Resurrection Men

“And wasn’t that the fragrant DS Clarke we saw coming back from the car park?” Allan Ward added.

They started whistling and laughing. Rebus didn’t bother to say anything. One man in the room wasn’t smiling: Francis Gray. He was seated at the table with a pen clenched between his teeth, playing out a rhythm on it with his fingernails. He wasn’t so much watching Rebus as studying him.

When it comes to Edinburgh, John knows where the bodies are buried.

Said metaphorically? Rebus didn’t think so . . .

20

By six that evening, the inquiry room had emptied. Siobhan was glad to see them go. Derek Linford had been giving her foul looks ever since the drinks machine. Davie Hynds had spent the afternoon writing up the report on Malcolm Neilson’s payoff. The only break he’d taken had been to interview — with Silvers as his partner — a good- looking woman who turned out to be Sharon Burns, the art collector. Siobhan had asked Silvers afterwards who she’d been. He’d explained, then grinned.

“Davie said you’d be jealous . . .”

Phyllida Hawes had been sitting moonfaced and anxious ever since lunch, checking her watch and the doorway, wanting Allan Ward to pay another visit. But no one from IR1 had come near. Eventually Hawes had asked Siobhan if she fancied a drink after work.

“Sorry, Phyl,” Siobhan had lied, “I’ve got a prior engagement.” Last thing she wanted was Hawes crying on her shoulder because Ward was giving her the cold one. But Silvers and Grant Hood were up for a pint, and Hawes had joined them. Hynds had waited to be asked, and eventually he was.

“I could probably manage one,” he’d said, trying not to sound too desperate.

“Might join you,” Linford had said, “if that’s all right.”

“More the merrier,” Hawes had told him. “Sure you can’t come, Siobhan?”

“Thanks anyway,” Siobhan had replied.

Leaving her alone in the office at six o’clock, the sudden silence relieved only by the hum of the strip lighting. Templer had left much earlier to attend some meeting at the Big House. The brass would want to know what progress was being made on the Marber case. As her eyes drifted over the Wall of Death, Siobhan could have told them: precious little.

They’d be keen for a result. Which was precisely when mistakes could be made, shortcuts taken. They’d be wanting Donny Dow or Malcolm Neilson to fit the frame, even if it meant reshaping them . . .

One of her teachers at college had told her years back: it wasn’t the result that mattered, it was how you got there. He’d meant that you had to play fair, stay open-minded; make sure the case lacked any slow punctures, so the Procurator Fiscal wouldn’t kick it straight back at you. It was up to the courts to decide guilt and innocence, the job of CID was merely to stitch the pieces together into a ball . . .

She looked down at her desk. Her notepad was a mass of doodles and squiggles, some in blue ink, some in black, not all of them hers. She knew she drew little tornadoes when she was on the phone. And cubes sometimes. And rectangles that looked like Union Jacks. One of the designs belonged to “Hi-Ho” Silvers: arrows and cacti were his specialties. Some people never doodled. She couldn’t remember Rebus ever doing it, or Derek Linford. It was as if they might give too much away. She wondered what her own graffiti would reveal to an expert. The tornado could be her way of giving some shape to the chaos of an investigation. The cubes and flags? Same thing, more or less. Arrows and cacti she wasn’t so sure about . . .

One name on her pad had been ringed and then half obliterated by a phone number.

Ellen Dempsey.

What was it Cafferty had said . . . ? Ellen Dempsey had “friends.” What sort of friends? The kind Cafferty didn’t want to tangle with.

“Is this what promotion does to you?” Rebus said. He was leaning against the doorframe.

“How long have you been there?”

“Don’t worry, I’m not spying.” He walked into the room. “They’ve all buggered off then?”

“Full marks for spotting that.”

“The old powers of deduction haven’t quite left the building yet.” Rebus tapped his head. His chair was behind what was now Linford’s desk. He wheeled it out and placed it in front of Siobhan’s.

“Don’t let that ba’heid sit in my seat,” he complained.

“Your seat? I thought you stole it from the Farmer’s old office?”

“Gill didn’t want it,” Rebus said, defending himself as he sat down and got comfortable. “So what’s on the menu for tonight?”

“Beans on toast probably. How about you?”

He made a show of thinking it over, resting his feet on the desktop. “Boeuf en croûte, maybe, washed down with a good bottle of wine.”

Siobhan wasn’t slow. “Jean called?”

He nodded. “I wanted to thank you for interceding on my behalf.”

“So where are you taking her?”

“Number One.”

Siobhan whistled. “Any chance of a doggie bag?”

“There might be a bone or two left. What are you writing?”

She noticed what she was doing. “Ellen Dempsey’s name was down here, only it’s been written over. I just wanted to write it again, to remind myself . . .”

“Of what?”

“I think she’s worth looking at.”

“On what grounds?”

“On the grounds that Cafferty said she has friends.”

“You don’t think it was Donny Dow who killed Marber?”

She shook her head. “I could be wrong, of course.”

“What about this artist guy? I hear you had him in for questioning, too . . .”

“We did. He took a payoff from Marber, promised to stop bad-mouthing him.”

“Didn’t exactly work.”

“No . . .”

“But you don’t see him for the killer either?”

She gave an exaggerated shrug. “Maybe nobody did it.”

“Maybe a big boy did it and ran away.”

She smiled. “Has anyone in the whole history of the world ever really used that as an alibi?”

“I’m sure I tried it, when I was a kid. Didn’t you?”

“I don’t suppose my mum and dad would have believed me.”

“I don’t suppose any parent’s been duped by it. Doesn’t mean a kid wouldn’t try it . . .”

She nodded thoughtfully. “Neither Dow nor Neilson has an alibi for the night Marber was killed. Even Cafferty’s story’s a bit shaky . . .”

“You think Cafferty was involved?”

“I’m beginning to lean that way. He probably owns the Paradiso . . . he could have known about Laura and Marber . . . His driver happened to be Laura’s ex, and Cafferty’s a collector, someone Marber could have cheated.”

“Then bring him in.”

She looked at him. “He’s hardly likely to burst into tears and confess.”

“Bring him in anyway, just for the hell of it.”

She stared down at Ellen Dempsey’s name. “Why do I get the feeling that would be for your benefit, rather than mine?”

“Because you’ve a suspicious nature, DS Clarke.” Rebus checked his watch, rose to his feet.