Saints of the Shadow Bible

‘Sometimes just by phone.’

‘Including this one?’ Rebus tapped a finger against Alice Bell’s name.

‘Shares a flat with the deceased’s son’s girlfriend. She’s studying art history and Mr McCuskey had arranged a tour of the Parliament for her — big collection there, apparently. Have you ever been?’

Rebus nodded slowly. ‘Years back, not long after it opened. Official business, though, I don’t recall seeing any paintings.’ He paused. ‘Any more calls between the two of them?’

‘Three or four over the space of a month.’

‘Setting up the Parliament tour?’

‘That’s right — have you spotted something I missed?’

‘Not at all — seems very thorough,’ Rebus said. ‘And you’ve shown the results to. .?’

‘DCI Ralph. It would have been DI Clarke, only she’s not here.’ Drake looked up at Rebus. ‘They’ve put her in charge of a real murder case.’

‘You never know, son — this might turn into one again.’ Rebus placed his half-empty mug on the nearest window ledge. ‘You just have to keep panning for gold. .’

Rebus spent the rest of the late afternoon in the Central Library on George IV Bridge. A librarian showed him how to use the microfilm reader in the Edinburgh Room. He was interested in the local daily and evening papers for the four weeks leading up to Billy Saunders’s attack on Douglas Merchant. Having been through the police logs, he’d found nothing surprising or out of place — excepting that torn page from the custody ledger. As he spooled each day’s news across the large screen in front of him, he tried not to become distracted; difficult when there were so many reports and stories that triggered memories. Margaret Thatcher was planning a June general election, and Jimmy Savile was fronting an advertising campaign for train travel. Alex Ferguson’s Aberdeen beat Real Madrid in extra time to lift the Cup Winners’ Cup. British Leyland was in trouble, as were Timex and Ravenscraig. There were moves to ban smoking from the upper decks of buses, and Annie was showing at the Playhouse — Rebus remembered Rhona and Sammy dragging him along so he could sleep through it. An ad for a Kensitas gift book reminded him that some of Sammy’s Christmas presents would have come from his cigarette coupons. Meantime, the Balmoral Hotel was still the North British and pirate videos were being seized. He thought he could recall a stash of them doing the rounds at Summerhall — Gandhi a popular choice. A business computer cost almost the same as a new car, and Bowie was due to play Murrayfield. Stefan Gilmour had blagged the Saints into the eventual gig, Rebus watching and listening through a haze of alcohol on a wet, grey June evening. .

On the verge of taking a break and stepping outside for a cigarette, he noticed that the room was emptying, the students unplugging their laptops and packing their bags. Rebus walked across to the desk, and asked what time the place closed.

‘Five,’ he was told.

Giving him only another ten minutes. Instead of the break, he speeded up his reading. He had been doing little more than glancing at each day’s obituaries, concentrating instead on news stories. But then he saw a name he recognised.

Philip Kennedy.

Suddenly but peacefully at home. . Funeral service. . Family flowers only, please. .

Wee Phil Kennedy. Slippery Phil. Rebus thought he remembered Stefan Gilmour at the time brushing his hands together at the news — one more scumbag who wouldn’t be clogging their in-tray. From the date of birth, he calculated that Kennedy had died just shy of his forty-third birthday. Rebus could see his face — pockmarked and florid and freckled. It was the sort of face you used to see in kids’ comics: slightly exaggerated, an overgrown child. Toothy and nervous and bad news. A housebreaker who always carried a knife with him on jobs, scaring the daylights out of anyone he happened to find at home. The elderly and frail a speciality; sheltered housing was never quite sheltered enough from one of Kennedy’s nocturnal visits. He would often follow his victims home from the post office on pension day, scope the place out, and then return later, a balaclava over his face and six inches of blade gripped tight. One woman died of fright, and another fell and broke her hip, leaving her in pain as well as fear for the rest of her days.

Suddenly but peacefully at home. .

Some justice in that, perhaps. He skimmed back a few days, but found no reports of Kennedy’s body being found. Rebus gnawed at his bottom lip. Was it Frazer Spence who had come in one day, a bounce in his step, and announced the news? And had Stefan Gilmour really brushed his hands together, quite content to have heard it? Was Porkbelly Paterson in the office at the time? How had he reacted? Rebus couldn’t remember. But all of them would have pulled Kennedy in for questioning at one time or another, and some of them would have given evidence against him in court. He had passed away six days prior to the attack on Douglas Merchant — their bodies might well have lain in adjacent drawers at the mortuary. Professor Cuttle’s words again: we were so busy. . a lot of lowlifes dropping dead. . Rebus wondered what had happened to Slippery Phil. He could think of one man who might well have the answers. The same man who very probably had sliced him open on a slab. .

It was dark by the time Clarke and Fox arrived at the canal bank, ducking below the crime-scene tape. The rain had finally stopped and the sky was clear, the temperature dropping rapidly. Arc lights had been set up to illuminate the area where the dive team were still searching. The bullet casing had been recovered from the water, but no weapon as yet. From their time in front of various streams of CCTV footage from the businesses based on the industrial estate, they now had a good notion that Saunders had been sleeping in an alley, covered by a roll of felt underlay and some flattened cardboard boxes. In the alley itself they had found scraps and wrappers indicating that he had indeed been eating from a local supermarket — whose CCTV was also now being checked for sightings. His phone had been dried out and was working. Once charged, it showed that he had made no calls, and had received only a few — predominantly from his wife and the Solicitor General’s office, both leaving messages asking him to get in touch.

‘Why didn’t he use it?’ Clarke had asked.

‘Because he was worried it could help trace him?’ Fox had suggested. ‘We have the technology to do that.’

‘You’re saying it was us he was afraid of?’

To which Fox had offered only a non-committal shrug. ‘Before he vanished, he had a call one morning — number withheld, and lasting all of half a minute. I’m guessing that was Stefan Gilmour. Certainly chimes with what Gilmour told Rebus and me.’

‘I need a full report from you, Malcolm — everything you can tell me about Summerhall and Saunders.’

‘Including John Rebus?’

‘Yes. No room for favours here, understood?’

‘Understood. Do you mind me asking something?’

‘What?’

‘Is this your first time in charge of a Major Incident Team?’

‘What if it is?’

‘Nothing — I just want to thank you for making me feel useful.’

‘You’ll be useful once I get that report.’ They were clambering up the bank towards the canal path, but Clarke stopped suddenly, turning to face him. ‘Summerhall was dirty, wasn’t it?’ She watched him nod, his eyes on hers. ‘And John?’

‘I’m not sure,’ he admitted. ‘He might not be implicated at all.’

‘You’re not just saying that because he’s my friend?’

‘We both know Rebus has sailed close to the wind — more times than either of us can count. I’m sure you’ve helped him out of a few jams, as have a lot of his other colleagues down the years, and some of them came to grief. I don’t know what kind of body armour Rebus wears, but it’s done its job up to now. Could be that when he arrived at Summerhall he took with him the idealism of youth. But by the time he left, he’d learned bad lessons.’

‘From Gilmour, Blantyre and Paterson?’

Fox nodded again, and watched as Clarke let out a hissed exhalation between gritted teeth. ‘The question is,’ he asked, ‘how much of all that Saints mumbo-jumbo does he still believe? Is he going to cover up for