Saints of the Shadow Bible (Rebus) (19 page)

‘The son of the Justice Minister?’

‘Delicious, isn’t it? I heard it from two normally reliable sources. Even set up a bit of a surveillance – had a photographer with me and everything. Never caught him, though.’

‘So we’re talking unsubstantiated rumours?’ Clarke, while sounding sceptical, still had a question. ‘Where’s he getting it?’

Smith offered a shrug. ‘Not sure it originates in Edinburgh – do your lot know of any dealers who could be sending stuff down the chain?’

‘I’ll look into it.’

‘A note of caution – this is a son grieving for his father, remember.’

‘Meaning there’s nothing
you
can do with it?’

Smith shook her head. ‘Would I be trading it otherwise?’ she asked, with that same sweet, professional smile.

Rebus was asleep in his chair when his phone woke him. He didn’t recognise the number, but answered anyway, massaging his eyes back into focus with his free hand.

‘John Rebus,’ he said.

‘You’ve got to stop hassling my dad!’

‘Jessica?’ Rebus walked over to the record deck and lifted the stylus from the run-out groove. Side two of
Beggars Banquet
– how had he managed to sleep through so much of that? ‘I didn’t know you had my number.’

‘You gave Forbes your card.’

‘So I did.’

‘Now listen to me – just leave him alone!’

‘Forbes or your dad?’

‘Dad’s not
done
anything – he doesn’t deserve this . . .’ She seemed to be trying to control a sob.

‘Has he taken it out on you, Jessica?’ Rebus asked.

‘Of course not – but I can see it’s eating him up. They named him on TV, and now people keep phoning him.’

‘You’re still at the hotel?’

‘Checking out tomorrow.’

‘You’ll go back to your flat? What about your father?’

‘He needs to be in London. What he
doesn’t
need is this hanging over him.’

‘Then tell me what happened,’ Rebus said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘The night of the crash . . .’

There was silence on the line. He thought for a moment she’d hung up. But then came a crackling sound as she exhaled noisily.

‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘They’ll kill me.’

‘Who’ll kill you?’ He gave her time to answer, but none came. ‘You’re Owen Traynor’s daughter – no one’s going to kill you.’

‘I just can’t. Don’t ask me again.’

‘You can expect to see me at your door tomorrow. Does it involve Forbes? Or maybe his father?’

But this time she really had ended the call. Rebus rang back, but her messaging service picked up. He added her number to the contacts list on his phone, then patted the phone against his cheek as he went back over the conversation.

They’ll kill me
.

Who the hell were
they
?

No mention of Forbes McCuskey, just this plural threat. Did Owen Traynor know or suspect? If someone were menacing his daughter, what would he do? Would the red mist descend? Did he have friends he could call on?

Expect to see me at your door . . .

His mind flashed to the doorway of Dod Blantyre’s bungalow, and Maggie standing there, looking radiant. Her words to him at the café:
How things might have turned out – if we’d been a little braver
. And Stefan Gilmour:
No skeletons in
your
cupboard, John?

We start lying and cheating and concealing . . .

His brain felt foggy: too many connections, too much loose, frayed wiring.

He made himself a mug of tea, stuck
Solid Air
on the turntable, and slumped back in his chair, ready for a long night’s thinking.

‘This Laura Smith, she wouldn’t be spinning you a line?’ Rebus was seated in a café on Morrison Street, halfway between Torphichen Place and Haymarket railway station. It was an area of town he tried to avoid – the tram works seemed to have shut half the roads. He’d found the last space in an overground car park off the West Approach Road and walked from there to the café.

Mid morning and the place was doling out coffee and buns to visitors fresh off the train. There were no tables as such, just a long shelf by the window and a row of tall narrow stools. Siobhan Clarke was perched on one, while Rebus opted to stand. He had removed the lid from his coffee and was blowing on it while Clarke plucked gobbets of damp pastry from her croissant and popped them into her mouth.

‘Could be,’ she conceded. ‘But why would she bother?’

‘And all she knows is Forbes McCuskey flogs drugs to his fellow students? We don’t know quantities or whether we’re talking weed or heroin?’

Clarke shook her head. ‘I’m wondering what to do with it,’ she said eventually.

‘You mean: is it worth taking to Nick Ralph in its current doodle-like state, or should you try to add a few recognisable features?’

‘Something like that.’ She checked the time on her phone.

‘Press conference?’

