Nobody could help him. Hugh McAnally hadn’t been near the place, not as far as anyone knew. He wasn’t about to press the point or outstay his lukewarm welcome, but he took a quick look round before he left.
In a corner of the main room, a woman with a huge canvas bag slung over her shoulder was crouching down in conversation with a man who sat slumped in a chair. The man stared past her, not interested. Eventually the woman gave up, wrote something on a pad, closed it, and returned it to the canvas bag. The man leaned forward then and whispered something into her ear. She listened, her cheeks reddened, and she got to her feet, turning to walk away.
Rebus was right behind her. She brought herself up short to avoid a collision.
‘You wouldn’t be Jennifer Benn, would you?’
‘That’s me.’
‘My lucky night.’ Rebus looked past her, to where the seated man was rubbing his forehead, trying not to let Rebus see his face. ‘Hiya, Pete.’
The man looked up and seemed to place Rebus. ‘Evening, Mr Rebus.’
‘How long have you been out?’
‘Three weeks two days.’
‘And you fancy another trip back already? Give the lady back her purse.’
The social worker stared in surprise as Pete slipped the bulging black leather purse out of his denim jacket. She snatched it back and checked the contents.
‘Do you want to press charges?’ Rebus asked. She shook her head. ‘Fine, then let’s have a little chat.’
By the time they reached the front door, Jennifer Benn had regained her composure.
‘Where are we going?’
‘Somewhere I’m a bit more welcome. There’s a pub across the road.’
‘I don’t like pubs.’
‘My car then?’
She turned to him. ‘Can I see some ID?’
‘I thought that scene back there would have been ID enough.’ But she wasn’t budging, so he dug out his warrant card, which she inspected slowly.
‘All right,’ she said, handing it back, ‘we can talk here.’
‘Here?’ They were on the pavement. She wrapped a woollen scarf around her neck and pulled on sheepskin mitts. She was in her late-twenties and had frizzy blonde hair and outsized glasses. ‘It’s freezing here,’ Rebus complained.
‘Then best hurry up.’
He sighed. ‘You were Shug McAnally’s social worker?’
‘That’s right.’
‘I’m investigating his suicide.’
She was shaking her head. ‘I’m afraid I can’t help. He never kept an appointment, we never met.’
‘Did you report him?’
She nodded. ‘But I didn’t think anything would come of it. What punishment do you mete out to someone with terminal cancer?’
And with that she turned and walked quickly to her car. Rebus thought that she’d asked a very good question indeed.
16
Next morning, he found himself summoned to Chief Superintendent Watson’s office.
Gill Templer was already there when he arrived. She was standing with her back to the filing cabinet, arms folded. There wasn’t much room: three large cardboard boxes marked ‘PanoTech’ sat on the floor by the desk.
‘My new computer,’ the Farmer explained. ‘Sit down, John.’ The Farmer looked like a man with bad news: Rebus had been here before; same look, same tone of voice.
‘I’d rather stand, sir.’
‘Been up to anything we should know about, John?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Nothing at all?’
‘Not that I know of, sir. Why?’
Watson glanced towards Gill Templer. ‘I had a phone call yesterday evening from Allan Gunner.’ Gunner: the deputy chief constable. ‘He doesn’t often call me at home.’
‘Do I take it he had bad news?’ Rebus decided to sit down after all.
‘HM Inspectorate of Constabulary are thinking of investigating us.’
‘Us?’
‘B Division.’
‘That’s us all right.’
‘It’s no joking matter.’
Nor was it. HMIC was independent of the police service; it reported directly to the Secretary of State for Scotland. HMIC’s public remit encompassed examining police standards and indicating areas for improvement. It inspected all eight regional forces each year, but only four of these were full ‘primary’ inspections. They looked at rises in crime stats, falls in detection rates, and complaints from the public. No problem there: the recorded crime rate was steady when it wasn’t falling, and recent clear-up rates were marginally improved. But HMIC could really screw up a station’s working practices, just by being on the premises. There were long lists of questions to answer, an initial pre-inspection followed by the full inspection … and, as everyone in the room knew, HMIC could sometimes stumble upon something better left unqueried. Or, as the Farmer put it,
‘You know those buggers, John. If they want to find dirt on us, there’s dirt to be found. We don’t exactly work in an antiseptic environment.’
‘That’s because we don’t deal with people who wash behind their ears every morning. What are you getting at, sir? So what if we’ve been picked out? It’s the luck of the draw.’
‘Ah,’ Watson said, holding up a prodigious forefinger. ‘I only said they were
‘I don’t get it.’
The Farmer shifted — so far as he was able — in his chair. He was not a small man; it was not a large chair. ‘To be honest, neither do I, the DCC was being bloody cagey. I think the gist was, we’re doing something naughty, and if we stop doing it, another division might find itself under scrutiny instead of us.’
‘Did he actually say that?’ Gill Templer asked.
The Farmer shrugged. ‘I’m giving my interpretation, that’s all. Now, after his phone call, I did some thinking. I asked myself: who would be getting up people’s noses? Well, I know one copper who’s like cocaine in that respect.’
‘Nobody sniffs coke these days, sir.’ Watson just sat there, unblinking. ‘OK,’ Rebus said, standing again. ‘I went to see Big Jim Flett yesterday, probably a couple of hours before Gunner called you.’
‘Why?’ Gill Templer asked. She looked furious that he hadn’t told her beforehand.
‘McAnally.’
‘The suicide?’ The Farmer frowned as Rebus nodded.
‘The thing is, sir, there’s something … I don’t know, I just think there’s something
‘Well,’ the Farmer said, ‘that might explain the second phone call. Also last night, and also at my home. It was from Derek Mantoni.’
‘I don’t know him.’
‘
