A Question of Blood

dry, rasping sound.

“What if Whiteread comes back?” Siobhan asked.

“She’s busy searching the yacht.” Rebus looked at her and smiled. A bell sounded and the doors shuddered open. As Rebus had hoped, the cleaning staff were still working this floor: a couple of their carts were parked in the corridor. Sheets and towels were piled up, waiting to be taken away for the laundry. He had his story ready: forgotten something… key down in Reception… any chance you could open the door for me? If that didn’t work, maybe a fiver or a tenner would. But his luck was in: the door to 212 stood wide open. The maid was in the bathroom. He put his head around the door.

“Had to pop back for something,” he told her. “Just you carry on.” Then he scanned the bedroom. The bed had been made. Personal items sat on the dressing table. Clothes hung in the narrow wardrobe. Whiteread’s suitcase was empty.

“She probably takes everything with her,” Siobhan whispered. “Keeps it in the car.”

Rebus paid her no heed. He checked beneath the bed, went through both clothes drawers, and slid open the drawer to the bedside table, revealing a Gideon Bible.

“Just like Rocky Raccoon,” he muttered to himself. Then he straightened up. There was nothing here. He’d seen nothing in the bathroom either, when he’d peered around its door. But now he was staring at another door… a connecting door. He tried the handle, and it opened, leading to another door, with no handle on Rebus’s side. Which didn’t matter: it was already open an inch. Rebus pushed it, and found himself in the next bedroom. Clothes strewn over both available chairs. Magazines on the bedside table. Ties and socks spilling from an oversized black nylon sports holdall.

“Simms’s room,” Rebus commented. And there on the dressing table, a brown manila file. Rebus turned it over, picked out the words CONFIDENTIAL and PERSONNEL. Picked out the name LEE HERDMAN. Simms’s idea of security: placing it facedown so no one would see what it was.

“You want to read it here?” Siobhan asked. Rebus shook his head: had to run to forty or fifty sheets.

“Reckon our receptionist would copy it for us?”

“I’ve got a better idea.” Siobhan lifted the file. “There was a sign in Reception for a business suite. I’m guessing they’ll have a photocopier.”

“Then let’s go.” But Siobhan was shaking her head.

“One of us stays here. Last thing we want is the cleaner disappearing, leaving the place locked tight behind her.”

Rebus saw the reasonableness of this, and nodded. So Siobhan took the file while Rebus made a cursory examination of Simms’s room. The mags were the usual men’s fare: FHM, Loaded, GQ. Nothing under the pillows or mattress. None of Simms’s clothes had made it as far as the chest of drawers, though a couple of shirts and suits hung in the wardrobe. Connecting doors… he didn’t know what, if anything, to read into that. Whiteread’s door had been kept closed, meaning Simms couldn’t get into her room. But Simms had left his own door an inch or two open… Inviting her to join him some night? In his bathroom: toothpaste and battery- operated toothbrush. He’d brought his own shampoo: anti-dandruff. Twin-blade razor and a can of shaving cream. Back in the bedroom, Rebus looked more closely at the black holdall. Five pairs of socks and underpants. Two shirts hanging up, two more on the chairs. Making five shirts in total. A week’s worth. Simms had packed for a week’s trip. Rebus was thoughtful. An ex-soldier goes on a killing spree, the army sends two investigators to make sure nothing links back to the killer’s past. Why send two people? And would they require a full week at the scene? What kind of people would you send? Psychologists maybe, to look into the killer’s state of mind. Neither Whiteread nor Simms struck him as having any experience of psychology, or any interest in Herdman’s state of mind.

They were hunters, maybe hunter-gatherers: Rebus was convinced of it.

There was a soft tapping at the door. Rebus checked the spy hole: it was Siobhan. He let her in, and she put the file back on the dressing table.

“Pages in the right order?” Rebus asked.

“Good as gold.” She had the copied sheets in a padded yellow envelope. “We ready to leave?”