She nodded. ‘Hotel along the street in twenty minutes.’

‘Autopsy results?’

‘I don’t think we’re seeing those until later.’ She looked at him. ‘Rough night?’

‘Not particularly.’

‘Get to bed at all?’

‘In time for the dawn chorus.’ He told her about Jessica Traynor’s phone call.

‘A drug deal gone wrong?’ Clarke speculated, seeming to wake up a little. Her drink of choice – a three-shot espresso – was already finished, and one of her knees was bouncing.

‘Possibly. Remember the car boot? Closed in the initial photos from the crash scene . . .’

‘But wide open by the time we got there. Meaning someone took something?’

‘Forbes McCuskey panics and does a runner. But then he has second thoughts, hangs around nearby. Once the ambulance has taken Jessica away and the patrol car has gone . . .’

‘He comes back, opens the boot and takes whatever was inside?’ Clarke’s eyes had opened a little wider. ‘And he’s walking distance from his parents’ place, so he takes the drugs there?’

Rebus nodded. ‘Maybe the original owners wanted them back – if the deal had gone sour.’

‘Forbes isn’t there, but they find his father instead?’

‘It’s guesswork at best, Siobhan,’ Rebus warned her. He knew this because he had spent half the night piecing it together.

‘We really need to talk to Forbes, don’t we?’

‘Might be easier starting with his girlfriend. She’s back in her flat as of today, with her dad nowhere in sight.’

‘Making her the weaker link?’ Clarke nodded, without looking especially convinced. She saw that there was no longer a queue at the counter. ‘I need another coffee to take with me.’

‘You sure about that?’ He nodded towards her knee. ‘I’d say you’re already shakier than a Neil Young tribute band.’

‘He’s playing Glasgow, you know – Neil Young, I mean.’

‘June the thirteenth,’ Rebus confirmed.

‘You’ve got a ticket?’

He shook his head. ‘They only had standing.’

‘And at your age you need a nice comfy seat?’ Clarke was smiling.

‘There are just some things I won’t stand for,’ Rebus replied. ‘You should know that by now . . .’

He walked with her to the hotel, and stood at the back of the room for the first few minutes of DCI Ralph’s presentation. A couple of political hacks seemed to have joined the usual newshounds. Rebus recognised their faces from late-night TV discussions. He had no idea what they sounded like – he always had the sound muted, an album playing in its place. They held phones or iPads rather than actual notebooks, and the look they affected was world-weary. Maybe they yearned for the bright lights of Westminster, Big Ben chiming the hours. Rebus almost felt sorry for them as he exited the hotel and returned to his car. He called Fox to make sure the office wasn’t locked.

‘Thought we might make a day of it,’ Fox told him. ‘I’ve fixed those interviews with Albert Stout and Norman Cuttle.’

‘Want me to bring anything for them – an ear trumpet or a bag of pan drops?’

‘They both sounded spry when I phoned them.’

‘So where are you just now?’

‘Elinor Macari’s office. She’s been updating me on Billy Saunders.’

‘And?’

‘Craigmillar police station are running the show – without any apparent enthusiasm.’

‘Guy’s been missing no time at all,’ Rebus argued.

‘Even so, Macari has got one of her fiscals to go gee them up. Poor bugger’s to stick to the investigation like glue.’

‘Glue used to be a currency in Craigmillar,’ Rebus commented. ‘So shall I meet you at Macari’s.’

‘Why not?’ Malcolm Fox said.

Why not indeed? Rebus thought to himself, ending the call and turning left at the lights.

Albert Stout lived on his own in an Edwardian house with uninterrupted views across Muirfield golf course. The place would be worth a few bob, but would also need gutting and updating by any new owners. The central heating radiators were the same age as the building, and emitted as much heat as a Bluebell match. There was a pervasive smell of damp, the window frames were crumbling, and the carpets were mouldering at their edges. There were books and newspapers everywhere, Stout having explained that he was writing his memoirs.

‘The industry’s on its last legs, so this is by way of
ave atque vale
.’

‘Do you know Laura Smith?’ Rebus enquired.

‘I hear she does a good enough job – under the circumstances.’ Stout shuffled along in carpet slippers, leading them into the lounge. More clutter – unopened mail, boxes of photographs, cups and plates. ‘Someone comes and cleans once a week,’ he apologised.

‘Do you have any other help?’ Fox asked.

‘Council tried matching me with someone, but I’m too set in my ways. They did install a button I can press if there’s an emergency . . .’ Stout looked around in vain for the device.

