‘What about after the show?’
‘Taxis were waiting . . . he grunted his goodbyes and left, tucking a spare bottle of wine under his jacket.’ She paused. ‘How any of this aids your inquiry is a mystery to me.’
‘That was the only time you met him?’
‘Didn’t I just say so?’ She looked to her assistant for confirmation. Clarke decided to look at him, too.
‘What about you, Mr Liddle?’ she asked. ‘Did you talk to him at The Hub?’
‘I introduced myself - “surly”, I’d have called him. There’s usually a non-politician on the show, and there’s always a rigorous pre-interview. The researcher who’d talked with Todorov didn’t sound too thrilled - you could tell by her notes that he hadn’t been forthcoming. To this day, I don’t know why they had him on.’
Clarke thought for a moment. Charles Riordan had said that Todorov liked to chat to people, yet the drinker in Mather’s had said he hardly uttered a word. And now Macfarlane and Liddle were saying much the same. Did Todorov have two sides to his personality? ‘Whose idea would it have been to book him on the show?’ she asked Liddle.
‘Producer, presenter, one of the crew . . . I dare say anyone can propose a guest.’
‘Could it have been,’ Goodyear interrupted, ‘a case of sending a message to Moscow?’
‘I suppose so,’ Macfarlane conceded, sounding impressed.
‘How do you mean?’ Clarke asked Goodyear.
‘There was a journalist killed there a while back. Maybe the BBC wanted people to know you can’t stifle free speech so easily.’
‘Someone stifled it eventually, though, didn’t they?’ Liddle added. ‘Or we wouldn’t be having this conversation. And look at what happened to that poor bloody Russian in London . . .’
Macfarlane was scowling at him. ‘That’s exactly the kind of rumour we want to clamp down on!’
‘Of course, of course,’ he mumbled, busying himself with his already empty cup.
‘So, just to recap,’ Clarke announced into the silence, ‘the two of you saw Mr Todorov at the Question Time recording, but didn’t get much of a conversation going. You hadn’t met him before, and you didn’t see him again afterwards - is that the way you’d like me to phrase it in my report?’
‘Report?’ Macfarlane fairly barked the word.
‘Not for public consumption,’ Clarke reassured her. Then, after a moment’s beat, she delivered her coup de grâce: ‘Until the trial, of course.’
‘I’ve already stressed, Sergeant, that we have some influential investors in town, and it might not take much to spook them.’
‘But you’d agree, wouldn’t you,’ Clarke countered, ‘that we need to show them how scrupulous and thorough our police force is?’
Macfarlane seemed about to say something to that, but her phone was trilling. She turned away from the table as she answered.
‘Stuart, how are things?’
Clarke guessed ‘Stuart’ might be the banker, Stuart Janney.
‘I hope you got them all a booking at Andrew Fairlie?’ Macfarlane had got to her feet and was on the move. She headed outside, glancing through the window as she continued her conversation.
‘It’s the restaurant at Gleneagles,’ Liddle was explaining.
‘I know,’ Clarke told him. Then, for Goodyear’s benefit:
‘Our economic saviours are staying the night there - nice big dinner and a round of golf after breakfast.’ She asked Liddle who would be picking up the tab. ‘The hard-pressed taxpayer?’ she guessed. He gave a shrug and she turned back to Goodyear. ‘Still reckon the meek will inherit the earth, Todd?’
‘Psalm 37, Verse 11,’ Goodyear intoned. But now Clarke’s own phone was ringing. She picked it up and held it to her ear. John Rebus wanted a progress report.
‘Just getting a bit of scripture from PC Goodyear,’ she told him. ‘The meek inheriting the earth and all of that.’
15
Rebus had only called because he was bored. But within a minute of Clarke answering his call, a black VW Golf was roaring to a kerbside stop outside the car park. The woman who emerged had to be Cath Mills, so Rebus cut the call short.‘Miss Mills?’ he said, taking a step towards her. With late-afternoon darkness had come biting gusts of wind, scudding in from the North Sea. He didn’t know what he’d been expecting ‘the Reaper’ to be wearing - a full-length cape maybe. But in fact her coat was more like a parka with fur-trimmed hood. She was in her late thirties, tall, with red hair in a pageboy cut and black-rimmed spectacles. Her face was pale and rounded, lips reddened with lipstick. She looked nothing like the picture in his pocket.
