‘You’re doing good work, Derek. Keep at it. Few years down the road, who knows? Maybe you’ll look back at this one as the inquiry that made your name.’ And the ACC had winked and patted his arm.
‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.’
But then had come the postscript, the ACC readying to leave but half-turning towards him. ‘Family men, Derek, that’s what the public should see when they look at us. People they can respect, because we’re no different from them.’
Family men. He meant wife and kids. Linford had gone straight to his phone and called Siobhan’s mobile . . .
Balls to it. He left, nodded to the doorman even though he didn’t know him. Out into the horizontal wind, the night seizing him and taking a bite. His lungs complained when he breathed in. Left turn: he’d be home in ten minutes. Left turn, he’d be going home.
He turned right, heading for Queen Street, the top of Leith Walk. The Barony Bar on Broughton Street, he liked it there. Good beer, an old-fashioned place. You wouldn’t stand out in a place like that, drinking alone.
And afterwards, it only took him a couple of minutes to find Siobhan Clarke’s building. Addresses: no problem in CID. First time they’d met, he’d gone to the office next day, checked up on her. Her flat was on a quiet street, a terrace of four-storey Victorian tenements. Second floor: that was where she lived. 2FL: second floor, left side. He went to the terrace opposite. The main door was unlocked. Climbed the stairs, until he reached the half-landing between second and third floors. There was a window, looking out on to the street and the flats opposite. Lights burning in her windows, curtains open. Yes, there she was: briefest of glimpses as she walked across the room. Carrying something, reading it: a CD cover? Hard to tell. He wrapped his jacket around him. Temperature wasn’t much above freezing. The skylight above had a hole in it; cold gusts assailing him.
But still he watched.
14
‘When will his body be released?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘It’s awful, to have someone die and not be able to bury them.’
Rebus nodded. He was in the sitting room of the house in Ravelston. Derek Linford was seated beside him on the sofa. Alicia Grieve looked small and frail in the armchair opposite. Her daughter-in-law, who’d just been speaking, was perched on the arm. Seona Grieve was dressed in black, but Alicia wore a flowery dress, the splashes of colour contrasting with her ash-grey face. To Rebus, her skin seemed like an elephant’s, the way the folds fell from her face and neck.
‘You have to understand, Mrs Grieve,’ Linford said, his voice pouring like treacle, ‘in a case like this, there’s a need to keep the body. The pathologist may be called on to—’
Alicia Grieve was rising to her feet. ‘I can’t listen any more!’ she trilled. ‘Not here, not now. You’re going to have to go.’
Seona helped her up. ‘It’s all right, Alicia. I’ll talk to them. Would you like to go upstairs?’
‘The garden . . . I’m going into the garden.’
‘Mind you don’t slip.’
‘I’m not helpless, Seona!’
‘Of course not. I’m just saying . . .’
But the old woman was making for the door. She didn’t say anything, didn’t look back. Closed the door after her. They could hear her feet shuffling away.
Seona slipped into the chair her mother-in-law had vacated. ‘Sorry about that.’
‘No need to apologise,’ Linford said.
‘But we will need to talk to her,’ Rebus cautioned.
‘Is that absolutely necessary?’
‘I’m afraid so.’ He couldn’t tell her: because your husband might have confided in his mother; because maybe she knows things we don’t.
‘How about you, Mrs Grieve?’ Linford asked. ‘How are you managing?’
‘Like an alcoholic,’ Seona Grieve said with a sigh.
‘Well, a drink often helps—’
‘She means’, Rebus interrupted, ‘she’s taking things one day at a time.’
Linford nodded, as though he’d known this all along.
‘Incidentally,’ Rebus added, ‘does anyone in the family have a drink problem?’
Seona Grieve looked at him. ‘You mean Lorna?’
He stayed silent.
‘Roddy didn’t drink much,’ she went on. ‘The odd glass of red wine, maybe a whisky before dinner. Cammo . . . well, Cammo seems unaffected by drink, unless you know him well. It’s not that he slurs or starts singing.’