There were grease stains on his cardigan and brown cord trousers. He was jowly, and hadn’t shaved in a couple of days. What hair he had left was silver and unruly, but his eyes were alert. As the three men sat down, he wagged a finger in Rebus’s direction.

‘I remember you now,’ he said. ‘Gave me more than a few column inches down the years.’

‘I hope that’s not a euphemism,’ Rebus retorted. Then: ‘Do you still smoke a couple of packs a day?’

Stout made a face. ‘Doctor told me I should call a halt.’

‘We want to talk to you about a particular case,’ Fox broke in, perching on the edge of the sofa rather than move the heaps of magazines behind him. ‘Summerhall CID and the death of Douglas Merchant. You wrote about it several times . . .’

‘Because it was a scandal – the police back then were like little tyrants.’ He paused and glanced in Rebus’s direction. ‘No offence.’

‘None taken,’ Rebus assured him, coldly.

‘They faked confessions, framed the innocent, planted evidence – we all knew it went on, but there was nothing we could do about it.’

‘The press knew, you mean?’

‘Very straightforward procedure – you bought a desk sergeant or someone from the custody suite a drink, and they poured out all the gossip. Almost none of it made the news pages.’

‘Why not?’

‘Editors would spike it. They’d be on the phone to someone high up at HQ, there’d be a few quiet words, and the piece would fail to appear.’

‘Editors in cahoots with the upper echelons?’

Stout nodded, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his cardigan.

‘But the pieces you wrote about the Merchant killing made it into the
Scotsman
,’ Fox nudged.

‘By no means all of them, but some, yes. It was safe by then, you see? A senior officer had already resigned.’

‘Stefan Gilmour?’ Fox watched the old man nod.

‘Did him no harm in the long run, did it?’ Stout grumbled. ‘On his way to a knighthood, I shouldn’t wonder.’

‘The officers at Summerhall contend that it was a simple matter of errors being made.’

‘Nonsense,’ Stout snapped back at Fox. ‘Billy Saunders had to be protected.’

‘Because he was Stefan Gilmour’s snitch? Or do you think there was more to it than that?’

‘It did cross my mind. Plenty of men around like Saunders at that time – losing one snitch to jail would hardly have shaken Gilmour’s world.’

‘So what do you make of it?’

‘Have you tried asking him?’ Stout gestured towards Rebus. ‘I seem to recall you were at Summerhall same time as Gilmour.’

‘I’m in the dark as much as anyone,’ Rebus commented. ‘But we’re talking to Eamonn Paterson and George Blantyre.’

‘And Gilmour himself, of course,’ Fox added.

‘Not Frazer Spence, though,’ Stout said quietly. ‘Poor little bugger. He was one of mine, you know.’

‘One of the officers who’d take a drink from you?’ Fox checked.

Stout was nodding again. ‘Not until a few years after the Merchant case, but yes . . .’ He seemed lost in thought for a moment. ‘Reluctant to talk about Summerhall though. And clammed up completely whenever Merchant was mentioned.’

‘He knew something?’

‘He was scared, or maybe haunted is a better word – like there was something he’d stuffed into a locker and he didn’t ever want it opening.’

‘Will Summerhall feature in your memoirs, Mr Stout?’ Rebus asked. Fox looked annoyed at the interruption.

‘Maybe as a postscript to be published after my death – that way nobody can sue.’ There was a glint in the old journalist’s eye.

‘You worked with Frazer Spence, John,’ Fox was saying. ‘Do you know why he’d feel “haunted”?’

‘No idea.’

‘Nobody in that police station was totally clean,’ Stout said sourly, his eyes on Rebus.

‘And we know that journalists have always been paragons of virtue,’ Rebus responded.

‘One or two of us were scumbags,’ Stout allowed. ‘But with your lot it was institutionalised lying, institutionalised violence and threats.’

‘You’re one to talk, you old—’

‘DS Rebus,’ Fox broke in, his voice rising. ‘Maybe you need a breath of air.’

After a staring match of a few seconds, Rebus got to his feet. ‘Maybe I do at that. The atmosphere in here’s getting a bit too fucking pious for me. I’ll leave you and this old hypocrite to it . . .’

Outside, he paced the short gravel driveway, sucking on a cigarette. It was a good five or six minutes before Fox emerged. Stout hadn’t bothered coming to the door to wave him off.