and information. He'd never before known her to sound so beaten.
'Maybe I can help,' he offered.
Todorov and Riordan?' she guessed, opening her eyes and turning to face him.
'The very same.'
'How come you're out here rather than in there?' She gestured towards the police station.
'Because I'm after a favour.'
'Meaning you want me to do some digging?'
Tou know me too well, Mairie.'
'I know I've done you plenty of favours in the past, John, and the scales never seem to balance.'
'Might be different this time.'
She laughed tiredly. 'Another line you always use.'
'All right then, call it your retirement gift to me.'
She studied him more closely. 'I'd forgotten you were on your way out.'
'I'm already out. Corbyn's suspended me.'
'Why did he do that?'
'I badmouthed a pal of his called Sir Michael Addison.'
'The banker?' Her intonation lifted along with her spirits.
'There's a tie – a loose tie – between him and Todorov.'
'How loose?'
'The whole six degrees.'
'Intriguing nevertheless.'
'Knew you'd think so.'
'And you'll tell me the story?'
'I'll tell you what I can,' Rebus corrected her.
'In return for what exactly?'
'A man called Andropov.'
'He's the Russian industrialist.'
'That's right.'
'Recently in town as part of a trade delegation.'
'They all went home; Andropov stayed.'
'I didn't know that.' She pursed her lips. 'So what is it you want to know?'
'Who he is and how he got his money. Again, there's a hook-up to Todorov.'
'In that they're both Russian?'
'I've heard they knew one another, back in the mists of time.'
'And?'
'And the night Todorov died, he was drinking in the same bar as his old classmate.'
Mairie Henderson let out a low, sustained whistle. 'No one else has this?'
Rebus shook his head. 'And there's plenty more.'
'If I run a story, your bosses are bound to guess the source.'
'The source is back to being a civilian in a couple of days.'
'Meaning no comebacks?'
'No comebacks,' he agreed.
Her eyes narrowed. 'I'm betting there's plenty more dirt you could be dishing.'
'Saving it for my memoirs, Mairie.'
She studied him again. 'You'll be needing a ghost-writer,' she informed him. Didn't sound like she was joking.
The Scotsman newspaper was based in an up-to-date facility at the bottom of Holyrood Road, opposite the BBC and the Parliament building. Although Mairie Henderson had left her full-time job there several years back, she was still a known face and carried her own security pass.
'How did you wangle that?' Rebus asked as he signed himself in at reception. Henderson tapped the side of her nose as Rebus pinned on his visitor badge. The office behind the reception desk was large and open-plan and seemed to be staffed by a skeleton crew of only nine or ten bodies. Rebus said as much, and Henderson told him that he was living in the past.
'Doesn't take many hands to produce a paper these days.'
Tou don't sound too enthusiastic'
'The old building had a bit of character to it. And so did the old newsroom, everyone scuttling around like mad trying to put a story together. Editor with his sleeves rolled up, effing and blinding.
Subs smoking like chimneys and trying to sneak puns into the copy… cutting and pasting by hand. Everything's just gotten so…“
She sought the right word. 'Efficient,' she eventually said.
'Being a cop was more fun in the old days, too,' Rebus assured her, 'but we also made more mistakes.'
'At your age, you're allowed to be nostalgic'
'But you're not?'
She just shrugged and sat herself at a vacant computer, gesturing for him to pull up a chair. A middle-aged man with a scraggy beard and wearing half-moon glasses walked past and said hello.
'Hiya, Gordon,' Henderson replied. 'Remind me of the password, will you?'
'Connery,' he said.
She thanked him and then, watching him leave, gave a little smile. 'Half the people in here,' she told Rebus, her voice lowered, 'think I'm still on the payroll.'
'Handy to be able to waltz in.' He watched her tap in the password and start to search the computer for the name Andropov.
'First name?' she asked.
'Sergei.'
She searched again, halving the initial results.
'We could have logged on to the Internet anywhere,' Rebus told her.
'This isn't the Internet as such; it's a database of news stories.'
'From the Scotsman?'
'And every other paper you can think of.' She tapped the screen.
'Just over five hundred hits,' she stated.
'Seems a lot.'
She gave him a look. 'It's minuscule. Want me to print the pages, or are you happy to scroll?'
'Let's see how I get on.'
She rose from her chair and slid it aside so Rebus could roll his own chair closer to the screen. 'I'm going to do the rounds, see what the gossip is.'
'What do I say if anyone asks me what I'm up to?'
She thought for a moment. 'Tell them you're the economics editor.'
'Fair enough.'
She left him to it, climbing the stairs to the next level. Rebus started clicking and reading. The first few stories concerned Andropov's business dealings. With perestroika had come a loosening of state controls on industry, allowing men like Andropov to buy into base metals, mining and the rest. Andropov had specialised in zinc, copper and aluminium, before branching out into coal and steel. Ventures into gas and oil had stalled, but in other areas he'd made a killing. Too big a killing, perhaps, leading the authorities to investigate him for corruption. Depending on which investigative journalist you turned to, Andropov was either a martyr or a crook. After twenty minutes, Rebus tried refining the search by adding 'background' to the keywords. He was rewarded with a potted biography of Andropov. Born 1960, the same year as Alexander Todorov, in the Zhdanov suburb of Moscow, also the same as Todorov.