‘What then?’
‘His behaviour changes, just ever so slightly.’ She looked down at her lap. ‘Let’s say his morals become hazy.’
‘Has he ever . . . ?’
She looked at Rebus. ‘He tried once or twice.’
Linford, no subtlety on display, glanced meaningfully towards Rebus. Seona Grieve caught the look and snorted.
‘Clutching at straws, Inspector Linford?’
He flinched. ‘How do you mean?’
‘Crime of passion, Cammo killing Roddy so he can get to me.’ She shook her head.
‘Are we being too simplistic, Mrs Grieve?’
She considered Rebus’s question. Took her time over it. So he lobbed in another.
‘You say he didn’t drink much, your husband, and yet he went out drinking with friends?’
‘Yes.’
‘Sometimes stayed out overnight?’
‘What are you trying to say?’
‘It’s just that we can’t find anyone who was out drinking with him the night he died.’
Linford checked his notebook. ‘So far, we’ve found one bar in the West End, they think he was there early on in the evening, drinking by himself.’
Seona Grieve didn’t have anything to say to that. Rebus sat forward. ‘Did Alasdair drink?’
‘Alasdair?’ Caught unawares. ‘What’s he got to do with this?’
‘Any idea where he might be?’
‘Why?’
‘I’m wondering if he knows about your husband. Surely he’d want to be here for the funeral.’
‘He hasn’t phoned . . .’ She turned thoughtful again. ‘Alicia misses him.’
‘Does he ever get in touch?’
‘A card now and then: Alicia’s birthday, never misses that.’
‘But no address?’
‘No.’
‘Postmarks?’
She shrugged. ‘All over, mostly abroad.’
There was something in the way she said it that made Rebus state: ‘There’s something else.’
‘I just . . . I think he gets people to post them for him, when they’re on the move.’
‘Why would he do that?’
‘In case we’re trying to find him.’
Rebus sat forward a little further, cutting down the distance between himself and the widow. ‘What happened? Why did he leave?’
She shrugged again. ‘It was before my time. Roddy was still married to Billie.’
‘Had that marriage broken up before you met Mr Grieve?’ Linford asked.
Her eyes narrowed. ‘What exactly are you implying?’
‘To get back to Alasdair,’ Rebus said, hoping his tone would dissuade Linford from further queries, ‘you’ve no idea why he left?’
‘Roddy talked about him now and again, usually when a card arrived.’
‘Cards to him?’
‘No, to Alicia.’
Rebus looked around him, but someone had removed Alicia Grieve’s birthday cards. ‘Did he send one this year?’
‘He’s always late. It’ll arrive in a week or two.’ She looked towards the door. ‘Poor Alicia. She thinks I’m staying here as a sort of sanctuary.’
‘Whereas, in reality, you’re looking after her?’
She shook her head. ‘Not looking after exactly, but I am worried about her. She’s grown fragile. This is the only room you’ve been in. That’s because it’s practically the only room left that’s habitable. The rest, they fill with old papers and magazines – she
won’t let them be thrown out. All sorts of rubbish, and when the room gets full, she moves into another. This room will go the same way, I suppose.’
‘Can’t her children do anything?’ Linford again.
‘She won’t let them. Refuses even to have a cleaner. “Everything’s in its place for a reason,” that’s what she says.’
‘Maybe she has a point,’ Rebus said. Everything in its place – the body in the fireplace; Roddy Grieve in the summer house – for a reason. There had to be an explanation; it was just that they couldn’t see it yet. ‘Does she still paint?’ he asked.
‘Not really. She tinkers. Her studio is at the bottom of the garden, that’s probably where she’s gone.’ Seona looked at her watch. ‘God, and I need to buy some food . . .’
‘You’d heard the rumours about your husband and Josephine Banks?’
The question had come from Linford. Rebus turned towards him, eyes burning, but Linford was concentrating on the widow.
‘Someone sent me a letter.’ She tugged the sleeve of her blouse down over her watch; suddenly defensive, where before she’d been opening up.
