The Naming Of The Dead (2006) (39 page)

“I could use one of those right now,” Rebus interrupted. A nice cool current of water to duck his head under.

Trevor Guest as the killer of Ben Webster’s mother.

The father dies of a broken heart...meaning Guest has destroyed the whole family.

Goes to jail for another offense, but when he gets out...

And soon after, Ben Webster, MP, takes a nosedive over the parapets of Edinburgh Castle.

Ben Webster?

“Duncan!” A yell in the distance, somewhere uphill.

“Debbie?” Barclay called back. “Down here!” He started clambering up the slope, Rebus toiling in his wake. By the time he reached the vehicle track, Barclay was enveloping Debbie with a hug.

“I wanted to tell you,” she was explaining, her words muffled by his jacket, “and I couldn’t get a lift, and I knew he’d be looking for me, and I got here as soon as—” She broke off as she caught sight of Rebus. Gave a little squeal and pulled back from Barclay.

“It’s all right,” he told her. “Me and the inspector have just been talking, that’s all.” He looked over his shoulder at Rebus. “And what’s more, I actually think he’s been listening.”

Rebus nodded his agreement with this, and slid his hands into his pockets. “But I’ll need you in Edinburgh all the same,” he announced. “Everything you’ve just said could do with being a matter of record, don’t you think?”

Barclay smiled a tired smile. “After all this time, it’ll be my pleasure.”

Debbie bounced on her toes, one arm sliding around Duncan Barclay’s waist. “I want to come, too. Don’t leave me here.”

“Thing is,” Barclay said with a sly glance at Rebus, “the inspector here has me down as a suspect...which would make you my accomplice.”

She looked shocked. “Duncan wouldn’t hurt a soul!” she squealed, gripping him more tightly than ever.

“Or a wood louse, I daresay,” Rebus added.

“These woods have looked after me,” Barclay said quietly, eyes fixed on Rebus. “That’s why the stick you picked up fell apart in your hand.” He gave a huge wink. Then, to Debbie: “You sure about this? Our first date, a police station in Edinburgh?” She replied by going up onto her tiptoes again and planting a kiss on his lips. The trees started rustling in a sudden, gentle breeze.

“Back to the car, children,” Rebus commanded. He’d taken half a dozen tentative steps along the track when Barclay indicated that he was headed in completely the wrong direction.

Siobhan realized she was headed the wrong way.

Well, not the wrong way exactly—depended which destination she had in mind, and that was the problem: she couldn’t think of one. Home, probably, but what would she do there? As she was already on Silverknowes Road, she pushed on until Marine Drive, then pulled over at the side of the road. Other cars were already parked there. It was a popular spot on weekends, with views across the Firth of Forth. Dogs were being exercised, sandwiches eaten. A helicopter rose loudly into the air, taking its passengers on one of the regular sightseeing tours, reminding her of the chopper at Gleneagles. One year, Siobhan had bought Rebus a gift certificate for the tour as a birthday present. As far as she knew, he’d never used it.

She knew he’d want to hear about Denise and Gareth Tench. Ellen Wylie had promised to call Craigmillar and get them to come take a statement, which hadn’t stopped Siobhan requesting the selfsame thing as soon as she’d left the house. She’d had half a mind to get them to pull both women in, kept hearing Wylie’s laughter...more than a touch of hysteria to it. Maybe natural under the circumstances, but all the same...She lifted her phone now, took a deep breath, and punched in Rebus’s number. The woman who answered was just a recording:
Your call cannot be taken...please try again later
.

She stared at the liquid crystal display and remembered that Eric Bain had left a message.

“In for a penny,” she muttered to herself, pushing more buttons.

“Siobhan, it’s Eric...” The recorded voice sounded slurred. “Molly’s walked out and...Christ, I don’t know why I’m...” The sound of coughing. “Juss wann you to...’matryin’ to say?” Another dry cough, as though he was on the verge of being sick. Siobhan stared out at the scenery, not really seeing it. “Oh, hell and...taken...taken too many...”

