“You’re staying here all night?”
“Maybe it won’t come to that.” Both knowing it might. “Cafeteria’s open twenty-four/seven.”
“And your parents?”
“I’ll head there first thing.” She’d paused. “If you can spare me...”
“We’ll just have to see, won’t we?”
“Thanks.” And she’d hugged him, not exactly sure why. Maybe just to feel human, the night stretching in front of her.
“Siobhan...Always supposing you find him, what then? He’ll say he was doing his job.”
“I’ll have proof that he wasn’t.”
“If you push it too hard...”
She’d nodded, given him a wink and a smile. Gestures she’d learned from him, used whenever he was planning on crossing the line.
A wink and a smile, and then she was gone.
Someone had painted a large anarchy symbol on the doors of the C Division police HQ in Torphichen Place. It was an old, crumbling building, with twice the atmosphere of Gayfield Square. Street sweepers were gathering debris and overtime outside. Broken glass, bricks and stones, fast-food cartons.
The desk sergeant buzzed Rebus in. Some of the Canning Street protesters had been brought here for processing. They’d spent the night in cells cleared for the purpose. Rebus didn’t like to think how many junkies and muggers were roaming the Edinburgh streets, having been ejected from their rightful lockups. The CID room was long and narrow and always had about it the faint musk of human odor, something Rebus put down to the regular presence of DC Ray “Rat-Ass” Reynolds. He was slouched there now with his feet crossed on the desk in front of him, tie undone and a can of beer in his fist. At another desk sat his boss, DI Shug Davidson. Davidson’s tie was all the way off, but he appeared to be still working, pounding with two fingers at his computer keyboard. The can of beer next to him had yet to be opened.
Reynolds didn’t bother to stifle a belch as Rebus walked into the room. “It’s the specter at the feast!” he called out in recognition. “I hear you’re about as welcome near the G8 as the Rebel Clown Army.” But he raised his can in a toast anyway.
“That cuts to the quick, Ray. Been hectic, has it?”
“We should be on bonuses.” Reynolds held up a fresh beer, but Rebus shook his head.
“Come to see where the action is?” Davidson added.
“Just need a word with Ellen,” Rebus explained, nodding in the direction of the room’s only other occupant. DS Ellen Wylie looked up from the report she was hiding behind. Her blond hair was cut short, with a center parting. She’d put on some weight since the days when Rebus had worked a couple of cases with her. Her cheeks had filled out, and were now flushed, something Reynolds could not resist referring to by rubbing his hands together and then holding them out in her direction, as though warming them at an open fire.
She was rising to her feet, but without making eye contact with the intruder. Davidson asked if it was anything he should know about. Rebus just shrugged. Wylie had lifted her jacket from the back of her chair, picked up her shoulder bag.
“I was calling it a night anyway,” she announced to the room. Reynolds gave a whistle and nudged the air with his elbow.
“What do you reckon, Shug? Nice when love blossoms between colleagues.” Laughter followed her out of the room. In the corridor, she leaned against the wall and let her head drop.
“Long day?” Rebus guessed.
“You ever tried questioning a German anarcho-syndicalist?”
“Not recently.”
“All had to be processed tonight so the courts could have them tomorrow.”
“Today,” Rebus corrected her, tapping his watch. She checked her own.
“Is that really the time?” She sounded exhausted. “I’ll be back here in six hours.”
“I’d offer to buy you a drink if the pubs were still open.”
“I don’t need a drink.”
“A lift home?”
“My car’s outside.” She thought for a moment. “No, it’s not—didn’t bring it in today.”
“Good move, considering.”
“We were warned not to.”
“Foresight is a wonderful thing. And it means I can give you that lift home after all.” Rebus waited until her eyes met his. He was smiling. “You still haven’t asked what I want.”
“I know what you want.” She bristled slightly, and he raised his hands in surrender.
“Easy now,” he told her. “Don’t want you getting all...”
“All what?”
Walking straight into his punch line. “Torn up inside,” he obliged.
