‘John,’ she said at last, ‘you don’t know the whole story. You’ve on heard Brian’s side.’
‘That’s true. Want to tell me yours?’
She thought it over. ‘Not like this, on the telephone. Maybe some other time.’
‘Any time you like, Nell.’
‘I’d better get back to work. Are you going to see Brian today?’
‘Maybe tonight. They’re running tests all morning. What about you?’
‘Oh yes, I’ll drop by. It’s only two minutes away.’
So it was. Rebus thought of Siobhan Clarke. For some reason, didn’t want the two women to meet at Brian’s bedside. ‘What time a you thinking of going?’
‘Lunchtime, I suppose.’
‘One last thing, Nell.’
‘Yes?’
‘Does Brian have any enemies?’
It took her a little while to answer. ‘No.’
Rebus waited to see if she had anything to add. ‘Well, take care, Nell.’
‘You too, John. Bye.’
After he’d put down the receiver, Rebus started back to his note-taking. But after half a sentence he stopped, tapping his pen thoughtfully against his mouth. He stayed that way for a considerable time, then made some phone calls to his contacts (he didn’t like the word ‘grasses’), telling them to keep ears open regarding an assault behind the Heartbreak Cafe.
‘A colleague of mine, which means it’s serious, okay?’
He’d ended up saying ‘colleague’ but had meant to say ‘friend’.
At lunchtime, he walked over to the University and paid his respects at the Department of Pathology. He had called ahead and Dr Curt was ready in his office, wearing a cream-coloured raincoat and humming some piece of classical music which Rebus annoyingly could recognise but not name.
‘Ah, Inspector, what a pleasant surprise.’
Rebus blinked. ‘Really?’
‘Of course. Usually when you’re pestering me, it’s because of some current and pressing case. But toda…’ Curt opened his arms wide. ‘No case! And yet you phone me up and invite me to lunch. It can’t be very busy along at St Leonard’s.’
On the contrary, but Rebus knew the workload was in good hands. Before leaving, he’d loaded enough work onto Siobhan Clarke that she wouldn’t have time for a lunch-break, beyond a sandwich and a drink from the cafeteria. When she’d complained, he’d told her she could take time off later in the afternoon to visit Brian Holmes.
‘How have you settled in there, by the way?’
Rebus shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter to me where they put me. Where do you want to eat?’
‘I’ve taken the liberty of reserving a table at the University Staff Club.’
‘What, some sort of canteen?’
Curt laughed, shaking his head. He had ushered Rebus out of his office and was locking the door. ‘No,’ said Curt. ‘There
‘Then lead on to the refinery.’
The dining-room was on the ground floor, near the main door of the Staff Club on Chambers Street. They’d walked the short walk, talking about nothing in particular when they could hear one another above the traffic noise. Curt always walked as though he were late for some engagement. Well, he was a busy man: a full teaching load, plus the extra duties heaped on him at one time or another by most of the police forces in Scotland, and most onerously by the City of Edinburgh Police.
The dining-room was small but with plenty of space between the tables. Rebus was pleased to see that the prices were reasonable, though the tally was upped when Curt ordered a bottle of wine.
‘My treat,’ he said. But Rebus shook his head.
‘The Chief Constable’s treat,’ he corrected. After all, he had every intention of claiming it as a legitimate expense. The wine arrived before the soup. As the waitress poured, Rebus wondered when would be the right moment to open the
‘Slainte!’ said Curt, raising his glass. Then: ‘So what’s this all about? You’re not the kind for lunch with a friend, not unless there’s something you want, and can’t get by buying pints and bridies in some smoky saloon.’
Rebus smiled at this. ‘Do you remember the Central Hotel?’
‘A dive of a place on Princes Street. It burnt down six or seven years ago.’
‘Five years ago actually.’
Curt took another sip of wine. ‘There was a smouldering body as I recall. “Crispy batter” we call those.’
‘But when you examined the corpse, he hadn’t died in the fire, had he?’
‘Some new evidence has come to light?’
‘Not exactly. I just wanted to ask what you remember about the case.’
‘Well, let’s see.’ Curt broke off as the soup arrived. He took three or four mouthfuls, then wiped a napkin around his lips. ‘The body was never identified. I know that we tried dental checks, but to no avail. There was no external evidence, of course, but people stupidly believe that a burned body tells no tales. I cut the deceased open and found, as I’d known I would, that the internal organs were in pretty good shape. Cooked on the outside, raw within, like a good French steak.’
A couple at a nearby table were soundlessly chewing their food, and staring hard at their tabletop. Curt seemed either not to notice or not to mind.
‘DNA fingerprinting had been around for four years, but though we got some blood from the heart, we were never given anything to match it against. Of course, the heart was the clincher.’
‘Because of the bullet wound.’
‘Two wounds, Inspector, entrance and exit. That set you lot scurrying back to the scene, didn’t it?’
Rebus nodded. They’d searched the immediate vicinity of the body, then widened the search until a cadet found the bullet. Its calibre was eight millimetre, matching the wound to the heart, but it offered no other clues.
‘You also found,’ said Rebus, ‘that the deceased had suffered a broken arm at some time in the past.’
‘Did I?’
‘But again it didn’t get us any further forward.’
‘Especially,’ said Curt, mopping his bowl with bread, ‘bearing in mind the reputation of the Central. Probably every second person in the place had been in a fight and suffered
Rebus was nodding. ‘Agreed, yet he was never identified. If he’d been a regular, or one of the staff, surely someone would have come forward. But nobody ever did.’
‘Well, it was a long time ago. Are you about to start dusting off some ghosts?’
‘There was nothing ghostly about whoever brained Brian Holmes.’
‘Sergeant Holmes? What happened?’
Rebus was hoping to spend some of the afternoon reading through more of the case-notes. He’d thought it would take half a day; but this had been optimistic from the start. He was now thinking in terms of half a week, including some evening reading in the flat. There was so much stuff. Lengthy reports from the fire department, the council’s building department, news clippings, police reports, interview statement…
But when he got back to St Leonard’s, Lauderdale was waiting. He had received Rebus’s hasty comment on the money-lending surveillance, and now wanted to push things on. Which meant that Rebus was trapped in the Chief Inspector’s office for the best part of two hours, an hour of it head-to-head stuff. For the other hour, they were joined by Detective Inspector Alister Flower, who had worked out of St Leonard’s since its opening day back in September 1989 and bragged continually that when he had shaken hands with the main dignitary at the occasion, they had both turned out to be Masons, with Flower’s being the older clan.
Flower resented the incomers from Great London Road. If there were friction and factions within the station, you could be sure Flower was
