“Better,” the instructor lied. “But try to focus on not bending that knee.”
“I’m scooping again?” his pupil guessed.
Mairie placed her metal basket on the ground, next stall over. Decided to take a few practice swings, loosen up her shoulders. Instructor and pupil seemed to resent her presence.
“Excuse me?” the instructor said. Mairie looked at him. He was smiling at her over the partition. “We actually booked that bay.”
“But you’re not using it,” Mairie informed him.
“Point is, we paid for it.”
“A matter of privacy,” the other man butted in, sounding irritated. Then he recognized Mairie.
“Oh, for pity’s sake…”
His instructor turned to him. “You know her, Mr. Pennen?”
“She’s a bloody reporter,” Richard Pennen said. Then, to Mairie: “Whatever it is you want, I’ve got nothing to say.”
“Fine by me,” Mairie answered, readying for her first shot. The ball sailed into the air, making a clean, straight line to the 200-yard flag.
“Pretty good,” the instructor told her.
“My dad taught me,” she explained. “You’re a professional, aren’t you?” she asked. “I think I’ve seen you on the circuit.” He nodded his agreement.
“Not at the Open?”
“Didn’t qualify,” he admitted, cheeks reddening.
“If the two of you have finished,” Richard Pennen interrupted.
Mairie just shrugged and prepared for another shot. Pennen seemed to be doing likewise, but then gave up.
“Look,” he said, “what the hell do you want?”
Mairie said nothing until she’d watched her ball sail into the sky, dropping just short of 200 and a little to the left.
“Bit of fine-tuning needed,” she told herself. Then, to Pennen: “Just thought I should offer fair warning.”
“Fair warning of what exactly?”
“Probably won’t make the paper till Monday,” she mused. “Time enough for you to prepare some sort of response.”
“Are you baiting me, Miss…?”
“ Henderson,” she told him. “Mairie Henderson-that’s the byline you’ll read on Monday.”
“And what will the headline be? ‘Pennen Industries Secures Scottish Jobs at G8’?”
“That one might make the business pages,” she decided. “But mine will be page one. Up to the editor how he phrases it.” She pretended to think. “How about ‘Loans Scandal Envelops Government and Opposition’?”
Pennen gave a harsh laugh. He was swinging his club one-handed, to and fro. “That’s your big scoop, is it?”
“I daresay there’s plenty of other stuff to come out in the wash: your efforts in Iraq, your bribes in Kenya and elsewhere. But for now, I think I’ll stick with the loans. See, a little birdie tells me that you’ve been bankrolling both Labor and the Tories. Donations are a matter of record, but loans can be kept hush-hush. Thing is, I very much doubt either party knows you’re backing the other. Makes sense to me: Pennen split off from the MoD because of decisions made under the last Tory government; Labor decided the sell-off could go ahead unhindered-favors owed to both.”
“There’s nothing illegal about commercial loans, Miss Henderson, secret or not.” Pennen was still swinging the club.
“Doesn’t stop it from being a scandal, once the papers get hold of it,” Mairie retorted. “And like I say, who knows what else will come bubbling to the surface?”
Pennen brought the clubhead down with force against the partition. “Do you know how hard I’ve worked this week, arranging contracts worth tens of millions to UK industry? And what have you been doing, apart from some useless muckraking?”
“We all have our place in the food chain, Mr. Pennen.” She smiled. “Won’t be Mr. for much longer, will it? Money you’ve been shelling out, that peerage can’t be far off. Mind you, once Blair finds out you’re bankrolling his enemies…”
“Any trouble here, sir?”
Mairie turned to see three police uniforms. The one who’d spoken was looking at Pennen; the other two had eyes for her and her alone.
Unfriendly eyes.
“I think this woman was just leaving,” Pennen muttered.
Mairie made a show of peering over the partition. “Got a magic lamp there or something? Any time I’ve ever called the cops, they’ve taken half an hour.”
“Routine patrol,” the group’s leader stated.
Mairie looked him up and down: no markings on his uniform. The face tanned, hair cropped, jaw set.
“One question,” she said. “Do any of you know the penalty for impersonating a police officer?”
The leader scowled and made a grab at her. Mairie wriggled free and ran from the safety of the driving area onto the grass surface itself. Fled toward the exit, dodging shots from the first two bays, the players yelling in outrage. She reached the door just before her pursuers. The woman at the register asked where her three-wood was. Mairie didn’t answer. Pushed open another door and found herself in the parking lot. Ran to her car, stabbing the remote. No time to look around. Into the driver’s seat and all four doors locked. Key in the ignition. A fist thumping at her window. The lead uniform trying the handle, then shuffling around to the front of the car. Mairie gave him a look that said she didn’t care. Gunned the accelerator.
“Watch out, Jacko! The bint’s crazy!”
Jacko had to dive sideways; that or be killed. In the wing mirror, she could see him picking himself up. A car had drawn up alongside him. No markings on it either. Mairie screamed out onto the main highway-airport to her left, city to the right. The road back into Edinburgh gave her more options, more chances to lose them.
Jacko: she’d remember that name. Bint, one of the others had called her. It was a term she’d only heard from the mouths of soldiers. Ex-military…with tans picked up in hot climes.
Iraq.
Private security disguised as constabulary.
She looked in the rearview: no sign of them. Didn’t mean they weren’t there. A8 to the bypass, breaking the speed limit all the way, flashing her lights to let the drivers in front know she was coming.
Where to next, though? It would be easy for them to get her address; absurdly easy for a man like Richard Pennen. Allan was on a job, wouldn’t be back in town until Monday. Nothing to stop her driving to the Scotsman and working on her article. Her laptop was in the trunk, all the information inside it. Notes and quotes and her rough drafts. She could stay in the office all night if need be, topped up by coffee and snacks, cocooned from the outside world.
Writing Richard Pennen’s destruction.
It was Ellen Wylie who gave Rebus the news. He in turn called Siobhan, who picked him up in her car twenty minutes later. They drove to Niddrie in silence through the dusk. The Jack Kane Center ’s campground had been dismantled. No tents, no showers or toilets. Half the fencing had been removed, and the security guards were gone, replaced for the moment by uniformed officers, ambulance men, and the same two morgue assistants who had collected Ben Webster’s shattered remains from the foot of Castle Rock. Siobhan parked alongside the line of vehicles. Rebus recognized some of the detectives-they were from St. Leonard ’s and Craigmillar. They nodded a greeting toward the new arrivals.
“Not exactly your turf,” one of them commented.
“Let’s just say we’ve an interest in the deceased,” Rebus replied. Siobhan was by his side. She leaned toward him so as not to be overheard.
“News hasn’t leaked that we’re on suspension.”
Rebus just nodded. They were nearing a circle of crouched Scene of Crime officers. The duty doctor had pronounced death and was signing his name to some forms on a clipboard. Flash photographs were being taken,