Ellen Wylie shared a house with her divorced sister.
It was a terrace in Cramond. The back garden ended in a sheer drop to the River Almond. The night being mild, and Rebus needing to smoke, they sat at a table outside. Wylie kept her voice low—didn’t want the neighbors complaining, and besides, her sister’s bedroom window was open. She brought out mugs of milky tea.
“Nice spot,” Rebus told her. “I like that you can hear the water.”
“There’s a stream just over there.” She pointed into the darkness. “Masks the noise of the planes.”
Rebus nodded his understanding: they were directly under the flight path into Turnhouse Airport. This time of night, it had only taken them fifteen minutes from Torphichen Place. On the way, she’d told him her story.
“So I wrote something for the Web site...not against the law, is it? I was just so pissed off at the system. We bust a gut to get these animals to court, and then the lawyers do their damnedest to get their sentences whittled away to nothing.”
“Is that all it was?”
She’d shifted in the passenger seat. “What else?”
“Tornupinside—sounds like it was more personal.”
She’d stared through the windshield. “No, John, just angry...Too many hours spent on rape cases, sexual assault, domestic abuse—maybe it takes a woman to understand.”
“Which is why you phoned Siobhan back? I recognized your voice straight off.”
“Yes, that was particularly devious of you.”
“My middle name...”
Now, seated in her garden with a cold breeze blowing, Rebus buttoned his jacket and asked about the Web site. How did she find it? Did she know the Jensens? Had she ever met with them...?
“I remember the case” was all she said.
“Vicky Jensen?” She nodded slowly. “Did you work on it?”
A shake of the head. “But I’m glad he’s dead. Show me where he’s buried and I’ll dance a little jig.”
“Edward Isley and Trevor Guest are dead, too.”
“Look, John, all I did was write a bit of a blog...I was letting off steam.”
“And now three of the men listed on the site are dead. A blow to the head and a smack overdose. You’ve worked murders, Ellen...what does that MO tell you?”
“Someone with access to hard drugs.”
“Anything else?”
She thought for a moment. “You tell me.”
“Killer didn’t want a face-to-face with the victims. Maybe because they were bigger and stronger. Didn’t really want them to suffer either—a straight KO and then the injection. Doesn’t that sound like a woman to you?”
“How’s your tea, John?”
“Ellen...”
She slapped a palm against the tabletop. “If they were listed on BeastWatch, they were grade-A scumbags...don’t expect me to feel sorry for them.”
“What about catching the killer?”
“What about it?”
“You want them to get away with it?”
She was staring into the darkness again. The wind was rustling the trees nearby. “Know what we had today, John? We had a war, cut-and-dried—good guys and bad...”
Rebus’s thought: Tell that to Siobhan.
“But it isn’t always like that, is it?” she went on. “Sometimes the line blurs.” She turned her gaz
e on him. “You should know that better than most, number of corners I’ve seen you cut.”
“I make a lousy role model, Ellen.”
“Maybe so, but you’re planning to find him, aren’t you?”
“Him or her. That’s why I need to get a statement from you.” She opened her mouth to complain, but he held up a hand. “You’re the only person I know who used the site. The Jensens have closed it down, so I can’t be sure what might have been on there.”
“You want me to help?”
“By answering a few questions.”
She gave a harsh, quiet laugh. “You know I’ve got court later today?”
Rebus was lighting another cigarette. “Why Cramond?” he asked. She seemed surprised by the change of subject.
“It’s a village,” she explained. “A village inside a city—best of both worlds.” She paused. “Has the interview already started? Is this you getting me to drop my guard?”
Rebus shook his head. “Just wondered whose idea it was.”
“It’s my house, John. Denise came to live with me after she...” She cleared her throat. “Think I swallowed a bug,” she apologized. “I was going to say, after her divorce.”
Rebus nodded at the explanation. “Well, it’s a peaceful spot, I’ll give you that. Easy out here to forget all about the job.”
The light from the kitchen caught her smile. “I get the feeling it wouldn’t work for you. I’m not sure anything short of a sledgehammer would.”
