he had reddened slightly at the neck.

“These things happen, Bobby,” Rebus sought to reassure him. He was wondering now if the gun had been tucked into Diamond’s waistband when he’d been answering their questions in IR1 . . .

With the body stripped of its clothing, the autopsy proper was beginning with the taking of body temperature. Rebus and Hogan knew what the pathologists would be looking for: alcohol levels; signs of injuries; head trauma . . . They would want to know whether Diamond had been alive or dead when he’d entered the water. Alive, and it could have been an accident — too much booze, maybe. Dead, and there was foul play involved. Everything from the state of the eyeballs to the contents of the lungs provided little clues. The body temperature would be used to calculate time of death, though immersion would make any exact calculations problematic.

After twenty minutes as spectator, Rebus said he needed a cigarette. Hogan decided to join him. They went to the staff room and helped themselves to mugs of tea, then walked outside. The night was clear and chilly. An undertaker’s car had arrived to take charge of one of the “naturals.” The driver bowed his head to them in sleepy acknowledgment. At this time of night, in this location, you had a bond of sorts. You were dealing with things most people — those with their heads warm against pillows, dreaming the time away until morning — shied away from.

“Undertaker,” Hogan mused. “You ever thought it a bloody odd word to use in the circumstances? Funeral director, I can understand, but undertaker . . . ?”

“You getting philosophical on me, Bobby?”

“No, I’m just saying . . . ach, forget it.”

Rebus smiled. His own thoughts were of Dickie Diamond. Dickie had gifted them Chib Kelly’s name. They could have accepted his gift, presented the case to Tennant and left it at that. But Gray and Jazz — Jazz in particular — hadn’t been satisfied. Rebus was wondering if they’d decided to press Dickie further. They’d dumped Rebus at Haymarket, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t turned back. In fact, he was a damned good alibi. When last seen, the trio had been heading west out of town, while Dickie was found in the northeast corner of the city. The Wild Bunch had started life looking like an uneasy alliance of insubordinate officers who didn’t like authority and were as likely to ignore an order as carry it out. But now Rebus was wondering if there was something more dangerous, more lethal at work. Gray, Jazz and Ward had been all too ready to help rip off the warehouse consignment. Force would have been necessary, but that hadn’t seemed to bother them. Were they capable of killing Dickie Diamond? Then again,
why
would they have killed him? Rebus didn’t have an answer for that, not yet.

He was leaning over the wall, watching the roadway, when he spotted the parked car. Movement within it. As the driver’s door opened and the interior light came on, he recognized Malky. He looked for Malky’s mother but didn’t see her. Malky was making to cross the road towards Rebus, but stopped at the centerline and stretched his arm, pointing.

“You fucking killed him, ya bastard!”

Hogan was at the wall now, too. “Calm down, Malky,” he called.

“Dickie told me he was going to have a word with you!” Malky shouted hoarsely. His finger moved towards the mortuary building. “Is that what you call ‘a word’? Man comes to talk to you, you do him in!”

“What’s he talking about, John?” Hogan said.

Rebus shook his head. “Maybe Dickie
did
say he was coming to see me . . .”

“But never got round to it?” Hogan guessed.

“Or didn’t get the chance.”

Hogan patted Rebus’s arm. “I’ll go talk to him,” he said, making for the street, hands held up in front of him. “Easy now, Malky, easy . . . It’s a bad time for you, I know, but let’s not go waking the neighbors, eh?”

For a moment, Rebus had thought he was going to say “waking the dead” . . .

He headed back indoors, depositing his empty mug in the sink in the staff room. As he turned to leave, Dr. Curt came in, no longer wearing his gown and boots.

“Any tea going?” Curt asked.

“Kettle’s not long boiled.”

Curt busied himself with a fresh mug and tea bag. “He was dead when he went in the water,” he began. “Happened around midnight, and the body went in the water not long after. Forensics might be able to tell us more from the clothing.”

“How did he die?”

“Windpipe was crushed.”

Rebus thought back to the interview room, the way Gray’s forearm had slid around Diamond’s throat . . .

“You got a spare cigarette?” Curt was asking now. Rebus opened his pack, and Curt picked one out, tucking it behind his ear. “I’ll have it with my tea. Simple pleasures, eh, John?”

“Where would we be without them?” Rebus said, his mind on the drive he was planning to take . . .

It was nearly dawn when he reached Tulliallan. He saw another detective in front of him, sneaking back in after a night in someone else’s bed. Rebus recognized him, a young detective sergeant from the new City Center force. He’d be here on one of the specialist programs. Rebus drove around the car park, seeking Jazz’s Volvo. There was dew on it, as with the cars on either side, so it had been there awhile. He touched the hood. It was cold; again, same temperature as the cars either side.

He did the same set of checks with Gray’s Lexus, once he’d found it. Nothing to suggest it had been used in the recent past. Then he realized he didn’t know what car Allan Ward drove. He supposed he could look for a dealer badge on the back windshield, something indicating purchase in Dumfries . . . but that would take time, and he was pretty sure it would be a waste of effort. Instead, he headed indoors and along to the bedrooms, walking right past his own door and knocking loudly on Gray’s, four along from him. When there was no answer, he knocked again.

“Who is it?” the voice coughed from within.

“It’s Rebus.”

The door opened a crack, Gray squinting into the light. “Hell’s going on?” he asked. His hair was sticking up. He was dressed in a T-shirt and underpants. The room smelled stuffy.

“Been in bed long, Francis?” Rebus asked.

“What’s it to you?”

“Dickie Diamond’s just been found dead, windpipe crushed.”

Gray didn’t say anything, just blinked a couple of times as if trying to wake from a dream.

“Afterwards, he was dumped in Leith docks, the killer trying to muddy the waters, as it were . . .” Rebus narrowed his eyes. “Coming back to you now, is it, Francis? It was only four or five hours ago.”

“Four or five hours ago I was tucked up in bed,” Gray stated.

“Anyone see you come back?”

“I don’t have to explain anything to you, Rebus.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.” Rebus pointed a finger. “Round up your pals and meet me in the bar. You’ve got a serious amount of convincing to do if you want me off your case.”

Rebus went to the bar and waited. The place smelled of stale beer and cigarettes. There were a few glasses dotted around, left there by drinkers who’d stayed put after the place had closed. Most of the chairs had been stacked on tables. Rebus lifted one down and made himself comfortable. He was asking himself what the hell he was doing here. It wasn’t that he was afraid of what Dickie Diamond might have told anyone. It was more that he just didn’t care anymore. Everything seemed to be falling apart, and the subtle undercover work hadn’t accomplished anything, perhaps because subtlety had never been his strong point. Rather, he was going to shake things up, see how the trio reacted. What did he have to lose? That was a question he wasn’t about to answer.

Five minutes later, the three men walked in. Gray had made some attempt to flatten his hair against his skull. Jazz looked wide awake and had dressed with his usual care. Allan Ward, wearing only a baggy T-shirt and gym shorts, was yawning and rubbing his face. He’d slipped sneakers on his feet, but no socks.