She cursed under her breath and turned the ignition, slammed the car into gear. Headlights switched to high beam and her hand pressed to the horn at every red light. Managed to steer and call for an ambulance at the same time. Thought she’d still beat it. Twelve minutes and she was pulling to a stop outside his block—no damage other than a scrape to her bodywork and a dinged wing mirror. Meaning another trip to Rebus’s friendly repair shop.

Outside Bain’s place, she didn’t even have to knock—the door had been left ajar. She ran in, found him slumped on the floor in the living room, head resting against a chair. Empty Smirnoff bottle, empty Tylenol bottle. She snatched his wrist—it was warm, his breathing shallow but steady. A sheen of sweat on his face, and a stain at the crotch where he’d wet himself. She shouted his name a few times, slapping his cheeks, prying open his eyes.

“Come on, Eric, wakey-wakey!” Shaking his body. “Time to get up, Eric! Come on, you lazy fuck!” He was too heavy for her; no way she could haul him to his feet unaided. She checked that his mouth was clear—nothing impeding the airway. Shook him again. “How many did you take, Eric? How many tablets?”

The door left ajar was a good sign—meant he wanted to be found. And he’d called her, too...Called
her
.

“You always were a drama queen, Eric,” she told him, pushing the slick hair back from his forehead. The room was messy. “What if Molly comes back and sees how untidy you’ve made everything? Better get up right now.” His eyes were fluttering, a groan coming from deep within him. Noises at the door: paramedics in their green uniforms, one of them toting a box.

“What’s he taken?”

“Tylenol.”

“How long ago?”

“Couple of hours.”

“What’s his name?”

“Eric.”

She got up and moved back a little, giving them room. They were checking his pupils, taking out the instruments they’d need.

“Can you hear me, Eric?” one of them asked. “Any chance you can give me a nod? Maybe just move your fingers for me? Eric? My name’s Colin and I’m going to be looking after you. Eric? Just nod your head if you’re hearing me. Eric...?”

Siobhan stood there with arms folded. When Eric spasmed and then started to puke, one of the paramedics asked her to look around the rest of the apartment: “See what else he might have ingested.”

As she left the room, she wondered if maybe he was just trying to spare her the sight. Nothing in the kitchen—it was spotless, apart from a liter of milk that needed putting in the fridge...and next to it, the screw cap from the Smirnoff. She crossed to the bathroom. The door of the medicine cabinet stood open. Some unopened packets of flu remedy had ended up in the sink. She put them back. There was a fresh bottle of aspirin, its seal intact. So maybe the Tylenol bottle had been opened previously, meaning he might not have taken as many as she’d thought.

Bedroom: Molly’s things were still there, but strewn across the floor, as though Eric had planned some act of retribution upon them. A snapshot of the pair of them had been removed from its frame but was otherwise undamaged, as though he’d been unable to go through with it.

She reported back to the paramedics. Eric had stopped vomiting, but the room reeked of the stuff.

“So that’s two thirds of a bottle of neat vodka,” the one called Colin said, “and maybe thirty tablets as a chaser.”

“Most of which has just come back to say hello,” his colleague added.

“So he’ll be all right?” she asked.

“Depends on the internal damage. You said two hours?”

“He called me two...nearly three hours ago.” They looked at her. “I didn’t get the message until...well, seconds before I called it in.”

“How drunk was he when he called?”

“His speech was slurred.”

“No kidding.” Colin locked eyes with his partner. “How do we get him downstairs?”

“Strapped to a stretcher.”

“Stairwell has a few tight corners.”

“So give me an alternative.”

“I’ll call for backup.” Colin rose to his feet.

“I could take his legs,” Siobhan offered. “Those corners won’t seem nearly so tight if there’s no stretcher to maneuver...”

“Fair point.” The paramedics shared another look. Siobhan’s phone started ringing. She went to turn it off, but caller ID had flashed up the letters
JR
. She stepped out into the hall and answered the call.

“You’re not going to believe it,” she blurted out, realizing as she did so that Rebus was telling her the exact same thing.

