“That’s your judgment, is it? Well, I can see I’m completely surplus to requirements. DC Hynds,” Templer announced to the room, “thinks he’s competent to make all the decisions around here.”
Hynds tried for a smile, failed.
“But just in case he’s wrong . . .” Templer was moving towards the doorway again, gesturing into the corridor. “Seeing how we’re down a DI, the Big House have let us borrow one of theirs.”
Siobhan sucked air between her teeth as a body and face she recognized walked into the room.
“DI Derek Linford,” Templer stated by way of introduction. “Some of you may already know him.” Her eyes turned towards Hi-Ho Silvers. “George, you’ve been staring at that wall long enough. Maybe you can bring Derek up to speed on the case, eh?”
With that, Templer left the room. Linford looked around, then walked stiffly towards George Silvers, shaking the proffered hand.
“Christ,” Hynds was saying in an undertone, “I felt like I was on her petri dish for a minute back there . . .” Then he noticed Siobhan’s face. “What is it?”
“What you were saying before . . . about Grant and me.” She nodded her head in Linford’s direction.
“Oh,” Davie Hynds said. Then: “Fancy another coffee?”
Out at the machine she gave him an edited version of events, telling him that she’d gone out with Linford on a couple of occasions, but leaving out the fact that Linford had started spying on her. She added that there was bad blood between Linford and Rebus, too, with the former blaming the latter for a severe beating he’d been given.
“You mean DI Rebus beat him up?”
Siobhan shook her head. “But Linford blames him all the same.”
Hynds gave a low whistle. He seemed about to say something, but now Linford himself was walking down the corridor, sorting out some loose coins in his hand.
“Change for fifty pee?” he asked. Hynds immediately reached into his own pocket, allowing Linford and Siobhan to share a look.
“How are you, Siobhan?”
“Fine, Derek. How are you?”
“Better.” He nodded slowly. “Thanks for asking.” Hynds was slotting coins home, refusing Linford’s offer of the fifty-pence piece.
“Was it tea or coffee you were after?”
“I think I’m capable of pushing the button myself,” Linford told him. Hynds realized he was trying too hard, took half a step back.
“Besides,” Linford added, “knowing this machine, it hardly makes any difference.” He managed a smile, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes.
“Why him?” Siobhan asked.
She was in DCS Templer’s office. Gill Templer had just got off the phone and was scribbling a note in the margin of a typewritten sheet.
“Why not?”
It struck Siobhan that Templer hadn’t been chief super back then. She didn’t know the full story.
“There’s . . .” — she found herself echoing Hynds’s word — “history.” Templer glanced up. “Between DI Linford and DI Rebus,” Siobhan went on.
“But DI Rebus is no longer part of this team.” Templer lifted the sheet of paper as if to read it.
“I know that, ma’am.”
Templer peered at her. “Then what’s the problem?”
Siobhan took the whole office in with a sweep of her eyes. Window and filing cabinets, potted plant, a couple of family photographs. She wanted it. She wanted someday to be sitting where Gill Templer was.
Which meant not giving up her secrets.
Which meant seeming strong, not rocking the boat.
“Nothing, ma’am.” She turned towards the door, reached out for the handle.
“Siobhan.” The voice was more human. “I respect your loyalty to DI Rebus, but that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a good thing.”
Siobhan nodded, keeping her face to the door. When her boss’s phone rang again, she made what she felt was a dignified exit. Back in the murder room, she checked her screen saver. No one had tampered with it. Then she had a thought, and walked the short distance back across the corridor, knocking on the door, putting her head around without waiting. Templer put a hand across the receiver’s mouthpiece.
“What is it?” she asked, her voice once again iron.
“Cafferty,” Siobhan said simply. “I want to be the one who interviews him.”
Rebus was slowly circling the long oval table. Night had fallen, but the slat blinds remained open. The table was strewn with stuff from the box-files. What it lacked as yet was some order. Rebus didn’t think it was his job to impose order, yet that was what he was doing. He knew that come the morning, the rest of the team might want to rearrange everything, but at least he’d have tried.
Interview transcripts, reports from the door-to-door inquiries, medical and pathology, forensics and Scene of Crime . . . There was a lot of background on the victim, as was to be expected: how could they hope to solve the crime until they had a motive? The area’s prostitutes had been reluctant to come forward. No one had claimed Eric Lomax as a client. It didn’t help that there had been a series of murders of Glasgow prostitutes and that the police had been accused of not caring. Nor did it help that Lomax — known to his associates as Rico — had operated on the fringes of the city’s criminal community.
In short, Rico Lomax was a lowlife. And even on this morning’s evidence, Rebus could see that some of the officers on the original inquiry had felt that all his demise did was erase another name from the game. One or two of the Resurrection Men had mooted similar feelings.
“Why give us a scumbag to work on?” Stu Sutherland had asked. “Give us a case we
Which remark had earned him a roasting from DCI Tennant. They had to want to see all their cases solved. Rebus had watched Tennant throughout, wondering why the Lomax case had been chosen. Could it be random chance, or something altogether more threatening?
There was a box of newspapers from the time. A lot of interest had been shown in them, not least because they brought back memories. Rebus sat himself down now and leafed through a couple. The official opening of the Skye Road Bridge . . . Raith Rovers in the UEFA Cup . . . a bantamweight boxer killed in the ring in Glasgow . . .
“Old news,” a voice intoned. Rebus looked up. Francis Gray was standing in the open doorway, feet apart, hands in pockets.
“Thought you were down the pub,” Rebus said.
Gray sniffed as he came in, rubbed a hand across his nose. “We just ended up discussing all this.” He tapped one of the empty box-files. “The lads are on their way over, but looks like you beat us all to it.”
“It was all right when it was just tests and lectures,” Rebus said, leaning back in his chair so he could stretch his spine.
Gray nodded. “But now there’s something for us to take seriously, eh?” He pulled out the chair next to Rebus’s, sat down and concentrated on the open newspaper. “But you seem to be taking it more seriously than most.”
“I just got here first, that’s all.”
“That’s what I mean.” Gray still wasn’t looking at him. He wet a thumb and turned back a page. “You’ve got a bit of a rep, haven’t you, John? Sometimes you get
“Oh aye? And you’re here for always toeing the line?”
Gray allowed himself a smile. Rebus could smell beer and nicotine from his clothes. “We’ve all crossed the line sometime, haven’t we? It happens to good cops as well as bad. Maybe you could even say it’s what makes the good cops
Rebus studied the side of Gray’s head. Gray was at Tulliallan because he’d disobeyed one order too many from a senior officer. Then again, as Gray had said: “My boss was, is, and will forever be a complete and utter arsehole.” A pause. “With respect.” That final phrase had cracked the table up. The problem with most of the Resurrection Men was, they didn’t respect those above them in the pecking order, didn’t trust them to do a good