‘You trusted your husband?’
‘Completely. I know what it’s like in politics.’
‘Any idea who might have sent the letter?’
‘I threw it straight in the bin. We agreed that was the best place for it.’
‘How did Ms Banks react?’
‘She thought about hiring a detective. We talked her out of it. Anything we did would have made it all seem legitimate. We’d have been playing his game.’
‘Whose game?’
‘Whoever was spreading the rumour.’
‘You’re sure it was a he?’
‘A question of probability, Inspector Linford. Most of the people in politics are male. It’s sad but it’s true.’
‘I notice’, Rebus said, ‘there were two women standing against your husband in the selection process.’
‘Labour policy.’
‘Did you know any of the other candidates?’
‘Of course. The Labour Party’s one big happy family, Inspector.’
He smiled, as was expected. ‘I hear Archie Ure wasn’t best pleased with the result.’
‘Well, Archie’s been in politics a hell of a sight longer than Roddy. He thought it was his birthright.’
Jo Banks had used the selfsame word: birthright.
‘And the two women on the shortlist?’
‘Young and intelligent . . . they’ll get what they want eventually.’
‘So what happens now, Mrs Grieve?’
‘Now?’ She was staring at the pattern in the carpet. ‘Archie Ure was the runner-up. I suppose they’ll go with him.’ Staring hard at the carpet, as if some message were imprinted there.
Linford cleared his throat and turned towards Rebus, indicating that for him the interview was complete. Rebus tried to think of some brilliant final question, but came up empty.
‘Just give me back my husband,’ Seona Grieve said, leading them into the hall. Alicia was standing there at the foot of the stairs, a china cup in her hand. She’d folded a slice of bread into the cup and squashed it down.
‘I wanted something,’ she told her daughter-in-law. ‘But I’m not sure now why.’
As they left, Roddy Grieve’s widow was leading his mother up the stairs like a parent with a sleepy child.
Back at the car, Rebus told Linford: ‘You go on ahead.’
‘What?’
‘I want to stick around, do the Good Samaritan bit.’
‘Babysitting?’ Linford got in, started the engine. ‘Something tells me that’s not the whole story.’
‘I might have a word with the old woman while I’m at it.’
‘Just tell me you’re not playing Grab-a-Granny.’
Rebus winked. ‘We don’t all have young ladies lusting after us.’
The look on Linford’s face changed. He put the car into gear and drove off.
A grin spread over Rebus’s face. ‘Good on you, Siobhan, you went and dumped him.’
He went back up the path, rang the doorbell. Explained to Seona Grieve that he could spare twenty minutes or so if she wanted to pop out. She hesitated.
‘It’s just milk and bread, Inspector. We can probably manage till—’
‘Well, I’m here now, and my driver’s gone.’ He waved back towards the empty roadway. ‘Besides, the way Mrs Grieve is getting through that bread . . .’
He made himself comfy in the sitting room. She told him he was welcome to make tea or coffee, as long as he didn’t take milk. ‘But fair warning,’ she added, ‘the kitchen’s a bomb-site.’
‘I’ll be fine,’ he said, picking up a Sunday supplement from six months before. He heard the door close – she hadn’t bothered telling her mother-in-law, hadn’t seen the point. There was a newsagent’s a quarter of a mile away. She wouldn’t be long. Rebus waited a couple of minutes, then climbed the stairs. Alicia Grieve was standing in her bedroom doorway. She was still dressed, but wore a dressing-gown over her clothes.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I thought I heard someone leaving.’
‘Nothing wrong with your ears, Mrs Grieve. Seona’s just nipped out to the shop.’
‘Then why are you still here?’ She peered at him. ‘You are the policeman?’
‘That’s right.’
She shuffled past him, one hand reaching out to steady herself against the wall. ‘I’m looking for something,’ she told him. ‘It’s not in my bedroom.’