27

H
e had decided on St. Leonard’s—figured there was less chance of being spotted there. No one on the front desk had seemed to know he was under suspension; they hadn’t even asked why he wanted the use of an interview room, and had let him borrow a constable to act as witness to the recording he was about to make.

Duncan Barclay and Debbie Glenister sat next to each other throughout, nursing cans of cola and feasting on chocolate from the vending machine. Rebus had broken open a fresh pack of cassette tapes, slotting two into the machine. Barclay had asked why two.

“One for you and one for us,” Rebus had answered.

The questioning had been straightforward, the constable sitting bemused throughout, Rebus having failed to explain any of the background to him. Afterward, Rebus had asked the officer if he could arrange transport for the visitors.

“Back to Kelso?” he’d guessed, sounding daunted. But Debbie had squeezed Barclay’s arm and said maybe they could be dropped somewhere along Princes Street instead. Barclay had hesitated, but finally agreed. As they were preparing to leave, Rebus had slipped him forty pounds. “Drinks here can be that bit more expensive,” he’d explained. “And it’s a loan rather than a handout. I want one of your best fruit bowls next time you’re in town.”

So Barclay had nodded and accepted the notes.

“All these questions, Inspector,” he’d said. “Have they helped you at all?”

“More than you might think, Mr. Barclay,” Rebus had said, shaking the young man’s hand before retreating to one of the empty upstairs offices. This was where he’d been based before the move to Gayfield Square. Eight years of crimes solved and shelved...It surprised him that no mark had been left. There was no visible trace of him here, or of all those convoluted cases—the ones he remembered best. The walls were bare, most of the desks unused and lacking even chairs to sit on. Before St. Leonard’s, he’d worked at the station on Great London Road...and the High Street before that...Thirty years he’d been a cop, and thought he’d seen just about everything.

Until this.

There was a large whiteboard on one wall. He wiped it clean with some paper towels from the men’s room. The ink was hard to erase, meaning it had been there for weeks—background to Operation Sorbus. Officers would have heaved their backsides onto the desks and sat there swigging coffee while their boss filled them in on what was to come.

Now safely erased.

Rebus searched in the drawers of the nearest desks until he found a marker. He began to write on the board, starting at the top and working down, with lines branching off to the sides. Some words he double underlined; others he encircled; a few he stuck question marks after. When he was finished, he stood back and surveyed his mind map of the Clootie Well killings. It was Siobhan who’d taught him about such maps. She seldom worked a case without them, though usually they stayed in her drawer or briefcase. She would bring them out to remind herself of something—some avenue not yet explored or connection meriting further inspection. It took a while for her to own up to their existence. Why? Because she’d thought he would laugh at her. But in a case as apparently complex as this, a mind map was the perfect tool, because when you started to look at it, the complexity vanished, leaving just a central core.

Trevor Guest.

The anomaly, his body attacked with unusual viciousness. Dr. Gilreagh had warned them to look out for feints, and she’d been right. The whole case had been almost nothing
but
a magician’s misdirection. Rebus slid his backside onto one of the desks. It gave only the mildest creak of complaint. His legs made little paddling motions as they hung above the floor. His palms were pressed against the surface of the desk on either side of him. He leaned forward slightly, gazing at the writing on the wall, the arrows and underlinings and question marks. He started to see ways to resolve those few questions. He started to see the whole picture, the one the killer had been trying to disguise.

And then he walked out of the office and the station, into the fresh air and across the road. Headed to the nearest shop and realized he didn’t really want anything. Bought cigarettes and a lighter and some chewing gum. Added the afternoon edition of the
Evening News
. Decided to call Siobhan at the hospital to ask how much longer she would be.

“I’m
here,
” she told him. Meaning St. Leonard’s. “Where the hell are you?”

“I must just have missed you.” The shopkeeper called out as he pulled open the door to leave. Rebus twitched his mouth in apology and reached into his pocket to pay the man. Where the hell was his...? Must’ve given Barclay his last two twenties. He pulled out some loose change instead, poured it onto the counter.

“Not enough for cigarettes,” the elderly Asian complained. Rebus shrugged and handed them back.

“Where are you?” Siobhan was asking into his ear.