‘Inspector Rebus?’ she assumed, giving a short-lived shake of the hand. She wore black leather driving gloves which she plunged into her pockets afterwards. ‘I hate this time of year,’ she muttered, checking the sky. ‘Dark when you get up, dark when you go home.’
‘You keep regular hours?’ Rebus asked.
‘Job like this, there’s always something needs dealing with.’ She glowered at the OUT OF ORDER sign next to the nearest exit barrier.
‘So were you out and about on Wednesday night?’
She was still looking at the barrier. ‘Home by nine, I seem to think. Problem at our facility in Canning Street - shift hadn’t turned up. I got the attendant to pull a double, so that was that.’ Slowly, she turned her attention to Rebus. ‘You’re asking about the night the man was killed.’
‘That’s right. Pity your CCTV’s worse than useless ... might’ve given us something to work with.’
‘We didn’t install it with slaughter in mind.’
Rebus ignored this. ‘So you didn’t happen to pass here around ten o’clock on the night it happened?’
‘Who says I did?’
‘No one, but we’ve a woman matching your description ...’ Okay, so he was stretching it, but he wanted to see how she would react. All she did was raise an eyebrow and fold her arms.
‘And how,’ she asked, ‘did you happen to get my description in the first place?’ She glanced towards the car park. ‘Boys been telling tales out of school? I’ll have to see to it they’re disciplined.’
‘Actually, all they said was that you sometimes wear a hood. A pedestrian happened to spot a woman hanging around, and she was wearing a hood, too . . .’
‘A woman with her hood up? At ten o’clock on a winter’s night? And this is your idea of narrowing the field?’
All of a sudden, Rebus wanted the day to be over. He wanted to be seated on a bar stool with a drink before him and everything else left far behind. ‘If you weren’t here,’ he sighed, ‘just say so.’
She thought this over for a moment. ‘I’m not sure,’ she said at last, drawing the words out.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Might liven things up, being a suspect in a police case . . .’
‘Thanks, but we get quite enough time-wasters as it is. The worst offenders,’ he added, ‘we might even prosecute.’
Her face opened into a smile. ‘Sorry,’ she apologised. ‘Been a long, gruelling day; I probably picked the wrong person to tease.’ Her attention was back on the barrier. ‘I suppose I should talk to Gary, make sure he’s reported that.’ She peeled back a glove to look at her wristwatch. ‘Just about see me through to the end of play . . .’ She brought her eyes back to Rebus’s. ‘After which I dare say I can be located in Montpelier’s.’
‘Wine bar in Bruntsfield?’ It had taken Rebus only a couple of seconds to place it.
Her smile widened. ‘Thought you looked the kind who’d know,’ she said.
In the end, he stayed for three drinks - blame the ‘Third Glass Free’ promotion. Not that he was drinking glasses of anything: three small bottles of imported lager, keeping his wits about him. Cath Mills was a pro, her own three drinks adding up to a whole bottle of Rioja. She’d parked her car around the corner, since she lived in some flats nearby and could leave it there overnight.‘So don’t think you can have me f
or drunk-driving,’ she’d said with a wag of the finger.
‘I’m walking, too,’ he’d answered, explaining that his own flat was in Marchmont.
When he’d entered the bar, assailed by loudspeaker music and office chatter, she’d been waiting in a booth at the back.
‘Hoping I wouldn’t find you?’ he’d speculated.
‘Don’t want to seem too easy, do I?’
The conversation had mostly been about his job, plus the usual Edinburgh rants: the traffic, the roadworks, the council, the cold. She’d warned him that there wasn’t much of a story to her own life.
‘Married at eighteen, divorced by twenty; tried again at thirty-four and it lasted all of six months. Should have known better by then, shouldn’t I?’
‘You can’t always have been a parking supervisor, though?’
