Set in Darkness (50 page)

Her approach had gone straight to the deepest fears of the High Hiedyins. Only Carswell, the story went, voted for Rebus’s suspension.

Rebus still had to thank her.

He looked up now and saw a cream trench coat moving across the grass towards the grave, hands deep in pockets, head bowed. Moving briskly, and with definite purpose. Rebus started moving, too, eyes never leaving the figure. A man, tall, thick hair slightly tousled, giving an impression of boyishness. He was standing graveside as Rebus approached. The diggers were still working, nearly done now. The headstone would come later. Rebus felt slightly
dizzy, the way gamblers sometimes did when long odds romped home. Three feet behind the figure now . . . Rebus stopped, cleared his throat. The man’s head half-turned. His back straightened. He began to walk away, Rebus following.

‘I’d like you to come with me,’ he said quietly, his performance watched by the gravediggers. The man said nothing, kept moving.

Rebus repeated the request, this time adding: ‘There’s another grave you should see.’

The man slowed, but didn’t stop.

‘I’m a police officer, if that’s what you’re worried about. You can check my warrant card.’

The man had stopped on the path, only a yard or two inside the gate. Rebus moved around in front of him, seeing the full face for the first time. Sagging flesh, but suntanned. Eyes which spoke of experience and humour and – above all – fear. A cleft chin, showing flecks of grey stubble. Weary from travel, mistrustful of this stranger, this strange land.

‘I’m Detective Inspector Rebus,’ Rebus said, holding up the warrant card.

‘Whose grave?’ It was said almost in a whisper, no sign of native accent.

‘Freddy’s,’ Rebus said.

Freddy Hastings had been buried in a barren spot in a sprawling cemetery on the other side of the city. No marker had been erected, so that they stood by an anonymous soft hillock, the bare earth covered patchily with sections of turf.

‘There weren’t many turned out for this one,’ Rebus said. ‘Couple of fellow officers, old flame, couple of winos.’

‘I don’t understand. How did he die?’

‘He killed himself. Saw something in the paper, and decided, God knows why, that he’d had enough of hiding.’

‘The money . . .’

‘Oh, he spent some of it at first, but after that . . . Something made him leave it untouched, for the most part. Maybe he was waiting for you to show up. Maybe it was just the guilt.’

The man didn’t say anything. His eyes were glassy with tears. He reached into his pocket for a handkerchief and wiped at his face, shivering as he replaced it.

‘Bit parky this far north, eh?’ Rebus said. ‘Where have you been living?’

‘The Caribbean. I run a bar there.’

‘Bit of a ways from Edinburgh.’

He turned towards Rebus. ‘How did you find me?’

‘I didn’t have to:
you
found
me
. All the same, the paintings helped.’

‘Paintings?’

‘Your mother, Mr Grieve. She’s been putting you on canvas ever since you left.’

Alasdair Grieve wasn’t sure if he wanted to see his family.

‘At this time,’ he argued, ‘it might be too much.’

Rebus nodded. They were seated in an interview room at St Leonard’s. Siobhan Clarke was there, too.

‘Don’t suppose’, Rebus said, ‘you want your visit here trumpeted from the Castle ramparts?’

‘No,’ Grieve agreed.

‘Incidentally, what name do you go by these days?’

‘My passport says Anthony Keillor.’

Rebus wrote the name down. ‘I won’t ask where you got the passport.’

‘I wouldn’t tell you if you did.’

‘Couldn’t shrug off every link with the past, though, could you? Keillor, short for Rankeillor.’

Grieve stared. ‘You know my family.’

Rebus shrugged. ‘When did you find out about Roddy?’

‘A few days after it happened. I thought of coming back then, but didn’t know what good it would do. Then I saw the funeral announcement.’

‘I wouldn’t have thought it would make the Caribbean papers.’

‘The Internet, Inspector. The
Scotsman
online.’

Rebus nodded. ‘And you thought you’d take the chance?’

‘I always liked Roddy . . . thought it was the least I could do.’

‘Despite the risks?’

‘It was twenty years ago, Inspector. Hard to know after that length of time . . .’

‘Just as well it was me at that graveside and not Barry Hutton.’

The name brought back all sorts of memories. Rebus watched them pass across Alasdair Grieve’s face. ‘That bastard,’ Grieve said at last. ‘Is he still around?’

‘Land developer of the parish.’

Grieve scowled, muttered the word ‘Christ’.

‘So,’ Rebus said, leaning forward, resting his elbows on the table, ‘I think maybe it’s time you told us who the body in the fireplace belongs to.’

Grieve stared at him again. ‘The what?’

When Rebus had explained, Grieve started to nod.

‘Hutton must have put the body there. He was working at Queensberry House, keeping an eye on Dean Coghill for his uncle.’