He could see into her room through the open door. It was chaotic. Clothes were piled on chairs and the floor, more spilling from the wardrobe and chest of drawers. Books and magazines, paintings stacked against the walls. There was a large patch of damp on the ceiling by the window.
She’d pushed open another door. The patterned carpet inside was faded to an almost uniform grey, where it wasn’t threadbare. Rebus followed her in. Was it a living room? An office? Impossible to tell. Cardboard boxes filled with memories and rubbish. Old letters, some not yet opened. Photograph albums spilling loose pictures across the floor. More magazines and newspapers, more paintings. Children’s toys and games from ages past. A collection of mirrors on one wall. A wigwam propped up against the far corner, its yellow canvas patched and crumbling. A child’s doll, sporting tunic and kilt, lay headless under a chair. Rebus picked it up, found the head resting in an open biscuit tin along with loose dominoes, playing cards, empty cotton reels. He fixed the head back on. The doll’s blue eyes looked neither pleased nor displeased.
‘What is it you’re looking for?’
She looked round. ‘What are you doing with Lorna’s doll?’
‘Its head had come off. I just—’
‘No, no, no.’ She grabbed the doll from him. ‘Its head didn’t come off, the little madam yanked it off.’ Which was what Alicia Grieve did now. ‘It was her way of telling us she’d broken with childhood.’
Rebus smiled. ‘How old was she?’ Expecting to hear nine or ten.
‘Twenty-five, twenty-six, something like that.’ Her mind was half on her visitor, half on the search.
‘What did you think when she took up modelling?’
‘I’ve always supported my children.’ It had the sound of a prepared line, a titbit she offered to journalists and the curious.
‘How about Cammo and Roddy? Were you political, Mrs Grieve?’
‘In my younger days I was. Labour, mostly. Allan was a Liberal, we had many a debate . . .’
‘Yet one of your sons is a Tory.’
‘Oh, Cammo could always be difficult.’
‘And Roddy?’
‘Roddy needs to step out from his brother’s shadow. You haven’t seen the way he runs after Cammo. Always watching, studying him. But Cammo has his own chums. Boys that age can be cruel, can’t they?’
She was drifting away from him, the years dancing in her eyes.
‘They’re grown men now, Alicia.’
‘Th
ey’ll always be boys to me.’ She started taking things out of a box, studying each item – binoculars, marmalade jar, football pennant – as though it might reveal itself to her.
‘Are you close to Roddy?’
‘Roddy’s a dear.’
‘He talks to you? Comes to you with problems?’
‘He’s . . .’ She broke off, looked confused. ‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’ Rebus nodded. ‘I told him, warned him often enough. Climbing over railings at his age.’ She shook her head. ‘Bound to be accidents.’
‘He’d done it before? Climbed the railings?’
‘Oh yes. It was a shortcut to school, you see.’
Rebus slid his hands into his pockets. She was travelling elsewhere now. ‘I did dally with the Nationalists in the fifties. They were a strange lot, maybe they still are. Kilts and Gaelic and a chip on the shoulder. We attended some good parties, though, lots of dancing. Sword and Shield . . .’
Rebus frowned. ‘I’ve heard of that. An offshoot of the Nationalists?’
‘It didn’t last long. Very little did in those days. An idea would blossom, then you’d have a few drinks and that would be the end of that.’
‘Did you know Matthew Vanderhyde?’
‘Oh, yes. Everyone knew Matthew. Is he still with us?’
‘I see him occasionally. Maybe not as often as I should.’
‘Matthew and Allan would argue politics with Chris Grieve . . .’ She broke off. ‘You know he’s not related?’ Rebus nodded, remembering the framed poem in the downstairs hall. ‘Allan would be doing Chris’s portrait, only the man wouldn’t sit still. Always moving, flinging out his arms to make a point.’ She flung out her own arms in imitation. The marmalade jar was in one hand, a roll of Christmas parcel-tape in the other. ‘Edwin Muir was a great foil for him. Then there was dear Naomi Mitchison. Do you know her work?’ Rebus was silent, as if speech might break the spell.