“How do you mean?”
“Maybe it was Colliar who had connections with the north of England.”
“Good point.”
“But that doesn’t seem to be panning out either.”
“Maybe you need to take a break.”
She hoisted the mug. “What does this look like?”
“I meant something more substantial.”
She was rolling her shoulders. “Haven’t got a Jacuzzi or a masseur on the premises by any chance?” She saw the look on his face. “I’m joking,” she reassured him. “Something tells me you’re not an expert at back rubs. Besides-” But she broke off, lifting the mug to her face.
“Besides what?” he asked.
She lowered the mug again. “Well, you and Siobhan…”
“…are colleagues,” he stated. “Colleagues and friends. Nothing more than that, despite the rumor mill.”
“Stories have gone around,” she admitted.
“And that’s what they are-stories. Meaning fiction.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time though, would it? I mean, you and DCS Templer.”
“Gill Templer was years back, Ellen.”
“I’m not saying she wasn’t.” She stared into space. “This job we do…how many do you know manage to keep a relationship together?”
“There are a few. Shug Davidson’s been married twenty years.”
She conceded the point. “But you, me, Siobhan…dozens more I could name.”
“Comes with the territory, Ellen.”
“All these other lives we get to know…” She wafted a hand over the case files. “And we’re useless at finding one for ourselves.” She looked at him. “There’s really nothing between you and Siobhan?”
He shook his head. “So don’t go thinking you can somehow drive a wedge between us.”
She tried to look outraged by the suggestion but struggled for words.
“You’re flirting,” he told her. “Only reason I can think of for that is so you can wind Siobhan up.”
“Jesus Christ…” She slammed the mug down on the table, splashing the paperwork spread out there. “Of all the arrogant, misguided, thickheaded-” She was rising from her chair.
“Look, if I’m wrong I apologize. It’s the middle of the night-maybe we both need some shut-eye.”
“A thank-you would be nice,” she demanded.
“For what?”
“For slogging while you were snoring! For helping you out when it could cost me a tongue-lashing! For everything!”
Rebus stood, seemingly dazed, for another moment before opening his mouth and uttering the two words she wanted to hear.
“Thank you.”
“And fuck you, too, John,” she retorted, picking up her coat and bag. He stood back to give her room as she walked out, listened to the door slam behind her. Took a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed the tea-stained paperwork.
“No real damage,” he said to himself. “No real damage…”
“Thanks for this,” Morris Gerald Cafferty said, holding open the passenger-side door. Siobhan paused for a moment, then decided to get in.
“We’re just talking,” she warned him.
“Absolutely.” He closed her door gently and walked around to the driver’s side. “It’s been a hell of a day, hasn’t it?” he said. “There was a bomb scare on Princes Street.”
“We don’t move from here,” she decreed, ignoring him.
He closed his own door and half turned toward her. “We could have talked upstairs.”
She shook her head. “No way you’re crossing that threshold.”
Cafferty accepted the slur on his character. He peered out at her tenement. “Thought you’d be living somewhere better by now.”
“Suits me fine,” she snapped back. “Though I wouldn’t mind knowing how you found me.”
He gave a warm smile. “I have friends,” he told her. “One phone call, job done.”
“Yet you can’t manage the same trick with Gareth Tench? One call to a professional and he’s never heard of again…”
“I don’t want him dead.” He sought the right phrase. “Just brought low.”
“As in humiliated? Cowed? Scared?”
“I think it’s time people saw him for what he is.” He leaned over a little closer. “You know what he is now. But in focusing on Keith Carberry, you’ll be missing a clear shot at the goal.” He gave another smile. “I speak as one soccer fan to another, even if we’re on opposite sides in our choices.”
“We’re on opposite sides in everything, Cafferty-never think otherwise.”
He bowed his head slightly. “You even sound like him, you know.”
“Who?”
“Rebus, of course. You both share the same hostile attitude-think you know better than anyone, think you are better than anyone.”
“Wow, a counseling session.”
“See? There you go again. It’s almost as if Rebus is working the strings.” He chuckled. “Time you became your own woman, Siobhan. And it has to happen before Rebus gets the gold watch…meaning soon.” He paused. “No time like the present.”
“Advice from you is the last thing I need.”
“I’m not offering advice-I’m offering to help. Between us we can bring Tench down.”
“You made John the same offer, didn’t you? That night at the church hall? I’m betting he said no.”
“He wanted to say yes.”
“But he didn’t.”
“Rebus and me have been enemies too long, Siobhan. We’ve almost forgotten what started it. But you and me, we’ve not got that history.”
“You’re a gangster, Mr. Cafferty. Any help from you, I become like you.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head, “what you do is, you put away the people responsible for that attack on your mother. If all you’ve got to work from is that photo, you’re not going to get further than Keith Carberry.”
“And you’re offering so much more?” she guessed. “Like one of those shysters on the shopping channels?”
“Now that’s cruel,” he chided her.
“Cruel but fair,” she corrected him. She was staring out through the windshield. A taxi was dropping a drunk- looking couple at their door. As it moved away, they hugged and kissed, almost losing their balance on the pavement. “What about a scandal?” she suggested. “Something that would put the councilman on the front of the tabloids?”
“Anything in mind?”
“Tench plays away from home,” she told him. “Wife sitting in front of the TV while he visits his girlfriends.”
“How do you know this?”
“There’s a colleague of mine, Ellen Wylie…her sister’s-” But if news broke, it wouldn’t just be Tench on the front pages…it would be Denise, too. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “Forget that.” Stupid, stupid, stupid…
“Why?”
“Because we’d be hurting a woman whose skin’s more fragile than most.”
“Then consider it forgotten.”
She turned to face him. “So tell me, what would you do if you were me? How would you get to Gareth Tench?”
“Through young Keith, of course,” he said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the starlit world.
Mairie was relishing the chase.
This wasn’t features; wasn’t some puff piece for a pal of the editor, or interview-as-marketing-tool for an