Indeed not: office job after office job, then her own little consulting business which had plummeted to earth after two and a half years, not helped by Husband Two hoofing it with the savings.
‘I was a PA after that but couldn’t hack it ... bit of time on the dole and trying to retrain, then this came along.’
‘My line of work,’ Rebus had said, ‘I hear people’s stories all the time - they always hold back the interesting stuff.’
‘Then take me in for questioning,’ she’d replied, stretching her arms wide.
Eventually, he’d got her to say a little about Gary Walsh and Joe Wills. She, too, suspected Wills of drinking on the job, but had yet to catch him.
‘Being a detective, you could find out for me.’
‘It’s a private eye you need. Or set up a few more CCTV cameras without him knowing about it.’
She’d laughed at that, before telling the waitress she was ready for her free drink.
After an hour, they were checking their watches and giving little smiles across the table to one another. ‘What about you?’ she’d asked. ‘Found anyone who’ll put up with you?’
‘Not for a while. I was married, one daughter - in her thirties now.’
‘No office romances? High-pressure job, working in a team . . . I know how it is.’
‘Hasn’t happened to me,’ he’d confirmed.
‘Bully for you.’ She sniffed and gave a twitch of the mouth. ‘I’ve given up on one-night stands . . . more or less.’ The twitch becoming another smile.
‘This has been nice,’ he’d said, aware of how awkward it sounded.
‘You won’t get into trouble for consorting with a suspect? ’
‘Who’s going to tell?’
‘Nobody needs to.’ And she’d pointed towards the bar’s own CCTV camera, trained on them from a corner of the ceiling. They’d both laughed at that, and as she shrugged back into her parka he’d asked again: ‘Were you there that night? Be honest now . . .’ And she’d shaken her head, as much of an answer as he was going to get.
Outside, he’d handed her a business card with the number of his mobile on it. No peck on the cheek or squeeze of the hand: they were two scarred veterans, each respectful of the other. On his way home, Rebus had stopped for fish and chips, eating them out of the little cardboard box. They didn’t come wrapped in newspaper any more, something to do with public health. Didn’t taste the same either, and the portions of haddock had been whittled away. Blame overfishing in the North Sea. Haddock would soon be a delicacy; either that or extinct. He’d finished by the time he arrived at his tenement, pulling himself up the two flights of stairs. There was no mail waiting, not even a utility bill. He switched on the lights in the living room and selected some music, then called Siobhan.
‘What’s up?’ she asked.
‘Just wondered where we go from here.’
‘I was thinking of going to the fridge for a can of something. ’
‘Time was, that would have been my line.’
‘The times are a-changing.’
‘And that’s one of mine, too!’
He could hear her laughing. Then she asked how his interview with Cath Mills had gone.
‘Another dead end.’
‘Took long enough to drive down it.’
‘Didn’t see the point of coming back to base.’ He paused. ‘Thinking of reporting me for bad time-keeping?’
‘I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. What’s the music you’re playing?’
‘It’s called Little Criminals. There’s a track on it called “Jolly Coppers on Parade”.’
‘Not someone au fait with the police then . . .’
‘It’s Randy Newman. There’s another title of his I like: “You Can’t Fool the Fat Man”.’
‘And would the fat man be yourself, by any chance?’
‘Maybe I’ll keep you guessing.’ He let the silence linger for a moment. ‘You’re starting to side with Macrae, aren’t you? You think we should be concentrating on the mugger file?’
‘I’ve put Phyl and Colin on it,’ Clarke conceded.
‘You’re losing your bottle?’
‘I’m not losing anything.’
‘Okay, I put that badly . . . It’s good to be cautious, Shiv. I’m not about to blame you for it.’
‘Think about it for a second, John. Was Todorov followed from the Caledonian Hotel? Not according to your CCTV wizard. Did a prostitute proposition him? Maybe, and maybe her pimp jumped in with a length of lead pipe. Whatever happened, the poet was in the wrong place at the wrong time.’
‘That much we agree on.’
‘And getting up the noses of MSPs, Russian tycoons and First Albannach Bank isn’t going to get us anywhere.’
‘But it’s fun, isn’t it? What’s the point of a job if you’re not having fun?’