“Buying chewing gum.”

And a lighter, he could have added.

But no cigarettes.

They sat down with mugs of instant coffee, silent for the first minute or so. Then Rebus thought to ask about Bain.

“Ironically,” she said, “given the amount of painkillers he’d scarfed, the first thing he complained of was a thumping headache.”

“My fault in a way,” Rebus told her, explaining first of all about his morning conversation with Bain, and then about his chat the night before with Molly.

“So we have a falling-out over Tench’s corpse,” Siobhan said, “and you head straight to a lap-dancing club?”

Rebus shrugged, deciding he had been right to leave out the visit to Cafferty’s home.

“Well,” Siobhan went on with a sigh, “while we’re playing the self-blame game...” And she filled him in on Bain and T in the Park and Denise Wylie, at the end of which there was another lengthy silence. Rebus was on his fifth piece of chewing gum—didn’t really go with coffee, but he needed some outlet for the current that was pounding through him.

“You really think Ellen’s turned her sister in?” he eventually asked.

“What else could she do?”

He gave a shrug, then watched as Siobhan picked up a handset and made a call to Craigmillar.

“Guy you want is DS McManus,” he informed her. She looked at him as if to say,
How the hell do you know that?
He decided it was time to get up and find a wastebasket in which to deposit the wad of flavorless gum. When she finished the call, Siobhan joined him in front of the whiteboard.

“Pair of them are there right now. McManus is going easy on Denise. Figures she could play the mental cruelty card.” She paused. “When was it exactly that you spoke to him?”

Rebus deflected the question by pointing to the board. “See what I’ve done here, Shiv? Taken a leaf out of your book, so to speak.” He tapped the middle of the board with his knuckles. “And it all boils down to Trevor Guest.”

“Theoretically?” she added.

“Evidence comes later.” He started to trace the time line of the killings with a finger. “Say Trevor Guest
did
kill Ben Webster’s mother. In fact, we don’t
need
to say that at all. It’s enough that Guest’s killer
believed
he did. The killer sticks Guest’s name into a search engine and comes up with BeastWatch. That’s what gives the killer the idea. Make it
look
like there’s a serial killer at large. The police are fooled as a result, looking in all the wrong places for the motive. Killer knows about the G8, so decides to leave a few clues right there under our noses, knowing they’ll be found. Killer was never a BeastWatch subscriber, so knows they’ve got nothing to fear. We’ll be run ragged tracking down all the people who were, and warning all the other sex attackers...and with the G8 and everything, chances are the investigation will end up tying itself in knots too tight ever to be unraveled. Remember what Gilreagh said—the ‘display’ was slightly wrong. She was right, because it was only ever Guest the killer wanted...only ever Guest.” He prodded the name again. “The man who’d torn the Webster family apart. Rurality and anomalies, Siobhan...and being led up the garden path...”

“But how could the killer have known that?” Siobhan felt obliged to ask.

“By having access to the original inquiry, maybe going through it all with a fine-tooth comb. Going to the Borders and asking around, listening in on the local gossip.”

She was standing next to him, staring at the board. “You’re saying Cyril Colliar and Eddie Isley died as a diversion?”

“Worked, too. If we’d been running a full-scale inquiry, we might have missed the Kelso connection.” Rebus gave a short, harsh laugh. “I seem to remember I gave a snort when Gilreagh started talking about the countryside and deep woods near human dwellings.”
Is this the sort of terrain the victims inhabited?
“Dead on, Doc,” he said in an undertone.

Siobhan ran her finger along Ben Webster’s name. “So why did he kill himself?”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, do you think it was the guilt finally catching up with him? He’s killed three men when only one was necessary. He’s under a lot of pressure because of the G8. We’ve just identified the patch from Cyril Colliar’s jacket. He starts to panic that we
will
catch him—is that how you see it?”

“I’m not even sure he knew about the patch,” Rebus said quietly. “And how would he have gone about procuring some heroin for those lethal injections?”

“Why are you asking me?” Siobhan gave a short laugh.