‘Bryce Callan?’

‘The same. Callan was grooming Barry. Looks like he did a good job of it, too.’

‘And you were in cahoots with Callan?’

‘I wouldn’t call it that.’ Grieve half rose from the table, then stopped. ‘Do you mind? I get a bit claustrophobic.’

Grieve began pacing what floor space there was. Siobhan was standing by the door. She smiled reassuringly at him. Rebus handed him a photo – the computer-generated face from the fireplace.

‘How much do you know?’ Grieve asked Rebus.

‘Quite a bit. Callan was buying up lots of land around Calton Hill, presumably with both eyes on a new parliament. But he didn’t want the planners knowing it was him, so he used Freddy and you as a front.’

Grieve was nodding. ‘Bryce had a contact in the council, someone in the planning department.’ Rebus and Siobhan exchanged a look. ‘He’d given Bryce a promise on the parliament site.’

‘Bloody risky, though: it was all down to how the vote went in the first place.’

‘Yes, but that looked solid at first. It was only later the fix went in, the government making damned sure it wouldn’t happen.’

‘So, Callan had all this land and now nothing was going to happen to make it worth anything?’

‘The land was still worth something. But he blamed us for everything.’ Grieve laughed. ‘As if
we’d
rigged the election!’

‘And?’

‘Well . . . Freddy had been playing silly buggers with the figures, telling Callan we’d had to pay more for the land than was the case. Callan found out, wanted the difference back plus the money he’d paid as a fee for fronting the whole thing.’

‘He sent someone round?’ Rebus guessed.

‘A man called Mackie.’ Grieve tapped the photo. ‘One of his thugs, a real piece of work.’ He rubbed at his temples. ‘Christ, you don’t know how strange it feels, saying all this at last . . .’

‘Mackie?’ Rebus prompted. ‘First name Chris?’

‘No, not Chris: Alan or Alex . . . something like that. Why?’

‘It’s the name Freddy took for himself.’ Guilt again? Rebus wondered. ‘So how did Mackie end up dead?’

‘He was there to scare us into paying, and he could be
very
scary. Freddy just got lucky. There was a knife he kept in his drawer, a sort of letter opener. Took it with him
that night for protection. We were supposed to be meeting Callan, sort it all out. Car park off the Cowgate, late night . . . the pair of us were scared shitless.’

‘But you went anyway?’

‘We’d discussed doing a runner . . . but, yes, we went anyway. Hard to turn down Bryce Callan. Only Bryce wasn’t there. It was this guy Mackie. He gave me a couple of whacks on the head – one of my ears still doesn’t work properly. Then he turned on Freddy. He had this gun, hit me with the butt. I think Freddy was going to get worse . . . I’m sure of it. He was the one in charge, Callan knew that. It was self-defence, I’d swear to it. All the same, I don’t think he meant to kill Mackie, just . . .’ He shrugged. ‘Just stop him, I suppose.’

‘Stabbed him through the heart,’ Rebus commented.

‘Yes,’ Grieve agreed. ‘We could see straight off he was dead.’

‘What did you do?’

‘Dumped him back in his car and ran for it. We knew we had to split up, knew Callan would have to kill us now, no two ways about it.’

‘And the money?’

‘I told Freddy I didn’t want anything to do with it. He said we should meet, a year to the day, a bar on Frederick Street.’

‘You didn’t make the meet?’

Grieve shook his head. ‘I was someone else by then, somewhere I was getting to know and like.’

Freddy had travelled, too, Siobhan was thinking: all the places he’d told Dezzi about.

But a year to the day, when Alasdair didn’t show, Freddy Hastings had walked into the building society on George Street, just round the corner from Frederick Street, and opened an account in the name of C. Mackie . . .

‘There was a briefcase,’ Siobhan asked.

Grieve looked at her. ‘God, yes. It belonged to Dean Coghill.’

‘The letters on it were ADC.’

‘I think Dean’s his second name, but he liked it better than the first. Barry Hutton brought us one lot of cash in that briefcase, boasted how he’d taken it from Coghill; “Because I can, and there’s nothing he can do about it.”’ He shook his head.

‘Mr Coghill’s dead,’ Siobhan said.

‘Chalk up another victim to Bryce Callan.’

And though Coghill had died of natural causes, Rebus knew exactly what Grieve meant.

Rebus and Siobhan, a powwow in the CID suite.

‘What’ve we got?’ she asked.

‘Lots of bits,’ he acknowledged. ‘We’ve got Barry Hutton heading out to check on Mackie, finding the body. Not far from Queensberry House, so he takes the body there, walls it in. Chances were, it wouldn’t be found for centuries.’

‘Why?’

‘Couldn’t have the police asking questions, I suppose.’

‘How come no one called Mackie ended up posted a MisPer?’

