in particular. Spotting her, it took him a second to make up his mind that she might suit his particular requirements.
“Busy?” he asked.
“What does it look like?”
“Fancy a wee drive, then?”
“You’re not really my type, George.”
A snort. “We’ve got a DP.” DP: deceased person.
“Where?”
“Over Gracemount way. Abandoned railway track. Looks like he fell from the footbridge.”
“An accident, then?” Like Fairstone’s chip-pan fire: another Gracemount accident.
Silvers shrugged his shoulders as far as he could within the confines of a suit jacket that had fitted him with room to spare three years before. “Story is, he was being chased.”
“Chased?”
Another shrug. “That’s as much as I know till we get there.”
Siobhan nodded. “So what are we waiting for?”
They took Silvers’s car. He asked her about South Queensferry, about Rebus and the house fire, but she kept her answers short. Eventually he got the message and turned on the radio, whistling along to trad jazz, possibly her least favorite music.
“You listen to any Mogwai, George?”
“Never heard of it. Why?”
“Just wondering…”
There was nowhere to park near the railway line. Silvers pulled up to the curb, behind a patrol car. There was a bus stop, and behind it an area of grassland. They crossed it on foot, approaching a low fence overgrown with thistles and brambles. The fence was broken by a short metal stairway leading to the bridge across the railway, where sightseers from the local apartment houses had gathered. A uniformed officer was asking each one if they’d seen or heard anything.
“How the hell are we supposed to get down?” Silvers growled. Siobhan pointed to the far side, where a makeshift stile had been erected from plastic milk crates and cinder blocks, an old mattress folded across the top of the fence. When they reached it, Silvers took one look and decided it wasn’t for him. He didn’t say anything, just shook his head. So Siobhan clambered up and over, skidding down the steep embankment, digging her heels as far as possible into the soft ground, feeling nettles sting her ankles, briars snag at her trousers. Several figures had gathered around the prone body on the track. She recognized faces from the Craigmillar police station, and the pathologist, Dr. Curt. He saw her and smiled a greeting.
“We’re lucky they haven’t reopened this line yet,” he said. “At least the poor chap’s in one piece.”
She looked down at the twisted, broken body. His duffel coat had been thrown open, exposing a torso clad in a loose-fitting checked shirt. Brown cord trousers and brown loafers.
“A couple of people called in,” one of the Craigmillar detectives was telling her, “saying they’d seen him wandering the streets.”
“Probably not too unusual around here…”
“Except he looked like he was on the hunt for somebody. Kept a hand in one pocket, like he might be carrying.”
“And is he?”
The detective shook his head. “Might be he dropped it when he was being chased. Local kids by the sound of it.”
Siobhan looked from the body to the bridge and back again. “Did they catch him?”
The detective shrugged.
“So do we know who he is?”
“Video rental card in his back pocket. Name’s Callis. Initial A. We’ve got someone checking the phone book. If that doesn’t work, we’ll get an address from the video shop.”
“Callis?” Siobhan’s eyebrows creased. She was trying to remember where she’d heard that name… Then it hit her.
“Andy Callis,” she said, almost to herself.
The detective had heard her. “You know him?”
She shook her head. “But I know someone who might. If it’s the same guy, he lives in Alnwickhill.” She was reaching for her mobile. “Oh, and one other thing… if it
“A cop?”
She nodded. The detective from Craigmillar sucked air through his teeth and stared up at the spectators on the bridge with a new sense of purpose.
16
There was nobody home. Rebus had been watching Miss Teri’s room for almost an hour. Dark, dark, dark. Just like his memories. He could not even recall which friends he’d met with that day in the park. Yet the scene had stayed with Allan Renshaw these past thirty-odd years. Indelible. It was funny, the things you couldn’t help remembering, the ones you chose to forget. The little tricks your brain could play on you, sudden scents or sensations reviving the long-forgotten. Rebus wondered if perhaps Allan was angry with him because such anger was possible. After all, what point was there in getting angry with Lee Herdman? Herdman wasn’t there to bear the brunt, while Rebus conspicuously was, as if conjured up for the very purpose.
The laptop kicked into screen-saver mode, shooting stars moving out of the far darkness. He hit the RETURN key and was back in Teri Cotter’s bedroom. What was he watching for? Because it satisfied the voyeur in him? He’d always enjoyed surveillances for the same reason: glimpses into secret lives. He wondered what Teri herself got out of it. She wasn’t making money. There was no interaction as such, no way for the viewer to make contact with her or for her to communicate with her audience. Why then? Because she felt the need to be on display? Like hanging out on Cockburn Street, stared at and sometimes set upon. She had accused her mother of spying on her, yet had made straight for her mother’s door when the Lost Boys had attacked. Hard to know what to think about that particular relationship. Rebus’s own daughter had lived her teenage years in London with her mother, remaining a mystery to him. His ex-wife would call him to complain about Samantha’s “attitude” or her “moods,” would let off steam at him and then put down the phone.
The phone.
His phone was ringing. His mobile phone. It was plugged into the wall, recharging. He picked it up. “Hello?”
“I tried ringing your home phone.” Siobhan’s voice. “It was engaged.”
Rebus looked at the laptop, the laptop that was hooked up to his phone line. “What’s up?”
“Your friend, the one you were visiting that night you bumped into me…” She was on her mobile, sounded like she was out- doors.
“Andy?” he said. “Andy Callis?”
“Can you describe him?”
Rebus froze. “What’s happened?”
“Look, it might not be him…”
“Where are you?”
“Describe him for me… that way you’re not headed all the way out here for nothing.”
Rebus squeezed his eyes shut, saw Andy Callis in his living room, feet up in front of the TV. “Early forties, dark brown hair, five-eleven, probably a hundred and sixty-five pounds or thereabouts…”
She was silent for a moment. “Okay,” she sighed. “Maybe you should come after all.”
Rebus was already looking for his jacket. He remembered the laptop, broke the Internet connection.
“So where are you?” he asked.
“How are you going to get here?”
