There was a large whiteboard on one wall. He wiped it clean with some paper towels from the men’s room. The ink was hard to erase, meaning it had been there for weeks-background to Operation Sorbus. Officers would have heaved their backsides onto the desks and sat there swigging coffee while their boss filled them in on what was to come.
Now safely erased.
Rebus searched in the drawers of the nearest desks until he found a marker. He began to write on the board, starting at the top and working down, with lines branching off to the sides. Some words he double underlined; others he encircled; a few he stuck question marks after. When he was finished, he stood back and surveyed his mind map of the Clootie Well killings. It was Siobhan who’d taught him about such maps. She seldom worked a case without them, though usually they stayed in her drawer or briefcase. She would bring them out to remind herself of something-some avenue not yet explored or connection meriting further inspection. It took a while for her to own up to their existence. Why? Because she’d thought he would laugh at her. But in a case as apparently complex as this, a mind map was the perfect tool, because when you started to look at it, the complexity vanished, leaving just a central core.
Trevor Guest.
The anomaly, his body attacked with unusual viciousness. Dr. Gilreagh had warned them to look out for feints, and she’d been right. The whole case had been almost nothing but a magician’s misdirection. Rebus slid his backside onto one of the desks. It gave only the mildest creak of complaint. His legs made little paddling motions as they hung above the floor. His palms were pressed against the surface of the desk on either side of him. He leaned forward slightly, gazing at the writing on the wall, the arrows and underlinings and question marks. He started to see ways to resolve those few questions. He started to see the whole picture, the one the killer had been trying to disguise.
And then he walked out of the office and the station, into the fresh air and across the road. Headed to the nearest shop and realized he didn’t really want anything. Bought cigarettes and a lighter and some chewing gum. Added the afternoon edition of the Evening News. Decided to call Siobhan at the hospital to ask how much longer she would be.
“I’m here,” she told him. Meaning St. Leonard’s. “Where the hell are you?”
“I must just have missed you.” The shopkeeper called out as he pulled open the door to leave. Rebus twitched his mouth in apology and reached into his pocket to pay the man. Where the hell was his…? Must’ve given Barclay his last two twenties. He pulled out some loose change instead, poured it onto the counter.
“Not enough for cigarettes,” the elderly Asian complained. Rebus shrugged and handed them back.
“Where are you?” Siobhan was asking into his ear.
“Buying chewing gum.”
And a lighter, he could have added.
But no cigarettes.
They sat down with mugs of instant coffee, silent for the first minute or so. Then Rebus thought to ask about Bain.
“Ironically,” she said, “given the amount of painkillers he’d scarfed, the first thing he complained of was a thumping headache.”
“My fault in a way,” Rebus told her, explaining first of all about his morning conversation with Bain, and then about his chat the night before with Molly.
“So we have a falling-out over Tench’s corpse,” Siobhan said, “and you head straight to a lap-dancing club?”
Rebus shrugged, deciding he had been right to leave out the visit to Cafferty’s home.
“Well,” Siobhan went on with a sigh, “while we’re playing the self-blame game…” And she filled him in on Bain and T in the Park and Denise Wylie, at the end of which there was another lengthy silence. Rebus was on his fifth piece of chewing gum-didn’t really go with coffee, but he needed some outlet for the current that was pounding through him.
“You really think Ellen’s turned her sister in?” he eventually asked.
“What else could she do?”
He gave a shrug, then watched as Siobhan picked up a handset and made a call to Craigmillar.
“Guy you want is DS McManus,” he informed her. She looked at him as if to say, How the hell do you know that? He decided it was time to get up and find a wastebasket in which to deposit the wad of flavorless gum. When she finished the call, Siobhan joined him in front of the whiteboard.
“Pair of them are there right now. McManus is going easy on Denise. Figures she could play the mental cruelty card.” She paused. “When was it exactly that you spoke to him?”
Rebus deflected the question by pointing to the board. “See what I’ve done here, Shiv? Taken a leaf out of your book, so to speak.” He tapped the middle of the board with his knuckles. “And it all boils down to Trevor Guest.”
“Theoretically?” she added.
“Evidence comes later.” He started to trace the time line of the killings with a finger. “Say Trevor Guest did kill Ben Webster’s mother. In fact, we don’t need to say that at all. It’s enough that Guest’s killer believed he did. The killer sticks Guest’s name into a search engine and comes up with BeastWatch. That’s what gives the killer the idea. Make it look like there’s a serial killer at large. The police are fooled as a result, looking in all the wrong places for the motive. Killer knows about the G8, so decides to leave a few clues right there under our noses, knowing they’ll be found. Killer was never a BeastWatch subscriber, so knows they’ve got nothing to fear. We’ll be run ragged tracking down all the people who were, and warning all the other sex attackers…and with the G8 and everything, chances are the investigation will end up tying itself in knots too tight ever to be unraveled. Remember what Gilreagh said-the ‘display’ was slightly wrong. She was right, because it was only ever Guest the killer wanted…only ever Guest.” He prodded the name again. “The man who’d torn the Webster family apart. Rurality and anomalies, Siobhan…and being led up the garden path…”
“But how could the killer have known that?” Siobhan felt obliged to ask.
“By having access to the original inquiry, maybe going through it all with a fine-tooth comb. Going to the Borders and asking around, listening in on the local gossip.”
She was standing next to him, staring at the board. “You’re saying Cyril Colliar and Eddie Isley died as a diversion?”
“Worked, too. If we’d been running a full-scale inquiry, we might have missed the Kelso connection.” Rebus gave a short, harsh laugh. “I seem to remember I gave a snort when Gilreagh started talking about the countryside and deep woods near human dwellings.” Is this the sort of terrain the victims inhabited? “Dead on, Doc,” he said in an undertone.
Siobhan ran her finger along Ben Webster’s name. “So why did he kill himself?”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, do you think it was the guilt finally catching up with him? He’s killed three men when only one was necessary. He’s under a lot of pressure because of the G8. We’ve just identified the patch from Cyril Colliar’s jacket. He starts to panic that we will catch him-is that how you see it?”
“I’m not even sure he knew about the patch,” Rebus said quietly. “And how would he have gone about procuring some heroin for those lethal injections?”
“Why are you asking me?” Siobhan gave a short laugh.
“Because you’re the one who’s accusing an innocent man. No access to hard drugs…no easy access to police files…” Rebus traced the line from Ben Webster to his sister. “Stacey, on the other hand-”
“Stacey?”
“Is an undercover cop. Probably means she knows a few dealers. She’s spent the past few months infiltrating anarchist groups-told me herself, they tend to base themselves outside London these days-Leeds and Manchester and Bradford. Guest died in Newcastle, Isley in Carlisle-both a manageable drive from the Midlands. As a cop, she’d be able to access any information she liked.”
“Stacey’s the killer?”
“Using your wonderful system”-Rebus slapped his hand against the board again-“it’s the obvious conclusion.”
Siobhan was shaking her head slowly. “But she was…I mean, we talked to her.”