‘Mackie belongs to Bryce Callan, no one to mourn him or post him missing.’

‘And Freddy Hastings kills himself when he reads the story in the paper?’

Rebus nodded. ‘The whole thing’s coming back again, and he can’t deal with it.’

‘I’m not sure I understand him.’

‘Who?’

‘Freddy. What made him do what he did, living like that . . .’

‘There’s a slightly more pressing concern,’ Rebus told her. ‘Callan and Hutton are getting away with this.’

Siobhan was leaning against her desk. She folded her arms. ‘Well, in the end, what did they
do
? They didn’t kill
Mackie, they didn’t push Freddy Hastings off North Bridge.’

‘But they made it all happen.’

‘And now Callan’s a tax exile, and Barry Hutton’s a reformed character.’ She waited for him to say something, but he didn’t. ‘You don’t think so?’ Then she remembered what Alasdair Grieve had said in the interview room.

‘A contact in the council,’ she quoted.

‘Someone in the planning department,’ Rebus quoted back.

It took them a week to get everything together, the team working flat out. Derek Linford was convalescing at home, drinking his meals through a straw. As someone commented, ‘Every time an officer takes a kicking, the brass has to reward them.’ The feeling was Linford would be going on a promotion shortlist. Meantime, Alasdair Grieve was acting the tourist. He’d got himself a room at a bed and breakfast on Minto Street. They weren’t letting him leave the country, not quite yet. He’d surrendered his passport, and had to report each day to St Leonard’s. The Farmer didn’t think they’d be charging him with anything, but as the witness to a fatal assault, a case-file would have to be prepared. Rebus’s unofficial contract with Grieve: stay put, and your family needn’t know you’re back.

The team compiled their case. Not just the Roddy Grieve team, but Siobhan and Wylie and Hood, Wylie making sure she had a desk by a window: her reward, she said, for all the hours in the interview room.

They had help from further afield, too – NCIS, Crime Squad, the Big House. And when they were ready, there was still work to be done. A doctor had to be arranged, the suspect contacted and informed that a solicitor might be a good idea. He would know they’d been asking questions; even in his state, he’d have to know – friends tipping him the wink. Again, Carswell argued against Rebus’s involvement; again, he was voted down, but only just.

When Rebus and Siobhan turned up at the detached,
walled house on Queensferry Road, there were three cars in the driveway: both doctor and solicitor had already arrived. It was a big house, 1930s vintage, but next to the main artery between the city and Fife. That would knock £50k from the value, easy; even so, it had to be worth a third of a million. Not bad for a ‘toon cooncillor’.

Archie Ure was in bed, but not in his bedroom. To avoid the stairs, a single bed had been erected in the dining room. The dining table now sat out in the hall, six formal chairs upended and resting on its polished surface. The room was redolent of illness: that stuffy, fusty smell of sweat and unbrushed teeth. The patient sat up, breathing noisily. The doctor had just finished his examination. Ure was hooked up to a heart monitor, his pyjama top unbuttoned, thin black wires disappearing beneath circles of flesh-toned tape. His chest was near hairless, falling with each laboured exhalation like a punctured bellows.

Ure’s solicitor was a man called Cameron Whyte, a short, meticulous-looking individual who, according to Ure’s wife, had been a family friend for the past three decades. He was seated on a chair at the bedside, briefcase on his knees and a fresh pad of A4 lined paper resting atop it. Introductions had to be made. Rebus did not shake Archie Ure’s hand, but did ask how he was feeling.

‘Bloody fine till all this nonsense,’ was the gruff response.

‘We’ll try to be as quick as we can,’ Rebus said.

Ure grunted. Cameron Whyte went on to ask some preliminary questions, while Rebus opened one of the two cases he was carrying and brought out the cassette machine. It was a cumbersome piece of kit, but would record two copies of the interview and time-stamp each one. Rebus went over the procedure with Whyte, who watched carefully as Rebus set the date and time, then broke open two fresh tapes. There were problems with the flex, which just barely stretched from the wall socket, and then with the double-headed microphone, whose lead just
made it to the bed. Rebus shifted his own chair, so that he was seated in a claustrophobic triangle with lawyer and patient, the mike resting on top of the duvet. The whole process had taken the best part of twenty minutes. Not that Rebus was hurrying: he was hoping the wait might bore Mrs Ure into retreating. She did disappear at one point, returning with a tray containing teacups and pot. Pointedly, she poured for the doctor and lawyer, but told the police officers to ‘serve yourselves’. Siobhan did so smilingly, before moving back to stand by the door, there being no chair for her – and little enough room for one. The doctor was seated at the far side of the bed, beside the heart monitor. He was young, sandy-haired, and seemed bemused by the whole scene being acted out before him.