“Or a few of those,” Rebus countered, nodding toward the row of empty wine bottles lined up beneath the kitchen window.
He took it slow, driving back into town. Loved the city at night, the taxicabs and lolling pedestrians, warm sodium glare from the streetlamps, darkened shops, curtained tenements. There were places he could go—a bakery, a night watchman’s desk, a casino—places where he was known and where tea would be brewed, gossip exchanged. Years back, he could have stopped for a chat with the working girls on Coburg Street, but most of them had either moved on or died. And after he, too, was gone, Edinburgh would remain. These same scenes would be enacted, a play whose run was never ending. Killers would be caught and punished; others would remain at large. The world and the underworld, coexisting down the generations. By week’s end, the G8 circus would have trundled elsewhere. Geldof and Bono would have found new causes. Richard Pennen would be in his boardroom, David Steelforth back at Scotland Yard. Sometimes it felt to Rebus that he was close to seeing the mechanism that connected everything.
Close...but never quite close enough.
The Meadows seemed deserted as he turned up Marchmont Road. Parked at the top of Arden Street and walked back downhill to his tenement. Two or three times a week he got flyers through his mailbox, firms eager to sell his apartment for him. The one upstairs had gone for two hundred K. Add that sort of money to his CID pension and he was, as Siobhan herself had said, “on Easy Street.” Problem was, it wasn’t a destination that appealed. He stooped to pick up the mail from inside the door. There was a menu from a new Indian take-out. He’d pin it up in the kitchen, next to the others. Meantime, he made himself a ham sandwich, ate it standing in the kitchen, staring at the array of empty cans on the work surface. How many bottles had there been in Ellen Wylie’s garden? Fifteen, maybe twenty. A lot of wine. He’d seen an empty Tesco’s bag in the kitchen. She probably did a regular recycling run, same time she did the shopping. Say every two weeks. Twenty bottles in two weeks; ten a week—Denise came to stay with me after she...after her divorce. Rebus hadn’t seen any nighttime insects illuminated against the kitchen window. Ellen had looked washed out. Easy to blame it on the day’s events, but Rebus knew it went deeper. The lines under her bloodshot eyes had taken weeks to accumulate. Her figure had been thickening for some time. He knew that Siobhan had once seen Ellen as a rival—two DSes who’d have to fight tooth and nail for promotion. But lately, Siobhan had stopped saying as much. Maybe because Ellen didn’t look quite so dangerous to her these days...
He poured a glass of water and took it into the living room, gulped it down until only half an inch was left, then added a slug of malt to the remainder. Tipped it back and felt the heat work its way down his throat. Topped it up and settled into his chair. Too late now to put any music on. He rested the glass against his forehead, closed his eyes.
Slept.
Tuesday, July 5, 2005
11
The best Glenrothes could offer was a lift to the railway station at Markinch.
Siobhan sat on the train—too early yet for the commuter rush—and looked out at the passing countryside. Not that she saw any of it: her mind was replaying footage of the riot, the same hours of footage she had just walked away from. Sound and fury, swearing and swinging, the clatter of hurled objects and the grunts of exertion. Her thumb was numb from pressure on the remote control. Pause...slow back...slow forward...play. Fast forward...rewind...pause...play. In some of the still photographs, faces had been circled—people the force would want to question. The eyes burned with hatred. Of course, some of them weren’t demonstrators at all—just local troublemakers ready to rumble, smothered in Burberry scarves and baseball caps. In the U.S., they’d probably be called juvenile delinquents, but up here they were neds. One of the team, bringing her coffee and a chocolate bar, had said as much as he stood behind her shoulder.
“Neddy the Ned from Nedtown.”
The woman across from Siobhan on the train had the morning paper open. The riot had made the front page. But so, too, had Tony Blair. He was in Singapore, pitching for London to win the Olympic bid. The year 2012 seemed a long way off; so did Singapore. Siobhan couldn’t believe he was going to make it back to Gleneagles in time to shake all those hands—Bush and Putin, Schröder and Chirac. The paper also said there was little sign of Saturday’s Hyde Park crowd heading north.
