were all councillors. That’s another thing: the district council is about to disappear with effect from April 1996. There are elections coming up so we can install a sort of shadow authority, if anyone bothers to vote.’
‘Any news of crooked deals, bent councillors?’
‘Nothing. Tom Gillespie is a diligent, hard-working councillor with no bad press, no apparent skeletons in his closet, not even any rumours. He’s not a tippler, not a gambler, and he doesn’t cheat on his wife with the secretary — ’
‘What makes you say that?’
She shrugged. ‘It’s just one of those things people sometimes do.’ She touched the back of his hand. ‘Do you know something I don’t?’
Rebus stood up. ‘That’d be the day. Which is he, by the way: self-employed? Unemployed?’
‘Wealthy spouse. His wife runs her own business.’
Rebus looked around. ‘Is there a cafe open somewhere?’
‘We could try the Fun Park.’ She wiped her hands clean of sand. ‘Am I in for an exclusive?’
Rebus rubbed his shoe over the circle she’d made in the sand, obliterating it.
‘Well?’ she persisted.
‘Are you still singing in that country and western band?’
‘Now there’s a subtle change of subject. You were about to answer my question.’
‘What question?’
‘About the exclusive.’
‘No I wasn’t.’ They came off the beach on to the promenade. ‘Can you check a couple of other things for me?’
‘What?’
‘A company name: LABarum.’ He spelt it for her. ‘That’s all I’ve got on it. Plus another name. Dalgety.’
‘A company?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve checked, and there are companies called Dalgety, plus it’s a place name
‘So what do you want me to do?’
He shrugged. ‘If you find out anything about LABarum, maybe Dalgety will tie into it.’
‘I’ll see what I can do. Oh, I forgot to say, I’m talking to your daughter later on.’
Rebus stopped. ‘You
‘OK, I wasn’t going to tell you. I’m interviewing her on the McAnally suicide.’ Rebus started walking again, Mairie hurrying to catch him up. ‘Any comment you’d like to make at this point, Inspector, strictly on the record?’
‘No comment, Miss Henderson,’ Rebus growled.
He’d decided the interview room might prove just too much for Helena Proffit, so made an appointment to see her at her work. She worked part-time in an office, on top of her post as Gillespie’s ward secretary. But someone from her office phoned to say Miss Proffit had been taken ill with a migraine and had gone home. He tried her home number, but got no answer. It could wait. Meantime he made another appointment, this time with the Governor of HM Prison Edinburgh. He told the governor’s secretary that it concerned the suicide of an ex-inmate. The secretary booked him in for Tuesday afternoon.
‘Sooner would be better,’ he told her.
‘Sooner isn’t possible,’ she replied.
That night, after the usual session with Doc and Salty, he drove out to the Forth Road Bridge, parked, and walked on to the bridge itself. For once there was no howling gale, hardly even a breeze. There was no moon, and the temperature was still a degree or two above freezing. The bridge had been reopened, some temporary repairs completed. Initial structural surveys had shown no real damage to the fabric, though if the car had snapped one of the thick metal support cables, it would have been different.
He stood there shivering after the warmth of the pub and his car. He was a few yards from where the boys had jumped. The area was cordoned off with metal barriers, anchored by sandbags. Two yellow metal lamps marked off the danger area. Someone had climbed over the barriers and laid a small wreath next to the broken rail, weighing it down with a rock so it wouldn’t be blown away. He looked up at the nearer of the two vast supports, red lights blinking at its summit as a warning to aircraft. He didn’t really feel very much, except a bit lonely and sorry for himself. The Forth was down there, as judgmental as Pilate. It was funny the things that could kill you: water, a ship’s hull, steel pellets from a plastic case. It was funny that some people actually
‘I could never do it,’ Rebus said out loud. ‘I couldn’t kill myself.’
Which didn’t mean he hadn’t thought of it. It was funny the things you thought about some nights. It was all so funny, he felt a lump forming in his throat. It’s only the drink, he thought. It’s the drink makes me maudlin. It’s only the drink.
13
Sometimes people who knew next to nothing about them called Edinburgh’s drop-in centres drop-
He knew the person who ran the centre behind Waverley Station. Rebus had done him a favour once, bringing back a heroin addict who’d suffered sudden cold turkey on Nicolson Street. Some officers would have lifted the hapless wretch and taken him to the station for a knee in the groin and a long sweat. But Rebus had taken him where he wanted to go: the drop-in centre at Waverley. Turned out he was undergoing withdrawal, doing it all on his own.
‘How is he?’ Rebus asked Fraser Leitch, the centre’s manager and guiding light.
Leitch was sitting in his mouldering office, surrounded by the usual mounds of paperwork. The shelves behind his desk were bowed under the weight of files, document boxes, magazines and books. Fraser Leitch scratched his grey-flecked beard.
‘He was doing all right, last I heard. Retrained as a chippie and actually found a job. See, Inspector, sometimes the system works.’
‘Or he’s the exception that proves the rule.’
‘The eternal pessimist.’ Leitch got up and crouched in front of a tray on the floor. He checked there was water in the kettle and switched it on. ‘I’ll make a bet with you. I’ll bet you’re here to talk about Willie Coyle and Dixie Taylor.’
‘I’d have to be daft to cover a bet like that.’
Leitch smiled. ‘You know Dixie was a user?’ Rebus nodded. ‘Well, as far as I know, with Willie’s help he’d been clean for a couple of months.’
‘His works were still under his bed.’
Leitch shrugged as he tipped coffee into two mugs. ‘The temptation’s always there. I’ll make another bet with you, I’ll bet you’ve never tried heroin yourself.’
‘You’d be right.’
‘Me neither, but the way I’ve heard it described … Well, like I say, the temptation never goes away. You have to take it one day at a time.’
Rebus knew Fraser Leitch used to have a drink problem. What the man was saying was that once you had it, you had it for life, because even if you dried out, the cause of your problem was still there, never quite beyond reach.
‘There’s a joke I’ve heard,’ Leitch said, as the kettle started to boil. ‘Well, it’s not much of a joke. Here it is: what kind of boat should Dixie have landed on?’
‘I give up.’
‘A sampan, because they’re both close to junk. Like I say, bad joke.’ He poured water and milk into the
