pink-clad baby. Siobhan had to smile. The woman was obviously using her child as a prop, enacting the same diaper-changing scenario in different locations, always directly in front of police lines. A great photo op, and a potential flash point. There was even an image of the various press cameramen, Mungo included. But Stacey had been concentrating on the demonstrators, putting together a nice little dossier for her masters at SO12. Some of the cops would be from the Met. They’d be on their way south now, to help in the aftermath, to check on loved ones, maybe eventually to attend the funerals of colleagues. If her mother’s attacker turned out to be from London…she didn’t know what she’d do.
Her mother’s words: It doesn’t matter…
She shook the notion away. It was fifty or sixty pictures in before Siobhan spotted her mum and dad-Teddy Clarke trying to drag his wife away from the front line. A complete melee around them. Batons raised, mouths open in a roar or a grimace. Trash bins flying. Dirt and uprooted flowers flying.
And then the stick connecting with the front of her mother’s face. Siobhan almost flinched, but forced herself to look. A stick, looked like something picked up off the ground. Not a baton. And swung from the protesters’ side of the trouble. The person holding it, he retreated fast. And suddenly Siobhan knew. It was just like she’d been told by Mungo the photographer: you strike out at the cops, and when they retaliate you make sure innocent civilians are in the firing line. Maximum PR, make the cops look like thugs. Her mother flinched as contact was made. Her face was blurred with movement, but the pain was evident. Siobhan rubbed her thumb over the screen, as if to take away the hurt. Followed the stick back to its owner’s bare arm. His shoulder was in the shot, but not his head. She went back a few frames, then forward a few past the actual blow.
There.
He’d placed a hand behind his back, hiding the stick, but it was still there. And Stacey had caught him full-face, caught the glee in his eyes, the crooked grin. A few more frames and he was up on his toes, chanting. Baseball cap low down on his forehead, but unmistakable.
The kid from Niddrie, the leader of the pack. Heading down to Princes Street like many of his kind-just for the pure hell of it.
Last seen by Siobhan emerging from the sheriff court, where Councilman Gareth Tench waited. Tench’s words: A couple of my constituents got caught up in all that trouble…Tench returning the culprit’s salute as he walked free from court. Siobhan’s hand was trembling slightly as she tried Rebus again. Still no answer. She got up and walked around the apartment, in and out of every room. The towels in the bathroom had been neatly folded and left in a pile. There was an empty soup carton in the bin in the kitchen. It had been rinsed out so that it wouldn’t smell. Her mother’s little touches…She stood in front of her bedroom’s full-length mirror, trying to see any resemblance. She thought she looked more like her father. They’d be on the A1 by now, making steady progress south. She hadn’t told them the truth about Santal, probably never would. Back at the computer she went through all the other photos, then started again from the beginning, this time on the lookout for just the one figure, one skinny little troublemaker in his baseball cap, T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers. Tried printing some of them off, but got a warning that her ink levels were low. There was a computer shop on Leith Walk. She grabbed her keys and purse.
The bottle was empty and there was no more in the house. Rebus had found a half bottle of Polish vodka in the freezer, but its contents had been reduced to a single measure. Couldn’t be bothered walking to the shops, so he made himself a mug of tea instead and sat down at the dining table, skimming through the case notes. Ellen Wylie had been impressed by Ben Webster’s CV, and so was Rebus. He went through it again. The world’s trouble spots: some people were drawn to them-adventurers, newsmen, mercenaries. Rebus had been told a while back that Mairie Henderson’s boyfriend was a cameraman and had traveled to Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, Iraq…But Rebus got the feeling Ben Webster hadn’t gone to any of these places from the need for a thrill, or even because he’d felt them particularly worthy causes. He’d gone because that was his job.
“It is our most basic duty as human beings,” he’d said in one of his parliamentary speeches, “to aid sustainable development wherever and whenever possible in the poorest and harshest regions of the world.” It was a point he’d hammered home elsewhere-to various committees, on public platforms, and in media interviews.
My brother was a good man…
Rebus didn’t doubt it. Nor could he think of any reason that someone would have pushed him from those ramparts onto the rocks below. Hardworking as he was, Ben Webster still hadn’t posed much of a threat to Pennen Industries. Rebus was coming back round to the suicide option. Maybe Webster had been made depressed by all those conflicts and famines and catastrophes. Maybe he’d known in advance that little progress would be made at the G8, his hopes of a better world stalled once again. Leaping into the void to bring attention to the situation? Rebus couldn’t really see that. Webster had sat down to dinner with powerful and influential men, diplomats and politicians from several nations. Why not voice his concerns to them? Make a fuss, kick up a stink. Shout and scream…
That scream flying into the night sky as he launched himself into the dark.
“No,” Rebus said to himself, shaking his head. It felt to him as though the jigsaw was complete enough for him to make out the image, but with some of the pieces wrongly placed.
“No,” he repeated, going back to his reading.
A good man…
After a further twenty minutes, he found an interview from one of the Sunday supplements of twelve months back. Webster was being questioned about his early days as an MP. He’d had a mentor of sorts, another Scottish MP and Labor highflier called Colin Anderson.
Rebus’s own member of parliament.
“Didn’t see you at the funeral, Colin,” Rebus said quietly, underlining a couple of sentences.
Webster is quick to credit Anderson for the help he gave the tyro MP: “He made sure I avoided the obvious pratfalls, and I can’t thank him enough for that.” But the sure-footed Webster is more reticent by far when questioned about the allegation that it was Anderson who propelled him into his current role as parliamentary private secretary, placing him where he could be of future assistance to the minister for trade in any leadership contest…
“Well, well,” Rebus said, blowing across the surface of his cup, even though the liquid within was tepid at best.
“I’d completely forgotten,” Rebus said, dragging a spare chair over to the table, “that my own member of parliament was minister for trade. I know you’re busy, so I’ll keep this short.”
He was in a restaurant on Edinburgh’s south side. Early evening, but the place was busy. The staff were making up a place setting for him, trying to hand him a menu. The Right Honorable Colin Anderson, MP, was seated across from his wife at a table meant for two.
“Who the hell are you?” he asked.
Rebus was handing the menu back to the waiter. “I’m not eating,” he explained. Then, to the MP: “My name’s John Rebus. I’m a detective inspector. Did your secretary not say?”
“Can I see some identification?” Anderson was asking.
“Not really her fault,” Rebus was telling him. “I exaggerated a little, said it was an emergency.” He’d opened his ID for inspection. While the MP studied it, Rebus smiled in his wife’s direction.
“Should I…?” She motioned to rise from the table.
“Nothing top secret,” Rebus assured her. Anderson was handing back Rebus’s ID.
“If you don’t mind me saying, Inspector, this isn’t exactly conve nient.”
“I thought your secretary would have told you.”
Anderson lifted his cell from the table. “No signal,” he stated.
“You should do something about that,” Rebus commented. “Lots of the city still like that.”
“Have you been drinking, Inspector?”
“Only when off-duty, sir.” Rebus fussed in his pocket until he found the pack.
“There’s no smoking in here,” Anderson warned him.
Rebus looked at the cigarette pack as though it had crawled unnoticed into his hand. He apologized and put it away again. “Didn’t see you at the funeral, sir,” he told the MP.
“Which funeral?”
“Ben Webster. You were a good friend to him in his early days.”
“I was otherwise engaged.” The MP made a show of checking his watch.
“Ben’s sister told me that once her brother was dead, Labor would soon forget about him.”