“Because you’re the one who’s accusing an innocent man. No access to hard drugs...no easy access to police files...” Rebus traced the line from Ben Webster to his sister. “Stacey, on the other hand—”

“Stacey?”

“Is an undercover cop. Probably means she knows a few dealers. She’s spent the past few months infiltrating anarchist groups—told me herself, they tend to base themselves outside London these days—Leeds and Manchester and Bradford. Guest died in Newcastle, Isley in Carlisle—both a manageable drive from the Midlands. As a cop, she’d be able to access any information she liked.”

“Stacey’s the killer?”

“Using your wonderful system”—Rebus slapped his hand against the board again—“it’s the obvious conclusion.”

Siobhan was shaking her head slowly. “But she was...I mean, we
talked
to her.”

“She’s good,” Rebus conceded. “She’s very good. And now she’s back in London.”

“We’ve no proof...not a shred of evidence.”

“True, up to a point. But when you listen to Duncan Barclay’s tape, you’ll hear him say she was in Kelso last year, asking around. She even spoke to him. He mentioned Trevor Guest to her. Trevor, with his housebreaker’s credentials. Trevor who was in the area, same time Mrs. Webster was killed.” Rebus gave a shrug, to let her know he had no trouble accepting any of this. “All three were attacked from behind, Siobhan, whacked hard so they couldn’t retaliate—just the way a woman would do it.” He paused. there’s her name. Gilreagh said there could be something significant about trees.”

“Stacey’s not the name of a tree...”

He shook his head. “But Santal is. It means ‘sandalwood.’ I always thought sandalwood was just a perfume. Turns out it’s a tree.” He shook his head in wonder at Stacey Webster’s intricate construction. “And she left Guest’s cash card,” he concluded, “because she wanted to be sure we’d have his name...leading us by the nose. A bloody smoke screen, just like Gilreagh said.”

Siobhan was studying the board again, probing the schematic for flaws. “So what happened to Ben?” she asked at last.

“I can tell you what I think...”

“Go on then.” She folded her arms.

“Guards at the castle thought there was an intruder. My guess is, it was Stacey. She knew her brother was there and was bursting to tell him. We’d found the patch—she’d probably heard about that from Steelforth. Thought it was time to share news of her exploits with her brother. As far as she was concerned, Guest’s death meant closure. And, by Christ, she’d made sure he paid for his crimes—mutilating his body. She relishes the challenge of sneaking past the guards. Maybe she’s sent him a message, so he comes out to meet her. She tells him everything—”

“And he offs himself?”

Rebus scratched the back of his head. “I think she’s the only one who can tell us. In fact, if we play it right, Ben’s going to be crucial in getting a confession. Think how hellish she must be feeling—that’s her whole family gone now, and the one thing she thought would bring her and Ben closer together has actually destroyed him. And it’s all her fault.”

“She did a pretty good job of hiding it.”

“Behind all those masks she wears,” Rebus agreed. “All these warring sides to her personality...”

“Steady,” Siobhan warned. “You’re starting to sound like Gilreagh.”

He burst out laughing, but stopped just as abruptly and scratched at his head again, eventually running the hand through his hair. “Do you think it holds up?”

Siobhan puffed out her cheeks and exhaled loudly. “I need to give it a bit more thought,” she conceded. “I mean...scrawled on a board like this, I can see it makes a kind of sense. I just don’t see how we’ll prove any of it.”

“We start with what happened to Ben...”

“Fine, but if she denies it, we’re left with nothing. You’ve just said so yourself, John, she wears all these masks. Nothing to stop her slipping one on when we start asking about her brother.”

“One way to find out,” Rebus said. He was holding Stacey Webster’s business card, the one with her cell number.

“Think for a minute,” Siobhan counseled. “Soon as you call her, you’re giving her advance warning.”

“Then we go to London.”

“And hope Steelforth lets us talk to her?”

Rebus considered for a moment. “Yes,” he said quietly, “Steelforth...Funny how quickly he knocked her back to London, isn’t it? Almost as if he knew we were getting close.”

“You think he
knew?
”

“There was surveillance video at the castle. He told me there was nothing to see, but now I’m wondering.”