Rebus nodded, and followed her to Simms’s door. But then he stopped, turned back. The file was lying faceup. He turned it over, gave the room a final look around, and left.

They’d offered the receptionist a smile as they’d passed her. A smile, but no words.

“Think she’ll tell Whiteread?” Siobhan had asked.

“I doubt it.” And he’d shrugged, because even if she did, there was nothing Whiteread could do about it. There’d been nothing in her room for anyone to find, and nothing was missing. While Siobhan drove them along the A90 towards Barnton, Rebus got started on the file. A lot of it was chaff: various test scores and reports, medical stuff, results from promotion boards. Penciled marginalia commented on Herdman’s strengths and weaknesses. His physical stamina was questioned, but his career was textbook stuff: tours of duty in Northern Ireland, the Falklands, the Middle East; training exercises in the UK, Saudi Arabia, Finland, Germany. Rebus turned a page and found himself staring at a sheet blank save for a few typed words: REMOVED BY ORDER. There was a scribbled signature and a stamped date, going back only four days. The date of the killings. Rebus turned to the next page and found himself reading about Herdman’s closing few months in the army. He had told his employers that he wouldn’t be signing up again-a copy of his letter was enclosed. Moves had been made to entice him to stay, but to no avail. After which the file descended into a bureaucracy of form filling. Events taking their course.

“Did you see this?” Rebus said, tapping the words REMOVED BY ORDER.

Siobhan nodded. “What does it mean?”

“It means something’s been taken out, probably locked away somewhere in SAS HQ.”

“Sensitive information? Not for Whiteread’s and Simms’s eyes?”

Rebus was thoughtful. “Maybe.” He flicked back a page, concentrated on the final paragraphs. Seven months before Herdman had walked away from the SAS, he’d been part of a “salvage team” on Jura. On first glancing down the page, Rebus had seen the word Jura and assumed it referred to an exercise. Jura: a narrow island off the west coast. Isolated, just the one road and some mountains. Real wilderness country. Rebus had done some training there himself, back in his army days. Long marshy hikes, broken up with rock climbing. He remembered the range of hills: the “Paps of Jura.” Recalled the short ferry crossing to Islay, and how, at the end of the exercise, they’d all been taken to a distillery there.

But Herdman hadn’t been there on an exercise. He’d been part of a “salvage team.” Salvaging what exactly?

“Any further forwards?” Siobhan asked, braking hard as the divided highway ended. Ahead of them lay a backup from the Barnton roundabout.

“I’m not sure,” Rebus admitted. Nor was he sure how he felt about Siobhan’s involvement in his little spot of subterfuge. He should have made her stay in Simms’s room. That way, it would have been his face the staff member in the business suite would remember. His description they would give to Whiteread if she ever came sniffing…

“Was it worth it, then?” Siobhan was asking.

He just shrugged, growing thoughtful as they took a left at the roundabout, watching as she pulled up at a driveway, then turned the car into it. “Where are we?” he asked.

“James Bell’s house,” she told him. “Remember? We were going to talk to him?”

Rebus just nodded.

The house was modern and detached, with small windows and harled walls. Siobhan pressed the bell and waited. The door was opened by a tiny woman in her well-preserved fifties, with piercing blue eyes and her hair tied back with a black velvet bow.

“Mrs. Bell? I’m DS Clarke, this is DI Rebus. We were wondering if we could have a word with James.”

Felicity Bell examined both IDs, then stepped back to allow them inside. “Jack’s not here,” she said, in a voice devoid of energy.

“It’s your son we wanted to see,” Siobhan explained, voice dropping for fear of scaring this small, harried- looking creature.

“But all the same…” Mrs. Bell looked around her wildly. She’d brought them into the living room. In an attempt to calm her, Rebus lifted a family photo from the windowsill.

“You’ve got three children, Mrs. Bell?” he asked. She saw what he was holding, stepped forward to pluck it