“Sorry, is this seat taken?”
Siobhan shook her head and the man squeezed in beside her.
“Wasn’t yesterday terrible?” he said. Siobhan grunted a reply, but the woman across the table said she’d been shopping in Rose Street and had only just escaped being caught up in it. The two then started trading war stories, while Siobhan stared out the window again. The skirmishes had been just that. Police tactics had been unchanged: go in hard; let them know the city’s ours, not theirs. From the footage, there’d been obvious provocation. But they’d been forewarned—no point in joining a demonstration if it didn’t make the news. Anarchists couldn’t afford ad campaigns. Baton charges were their equivalent of free publicity. The photos in the paper proved it: cops with gritted teeth swinging their clubs; rioters defenseless on the ground, being dragged away by faceless uniforms. All very George Orwell. None of it got Siobhan any closer to finding out who had attacked her mother, or why.
But she wasn’t about to give up.
Her eyes stung when she blinked, and every few blinks the world seemed to swim out of focus. She needed sleep but was wired on caffeine and sugar.
“Sorry, but are you all right?”
It was her neighbor again. His hand was brushing her arm. When she blinked her eyes open, she could feel the single tear running down her cheek. She wiped it away.
“I’m fine,” she said. “Just a bit tired.”
“Thought maybe we’d upset you,” the woman across the table was saying, “going on about yesterday...”
Siobhan shook her head, saw that the woman had finished with her paper. “Mind if I...?”
“No, pet, you go ahead.”
Siobhan managed a smile and opened the tabloid, studying the pictures, looking for the photographer’s name...
At Haymarket she lined up for a cab. Got out at the Western General and went straight to the ward. Her father was slurping tea in the reception area. He’d slept in his clothes and hadn’t managed a shave, the bristles gray on his cheeks and chin. He looked old to her, old and suddenly mortal.
“How is she?” Siobhan asked.
“Not
too bad. Due to get the scan just before lunch. How about you?”
“Still haven’t found the bastard.”
“I meant, how are you feeling?”
“I’m all right.”
“You were up half the night, weren’t you?”
“Maybe a bit more than half,” she conceded with a smile. Her phone beeped: not a message, just warning her its battery was low. She switched it off. “Can I see her?”
“They’re getting her ready. Said they’d tell me when they’d finished. How’s the outside world?”
“Ready to face another day.”
“Can I buy you a coffee?”
She shook her head. “I’m swimming in the stuff.”
“I think you should get some rest, love. Come see her this afternoon, after the tests.”
“I’ll just say hello first.” She nodded toward the ward doors.
“Then you’ll go home?”
“Promise.”
The morning news: yesterday’s arrests were being sent to the sheriff court on Chambers Street. The court itself would be closed to the public. A protest was taking place outside the Dungavel Immigration Center. Forewarned, the immigration service had already moved the waiting deportees elsewhere. The demonstration would go ahead anyway, organizers said.
Trouble at the Peace Camp in Stirling. People were starting to head for Gleneagles, the police determined to stop them, using Section 60 powers to stop and search without suspicion. In Edinburgh, the cleanup was well advanced. A vehicle loaded with ninety gallons of cooking oil had been detained—the oil would have formed a road slick, causing traffic chaos. Wednesday’s Final Push concert at Murrayfield was coming together. The stage had been built, lighting installed. Midge Ure was hoping for some “decent Scottish summer weather.” Performers and celebrities had started arriving in the city. Richard Branson had flown one of his jets to Edinburgh. Prestwick Airport was gearing up for the next day’s arrivals. An advance guard of diplomats had already arrived. President Bush would be bringing his own sniffer dog, plus a mountain bike so he could maintain his daily exercise regime. Back in the newsroom, the TV presenter read out an e-mail from a viewer, suggesting the summit could have been held on one of the North Sea’s many decommissioned oil platforms, “saving a small fortune in security, and making protest marches an interesting proposition.”