gun’s real. It’s only a matter of time.” Rebus was aware that he was allowing some emotion to creep into his voice. Silvers was studying him, beginning to wonder what he was up to. Rebus looked at him, then shrugged, started to push up from the chair.
“Think about it, Bob, just do that for me.” Rebus tried for eye contact, but the young man was staring at the ceiling lights, as if at a fireworks display.
“I’ve never been to a panto…” he was starting to tell Silvers as Rebus left.
Siobhan, dumped by Rebus, had gone upstairs to CID. The main office was busy, detectives seated at borrowed desks, facing their interviewees. At her own desk, the computer monitor had been pushed to one side, her in-tray relegated to the floor. Detective Constable Davie Hynds was taking notes as a young man, pupils reduced to pinpoints, droned on.
“What’s wrong with your own desk?” Siobhan asked.
“DS Wylie pulled rank on me.” Hynds nodded towards where Detective Sergeant Ellen Wylie sat at his desk, preparing for her next interview. She looked up at the mention of her name and smiled. Siobhan smiled back. Wylie was based at the West End station. Same rank as Siobhan, but more years on her clock. Siobhan knew they might become rivals in the promotion stakes. She decided to squeeze her in-tray into one of the desk drawers, didn’t like the idea of this invasion. Each police station was a fiefdom of sorts. No telling what the raiders could take away with them…
When she picked up the in-tray, she saw the corner of a white envelope poking out from beneath a series of stapled reports. She eased it out, then placed the in-tray in the desk’s single deep drawer, closing and locking it. Hynds was looking at her.
“Nothing you need, is there?” Siobhan asked him. He shook his head, wondering if an explanation was on its way. But all Siobhan did was walk away, heading back downstairs to the drink machine. It was more peaceful down here. A couple of the visiting detectives were on a break, smoking and sharing some joke in the car park. She didn’t see Rebus there, so she stayed by the machine, opening the ice-cold can. The sugar hit her teeth and then her stomach. She found the can’s list of contents, reminding herself that the panic attack books said to lay off caffeine. She was trying to find room in her affections for decaf coffee, and she knew there were caffeine-free soft drinks out there somewhere. Salt: that was another one to avoid. High blood pressure and all that. Alcohol was all right in moderation. She wondered if a bottle of wine in the evening after work could be classed as “moderate,” doubted it somehow. Thing was, if she drank half a bottle, the rest tasted foul the next day. Memo to self: explore possibility of buying half-bottles of wine only.
She remembered the envelope, lifted it from her pocket. Handwritten, more of a scrawl really. She put her can down on top of the machine, already getting a bad feeling as she peeled the envelope open. Just a single sheet of paper, she was sure of that. No razor blades, no glass… Plenty of nutters out there keen to share their thoughts with her. She unfolded the letter. Big scrawled capitals.
LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING YOU AGAIN IN HELL-MARTY.
The name was underlined. Her heart was racing. She didn’t doubt who Marty was: Martin Fairstone. But Fairstone was a tub of cinders and bone on a shelf in someone’s lab. She studied the envelope. Address and post- code perfect. Somebody’s idea of a joke? But who could it be? Who knew about her and Fairstone? Rebus and Templer… anyone else? She thought back a few months. Someone had left messages on her screen saver, had to be CID, one of her so-called colleagues. But the messages had stopped. Davie Hynds and George Silvers: they worked beside her. Grant Hood, too, most of the time. Others came and went. But she hadn’t told any of them about Fairstone. Hold on… when Fairstone had made his complaint, had any of it become a matter of record? She didn’t think so. But cop shops were hives of gossip, hard to keep any secrets.
She realized she was staring through the glass outer doors, and the two detectives in the car park were staring back at her, wondering what it was about them that she was finding so mesmeric. She tried for a smile and a shake of the head, as if to say she’d been in a “dwam.”
For lack of anything else to do, she took out her mobile, intending to check for messages. But started to make a call instead, punching in the number from memory.
“Ray Duff speaking.”
“Ray? You busy?”
Siobhan knew what the initial answer would be: an intake of breath preceding an elongated sigh. Duff was a scientist, working for the forensics lab at Howdenhall.
“You mean apart from checking that all the Port Edgar bullets came from the same gun, then examining blood spatter configurations and powder residues, ballistic angles, all that?”
“At least we keep you in a job. How’s the MG?”
“Running like a dream.” The last time the two had spoken, Duff had just finished rebuilding a ’73 special. “That offer of a spin some weekend still stands.”
“Maybe come the better weather.”
“There’s a top, you know.”
“Not the same, though, is it? Look, Ray, I know you’re up to your eyes in work from the school, but I was wondering if I could ask a wee favor…”
“Siobhan, you know I’m going to say no. Everyone wants this done and dusted.”
“I know. I’m working Port Edgar, too.”
“You and every other cop in the city.” Another sigh. “Just out of curiosity, what is it exactly?”
“Between you and me?”
“Of course.”
Siobhan looked around. The detectives outside had lost interest in her. Three constables sat together at a table in the cafeteria, eating sandwiches and drinking tea, maybe twenty feet away from her. She turned her back to them, so she was facing the machine.
“I just got this letter. Anonymous.”
“Threatening?”
“Sort of.”
“You should show it to someone.”
“I was thinking of showing it to you, see if you can take anything from it.”
“I meant show it to your boss. Gill Templer, isn’t it?”
“I’m not exactly her star pupil right now. Besides, she’s snowed under.”
“And I’m not?”
“Just a quick recon, Ray. It could be something, or nothing.”
“But on the q.t., am I right?”
“Right.”
“Which is wrong. Someone’s threatening you, you need to report it, Shiv.”
That nickname again:
“Thing is, Ray, it’s from a dead man.”
There was a pause on the line. “Okay,” Duff drawled at last. “You’ve got my attention.”
“Housing project in Gracemount, chip-pan fire…”
“Ah, yes, Mr. Martin Fairstone. I’ve been trying to get some work done on him, too.”
“Come up with anything?”
“Bit early to tell… Port Edgar came straight in at number one. Fairstone dropped a few places.”
She had to smile at the analogy. Ray liked his charts. Their conversations usually contained top threes and fives. And right on cue:
“By the way, Shiv-top three Scottish rock and pop acts?”
“Ray…”
“Humor me. No thinking allowed, just off the top of your head.”
“Rod Stewart? Big Country? Travis?”
“No room for Lulu? Annie Lennox?”
“I’m not much good at this, Ray.”
“Rod’s an interesting choice, though.”
