The years melted away. Rebus remembered all right. A bar on Buccleuch Street, just along from Summerhall. The regular haunt of the Saints. Rebus wasn’t sure the owner liked this, but he put up with it. A place filled with billowing smoke and curses, the waft of stale urine every time someone opened the door to the toilets. A Friday evening probably, hence the densely packed bar, Rebus having just got in the drinks. Then Dod Blantyre at his shoulder, offering to carry a couple of them back to the table. But tightening a hand around Rebus’s forearm first, leaning in so that his lips brushed Rebus’s left ear.
Rebus nodding mutely. And then the growling voice again.
Another nod. Rebus with his mouth open, but unable to find the words. The glasses of whisky lifted from him — the usual generous measures — and transported to the corner table, where Gilmour, Paterson and Frazer Spence waited with smiles and a sheen of sweat.
‘I remember,’ Rebus said, in the sitting room of Dod Blantyre’s overheated bungalow, his eyes fixed on a man in constant discomfort, a man with not much longer to live.
‘A promise is a promise, John.’ Blantyre noticed Rebus’s eyes flitting towards the door. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘She doesn’t know. This is just you and me here.’
‘You’re telling me it’s okay to cover up a murder?’
‘Nobody’s mentioned murder — you said so yourself: Kennedy could have taken a tumble. All we need from you is your silence.’
Rebus got up and placed the mug back on its tray, still half full. Then he turned to face Dod Blantyre. The man was mustering as much of his old grit as he could, hands gripping the sides of his chair, as if he might try to rise from it at any moment.
‘I’ll see myself out,’ Rebus said.
‘We deserve better from you, John — all of us.’
But Rebus was shaking his head slowly as he left the room. He had already pulled his coat on when Maggie emerged from the kitchen.
‘Cigarette in the back garden?’ she asked.
‘I have to go.’
‘What’s wrong? What’s he been saying?’
‘Nothing, Maggie — I just need to be elsewhere.’
She reached out to him, but he turned away and opened the front door, glad of the cold air and the squall.
‘John?’ she was calling as he headed down the path towards the gate. ‘John?’
He lifted a hand, waving without looking.
‘Too true,’ Rebus muttered to himself, unlocking his car and getting in. When his phone buzzed, he knew it would be Maggie. He didn’t take it out of his pocket to check. Just turned the key in the ignition and got going.
Day Eleven
20
‘If I didn’t know better,’ Malcolm Fox said, ‘I’d think you were relishing the chance to get your hands on the Summerhall files now they’re not under lock and key.’ He was removing his coat and scarf and shaking rainwater from both.
Rebus was seated at the desk in Wester Hailes police station, the one with the boxes of folders next to it. He’d already been there over an hour and it wasn’t quite half past eight.
‘Morning,’ he said, as Fox hung up his things. He’d bought a coffee from a petrol station on his way into work, but the inch or so left of it was stone cold.
‘Maybe there’s some other reason why you seem so interested in being here when I’m not?’ Fox went on, rubbing at his hair to dry it.
‘You’re keen,’ a fresh voice added. Siobhan Clarke was standing in the doorway, paperwork clutched to her chest.
‘Maybe it’s because you’ve won me over,’ Rebus said.
‘In what way?’ she asked, stepping into the room.
Rebus tapped the sheets on the desk in front of him. ‘Say you’re right and Saunders was killed by one of the Saints. From what I’m seeing here, we’re not going to find proof from Summerhall. Any amount of paperwork could have been tampered with or removed. At most we’d find anomalies and things that can be explained away as admin errors.’
‘Okay.’
‘And if we go asking Stefan Gilmour to account for his movements on the night Saunders died. . well, we’re dealing with a pro — you can bet he’ll have set something up that’s as watertight as it can be.’
‘Leaving us where exactly?’ Fox asked, resting against a corner of the desk.
Rebus looked from him to Clarke and back again. ‘It might be that the best way to get to him is to go after the others. It worked before. He fell on his sword precisely so that the Complaints didn’t tear apart the rest of the Saints.’
‘We bring in Paterson and Blantyre?’ Clarke guessed.
‘You sweat them,’ Rebus agreed. ‘You let Gilmour know you intend to prosecute all three.’ He held up a finger. ‘Blantyre was at the autopsy when it was rigged and he never said anything.’ A second finger. ‘Paterson meantime had the gun in his desk drawer. Gives you the opportunity to say you intend taking them all down.’
‘And you really think that’ll be enough to get him to confess?’ Fox asked, sounding sceptical.
‘With all he’s got to lose?’ Clarke added.
‘You won’t know till you try.’
Clarke looked at him. ‘And where are you when all this is going on?’
‘I know my place, Siobhan — I’ll be nowhere near.’
‘And if one of them implicates you. .?’
‘Up to you to decide if they’re lying.’
Clarke’s focus had shifted to Fox. ‘What do you think?’
‘I really doubt it’ll work — but right now I’m not sure what else we’ve got.’
Clarke nodded slowly, then turned to leave the room.
‘I’d say that’s a definite maybe,’ Fox commented to Rebus. ‘But you must know this could end up rebounding on you?’
‘I can live with that.’ Rebus leaned back in the chair. ‘How did we get away with it?’ he asked, tapping the tip of one finger against the paperwork again.
‘Most of the journalists that mattered could be bought or silenced,’ Fox surmised. ‘No social media for the airing of grievances.’ He offered a shrug. ‘How am I doing?’
‘On the nail, I’d say. The more we got away with it, the more we kept doing it. .’
‘Conscience getting to you?’
‘Fuck off, Malcolm.’ But there was no venom behind the words.