‘It’s fun for you, John . . . it’s always been fun for you.’
‘So humour me, my last week at work.’
‘I thought that’s what I was doing.’
‘No, Shiv, what you’re doing is writing me off. That’s what Todd Goodyear is about - he’s your number two, same way you used to be mine. You’re already starting to train him up, and probably enjoying it, too.’
‘Now hang on a sec . . .’
‘And I’m guessing he’s also a means to an end - as long as you’ve got him with you, you don’t have to choose between Phyl and Col.’
‘With insights like that, it’s a wonder you never got further up the ladder.’
‘Thing about that ladder, Shiv, each rung you climb there’s another arse waiting to be licked.’
‘What a lovely image.’
‘We all need some poetry in our lives.’ He told her he’d see her tomorrow - ‘always supposing I’m needed’ - and ended the call. Sat there another five minutes wondering if she’d call back, but she didn’t. There was something too cheery about Randy Newman’s delivery, so Rebus turned off the album. Plenty of darker stuff he could play - early King Crimson or Peter Hammill, for example - but instead he walked around the silent flat, going from room to room, and ended up in the hallway with the keys to the Saab in his hand.
‘Why the hell not?’ he told himself. It wasn’t as if it would be the first time, and he doubted it would be the last. Wasn’t drunk enough for it to be a problem. He locked the flat and headed down the stairwell, out into the night. Unlocked the Saab and got in. It was only a five-minute drive, and took him past Montpelier’s again. A right-hand turn off Bruntsfield Place, then one more right and he was parking in a quiet street of detached Victorian-era houses. He’d been here so often, he’d started to notice changes: new lamp-posts or new pavements. Signs had gone up warning that come March the parking would be zoned. It had already happened in Marchmont; hadn’t made it any easier to find a space. A few rubbish skips had come and gone. He’d heard the Polish accents of the workmen. Extensions had been added to some homes, and the garages dismantled in two separate gardens. Plenty of comings and goings during the day, but much quieter in the evening. Practically every house had its own driveway, but cars from neighbouring streets would park up overnight. No one had
ever paid attention to Rebus. In fact, one dog-walker had started to mistake him for a local, and would nod and smile or offer a hello. The dog itself was small and wiry and looked less trusting, turning away from him the one time he’d tried crouching down to pat it.
That had been a rare occurrence: mostly he stayed in the car, hands on the steering wheel, window rolled down and a cigarette between his lips. The radio could be playing. He wouldn’t even be watching the house necessarily, but he knew who lived there. Knew, too, that there was a coach-house in the back garden, which was where the bodyguard lived. One time, a car had stopped when it was halfway through the driveway gates. The bodyguard was in the front, but it was the back window which had slid soundlessly down, the better for the passenger to make eye contact with the watching Rebus. The look was a mixture of contempt, frustration, and maybe even pity - though this last would have been imitation.
Rebus doubted Big Ger Cafferty had ever in his adult life felt an emotion like pity for another human being.
Day Five
Tuesday 21 November 2006
16
The air still smouldered, the charred smell almost overpowering. Siobhan Clarke held a handkerchief to her mouth and nose. Rebus stubbed out his breakfast underfoot.‘Bloody hell,’ was all he could think to say.
Todd Goodyear had heard the news first and had phoned Clarke, who was halfway to the scene before she decided to call Rebus. They now stood on a roadway in Joppa while the fire crew gathered up the spent coils of hose. Charles Riordan’s house was a shell, the windowpanes gone, roof collapsed.
‘Can we go in yet?’ Clarke asked one of the firemen.
‘What’s the rush?’
‘I’m just asking.’
‘Talk to the boss . . .’
Some of the firemen were sweating, rubbing smudges of soot across their foreheads. They’d taken off their oxygen tanks and masks. They were talking among themselves, like a gang after a rumble, debating their roles in the action. A neighbour had brought them water and juice. More neighbours were standing in their doorways or gardens, while onlookers from further afield shuffled and whispered. It was a D Division call and two suits from Leith CID had already asked Clarke what Gayfield Square’s interest was.