Interview Room 1 had yet to be cleared of the desks and chairs used by the Wild Bunch, meaning that in the interim all interviews would be conducted next door in IR2.
There was a knock at the door and it opened. Siobhan sidled in, carrying a thick manila folder. Rebus was seated at one of the desks, nursing a coffee from the machine.
“Anyone see you come in?” she asked him.
“Nope. Anyone notice you leaving the office with that lot?”
“Hard not to.” She shrugged. “I don’t think I was followed, though.” She placed the folder on his desk. “So what are we looking for?”
“Sure you can spare the time?”
She pulled out a chair. “What are we looking for?”
“Ties that bind,” he answered.
“Dempsey and McCullough?”
He nodded. “For starters. By the way, I blew it this morning, told McCullough I knew about the pair of them.”
“I don’t suppose he was thrilled.”
“No. But it means they’ll both be ready for us. We need to have some ammunition.”
“And you think it’s hiding somewhere in here?” She patted the folder.
“I hope so.”
She blew air from her cheeks. “No time like the present,” she said, opening the folder. “Do we each take a chunk of the inquiry . . . ?”
Rebus was shaking his head, getting up and moving to the chair next to her. “We work as partners, Siobhan. That means reading each and every page together, seeing what ideas we come up with.”
“I’m not the world’s fastest reader.”
“All the better. Something tells me you know this case back to front anyhow. This way, I get the chance to read everything through twice to your once.”
He slid the first stapled set of sheets out of the folder and placed it on the desk between them. Then, like kids at primary school sharing a textbook, they started to read.
By lunchtime, Rebus’s head was pounding. He’d covered six sides of lined legal paper with comments and questions. No one had disturbed their session. Siobhan was standing up and stretching. “Can we take a break?”
He nodded, checking his watch. “Forty minutes for lunch. Can you fetch a bag from upstairs?”
She stopped in the middle of a neck stretch. “What for?”
Rebus had his hand on the folder. “This goes with us,” he said. “I’ll meet you outside in five.”
He was smoking a cigarette when she came out. Something was weighing down her shoulder bag, and he nodded his satisfaction.
“Tell me we’re not working through lunch?”
“I just don’t want anyone else to know what we’re up to,” he explained.
“Well, since it’s your idea . . .” She handed him the shoulder bag. “You get to be in charge.”
They went to a sandwich bar near The Meadows, sat on high stools at the window, chewing their purchases. Neither spoke. Their heads were still cluttered, the passing world a good excuse to stare unblinking and unthinkingly. Both sipped from cans of Irn-Bru. Afterwards, on the way back to St. Leonard’s, Siobhan asked Rebus how his filled roll had been.
“It was fine,” he told her.
She nodded. “What was the filling again?”
He thought for a moment. “Can’t honestly remember.” He looked at her. “What was in yours?”
Watching her shrug, his face broke into a smile, which Siobhan returned.
There was no sign that anyone had been in IR1 in their absence. They’d brought extra cans of juice with them, and placed these on the desk, along with the folder and the lined pad of notes.
“Remind me,” Siobhan said, opening her drink, “what are we looking for?”
“Whatever it is that was missed first time round.”
She nodded, and they got back to work. Half an hour later, they were in discussion about the missing painting.
“It means something,” Rebus was saying. “Maybe not to us, but to someone . . . When did Marber buy it again?” Rebus waited while Siobhan flipped through the sheets, finding the right one.
“Five and a half years back.”
Rebus tapped the desk with his pen. “We’ve been talking about Neilson trying to blackmail Marber . . . What if it works both ways?”
“How do you mean?”
“Maybe Marber was putting the squeeze on someone else.”
“Neilson?”
Rebus shook his head. “The big money he was expecting . . .”
“We only had Laura’s word for that. Marber could just have been trying to impress her.”
“Fair enough, but let’s say he
“Blackmail money?”
Rebus was nodding. “From someone he had no need to fear . . .”
“Can’t be too many people out there wimpier than Edward Marber.”
Rebus held up a finger. “Exactly. But maybe Marber wasn’t going to be around for much longer . . .”
“Because he was going to be dead?” Siobhan was frowning, feeling she was failing to understand Rebus’s train of thought.
He shook his head. “He wasn’t going to be
“Going somewhere?”
Now Rebus nodded. “This place of his in Tuscany. Maybe he was thinking of persuading Laura to go there with him.”
“She’d never have agreed.”
“I’m not saying she would. But if he was infatuated with her, maybe he couldn’t see that. Think of the way he got her the flat in Mayfield Terrace: springing it on her. Could he have been planning the same sort of surprise with Italy?”
Siobhan was thinking it through. “So he’s going to put some of his stuff into storage, maybe take some of it with him . . . ?” She shrugged. “And where does that get us exactly?”
Rebus was rubbing his chin. “It brings us back to the Vettriano . . .”
The door opened and a head popped round: Phyllida Hawes. “Thought I heard voices,” she said.
“We’re in conference here, Phyl,” Siobhan complained.
“That’s as may be, but DCS Templer is looking for DI Rebus. Toot-sweet, as I believe they say in France . . .”
Gill Templer looked to be rearranging the paperwork on her desk when Rebus walked in.
“You wanted to see me?” he said.
“Heard you’d been spotted on the premises.” She crumpled a sheaf of paper and added it to the contents of her overflowing bin.
“Marber case solved to your satisfaction, then?” he asked.
“Fiscal’s office seem inclined to go to trial. Few loose ends they want us to tie up . . .” She looked at him. “I hear you’re AWOL from Tulliallan?”
He shrugged. “That’s all finished with, Gill.”
“Really? Sir David hasn’t said anything . . .”
“Give him a ring.”
“Maybe I will.” She paused. “Did you get a result?”
He shook his head. “Anything else I can do for you, Gill? Only, there’s some work I’m trying to catch up on . . .”
“What sort of work?”
