His phone rang. He didn’t recognise the number.
‘Yes?’ he answered.
It was the officer from Central.
‘Midnight-blue Ford Escort, eight years old. Used to run something sportier but the divorce settlement took care of that.’ The man reeled off the licence plate. Rebus told him to hang on, then went back into the CID suite and grabbed a pen and sheet of paper.
‘Repeat that, will you?’ he said, jotting the details down.
‘Plus I’ve e-mailed you a mug shot,’ the man went on.
‘Wasn’t so hard, was it?’ Rebus said. ‘But was he a smoker?’
‘Ten a day. Do I get to go back to actual real work now?’
‘With my blessing.’
Rebus put his phone next to the computer and opened his e-mail folder. Clicked on the attachment, then called across to Christine Esson. She studied the face, front and side views. Physical details were listed beneath.
‘Height, five-ten,’ Esson intoned. ‘Weight, a hundred and seventy pounds. Grey eyes, fair hair. .’ She retreated to her desk and returned with the autopsy photos. ‘So who is he?’ she said.
‘Would you say they’re the same person?’
‘It’s possible.’
‘No more than that?’
She shrugged.
‘I think it’s him. He was stored in a car boot, and then dumped in the docks.’
‘Stored for two years, you mean?’ She watched Rebus nod. ‘So where’s the car?’
‘Right here,’ Rebus said, holding up the sheet of paper. ‘Eight-year-old blue Ford Escort.’ He thought back to the cars in the multi-storey. No, it matched neither of them. It had probably been driven to Leith Docks with its cargo still on board. Then got rid of. Rebus picked up his phone and called the Road Policing Unit.
‘Any abandoned cars in the past couple of days? Tax disc almost certainly a year or more out of date.’ He described Jack Redpath’s Escort and then waited.
‘You think it’s out there collecting parking tickets?’ Esson asked.
‘Best-case scenario.’
‘And worst?’
Rebus just shrugged. He was listening to news that the information could take some time — the city’s traffic wardens would need to be questioned.
‘Soon as you can, eh?’ Rebus gave his details and put the phone down. ‘Now we wait,’ he told Esson.
‘Maybe you do, but I’m heading out to the shop. It’s lunchtime, if you hadn’t noticed — want me to fetch you something?’
‘Maybe a sandwich or a sausage roll.’ He dug into his pocket for change.
‘My treat,’ Esson told him. ‘A sandwich is probably healthier.’
‘Make it the sausage roll, then.’
She rolled her eyes and shrugged her arms into her jacket. Rebus remembered Deborah Quant doing the same, and his own instinct to help. When he’d suggested meeting for a drink sometime, she hadn’t turned him down flat. Then again, he didn’t have a number for her, excepting the one for the mortuary.
He headed out to the car park for a smoke, then remembered the phone upstairs could ring at any moment. So after three or four draws he nipped the end of the cigarette and returned it to the packet. He could hear the phone ringing on his desk from the top of the stairs, but it stopped as he entered the office. Cursing under his breath, he sat down and waited. Esson returned and handed him a paper bag. The lack of grease stains meant she’d ignored his request. The baguette contained ham salad.
‘It’s like being at one of those health spas,’ he muttered. But he demolished it anyway.
When the phone rang again, he snatched at it.
‘Thought you were in a hurry,’ the RPU officer complained.
‘I am.’
‘So why didn’t you answer earlier?’
‘Call of nature. Now what have you got?’ Rebus listened for a moment. ‘Taken away to be scrapped?’ he repeated for Esson’s benefit. ‘Yesterday?’ He reached for his pen again. ‘Do we know which scrapyard?’ He began taking down the details but then broke off. ‘Yes, I know it,’ he said. ‘Thanks.’
He finished the call and made another, but no one was answering. Cursing, he stuffed his phone into his pocket and got up from the desk.
‘What do I tell the boss when he gets back?’ Esson asked.
‘That his sartorial elegance has shamed me into doing a bit of shopping.’
She smiled and gave him a little wave as he made for the door. Then she left her own desk and crossed to Rebus’s, taking her prawn sandwich with her. She studied the photo of Jack Redpath on Rebus’s computer screen.
‘Maybe,’ she said to herself. ‘Just maybe. .’ She fixed her eyes on the doorway. She hadn’t known John Rebus long, but she knew he was good at this, like a bloodhound given a scent and then left to do what it was best at. Form-filling and protocols and budget meetings were not Rebus’s thing — never had been and never would be. His knowledge of the internet was rudimentary and his people skills were woeful. But she would lie for him to James Page, and take the rap if caught. Because he was a breed of cop that wasn’t supposed to exist any more, a rare and endangered species.
And she would miss his kind when they did — as they would — eventually vanish from the world.
It was the scrapyard Jessica Traynor’s Golf had been taken to. The same German shepherd rose to its feet and bared its fangs as Rebus got out of his car. Eddie Duke emerged from the shack and snapped at it.
‘Boris! Pipe down!’
Then, to Rebus, and indicating the Saab: ‘Just leave it there. We’ve got a bit of a backlog, but we’ll get round to it when we can.’
‘That’s hilarious,’ Rebus said, looking as though he’d never found anything less funny in his life. ‘I’ve been trying to phone you.’
‘I told you, we’re busy.’ He gestured towards the compactor, which was squeezing the life out of its latest victim. Rebus could hear the dying gasps of metal, plastic and glass. Reece Bairstow was working the machinery. Rebus noticed a car number plate resting against the wall next to the guard dog. He walked over and picked it up, ignoring the dog’s growls.
‘This car?’ he asked.
‘Was blocking a street in Granton. Obviously abandoned.’
‘And is now. .?’
The man gestured once more towards the compactor. ‘Is there a problem?’ he asked.
Granton: just along the coast from Leith. Rebus dropped the number plate and marched towards the machine, yelling for it to be switched off. Bairstow did as he was told. His boss was a couple of yards behind Rebus, repeating his question. Rebus peered into the compactor. He could smell engine oil. The blue Ford Escort had been reduced to a third of its size, and wouldn’t be carrying passengers again. Rebus looked at the two men.
‘You stripped it?’
Bairstow checked with Duke before answering. ‘Someone had already picked it clean.’
Not that it looked clean — even mangled as it was, Rebus could make out the thick coating of dust.
‘Been stored for a while, would you say?’
Bairstow nodded.
‘Check the boot?’
‘I didn’t take anything.’
‘We removed the tyres and hubs,’ his boss added. ‘Some of the electrics. The engine was pretty well shot. .’
‘I want it out of there,’ Rebus ordered. ‘A scene-of-crime team will come and examine it.’
‘For what?’
