Let It Bleed

Rebus nodded. ‘You mean so they can be a bit more polite next time they mug their granny?’

She glowered at him and he raised his hands. ‘Just a joke,’ he said.

‘Maybe you need some communication skills yourself.’

‘He’s as blunt as a butt to the head,’ Patience said, bringing in the teapot.

‘Can I help?’ Sammy offered.

‘You sit there, I’ll be back in a second.’

She was away far longer than a second; there was no conversation between times. Rebus watched Lucky the cat staring at him from the garden path. Patience returned with plates of cakes and biscuits. His mouth was imploring him: no hot drinks, no cakes or biscuits, no sugar, no crunching.

‘I’ll pour,’ Sammy said. There was a clatter as Lucky came back in, seeking tidbits.

‘Cake, John?’ Patience said, offering him the pick from the plate. He took the smallest item he could find, a thin end-slice of madeira. Patience regarded his choice with suspicion: he’d always preferred ginger sponge, and she, who hated it, had bought one specially.

‘Sammy,’ Patience said, ‘try the ginger.’

‘It’s a bit sweet for me,’ Sammy replied. ‘I’ll just have a biscuit.’

‘Fine.’

‘This outfit of yours,’ Rebus began.

‘It’s called SWEEP,’ Sammy reminded him.

‘Yes, SWEEP, who funds it?’

‘We’ve charitable status. We get some donations, but spend more time than we ought to thinking up fund- raising schemes. The bulk of the money drips down from the Scottish Office.’ She turned to Patience. ‘We’ve this brilliant guy, he knows just how to word an application for funding, knows what grants are available …’

Patience looked interested. ‘Is he nice?’

Sammy blushed. ‘He’s great.’

‘And he deals with the Scottish Office?’ Rebus asked.

‘Yes.’ Sammy couldn’t see where this was leading. She worked with people who were mistrustful of police officers and other authority figures, mistrustful of their motives. Her colleagues were careful what they said in front of her. She’d been open with them from the start; she’d stated on the application form that her father was in Edinburgh CID. But there were some people who still didn’t trust her entirely.

She knew one problem was the media. When the media learned who her father was, they sought her out for a quote — her background made it more interesting. They called it ‘personalising the issues’. There were some people in SWEEP who felt resentful of the attention she got.

She didn’t really blame them. It was the system.

‘More cake, John?’

The catflap clacked again as Lucky went back outside.

‘No, thanks, Patience,’ Rebus said.

‘I think maybe I’ll try the madeira,’ Sammy said. Which left an awful lot of ginger cake.

‘You haven’t touched your tea, John.’

‘I’m waiting ’til it cools’. In the past, he’d always liked it scalding.

‘Why are you so interested in SWEEP all of a sudden?’ Sammy asked him.

‘I’m not, but I might be interested in the Scottish Office.’

Sammy looked like she didn’t believe him. She started to defend SWEEP, going on at length, her cheeks colouring with conviction. Rebus envied her that sense of conviction.

Then he said a couple of things, and an argument started. He couldn’t help himself; he’d just had to take a contrary point of view. He tried drawing Patience into the debate, but she only shook her head slowly and sadly. Finally, when Sammy had collapsed into a sulk, Patience was ready with her summing-up.

‘You see, Sammy, your father is the Old Testament type: retribution rather than rehabilitation. Isn’t that right, John?_’

Rebus just shrugged, drank some lukewarm tea, and absent-mindedly chewed on a slice of buttered ginger cake.

‘And he’s the classic Calvinist, too,’ Patience went on. ‘Let the punishment fit the crime, and then some.’

‘That’s not Calvinism,’ Rebus said. ‘It’s Gilbert and Sullivan.’ He sat forwards in his chair. ‘Besides, the problem is that sometimes the punishment doesn’t fit the crime. Sometimes there’s punishment and no crime at all. Other times there’s crime but no punishment; and worst of all — ’ he paused — ‘nearly all of the time there’s unfairness.’ He looked at Sammy, wondering what SWEEP would have done for Willie Coyle and Dixie Taylor, wondering if anything at all, anything worth a candle, would have been left of them after prison.

Eventually, they found other things to talk about. Sammy didn’t contribute much; she just kept staring at her father, as if seeing him afresh. The sky outside conceded defeat and collapsed from slate-grey to late-afternoon black. While Patience and Sammy were clearing the table, Rebus stared at Lucky through the window, then went over to the catflap and locked it shut. The cat saw what he had done. It miaowed at him once, registering its protest. Rebus waved it cheerio.

They sat in the living room, and Patience handed over a few things he’d left behind after the move: his second-best razor, some clean handkerchiefs, a pair of shoelaces, a tape of Electric Ladyland. He stuffed everything into his jacket pockets.

‘Thanks,’ he said.

‘You’re welcome.’

Sammy saw him back to the door and waved him off.

That evening, back at the flat, Rebus sat listening to Hendrix with a lined pad of paper in front of him. There were some words on it.

SDA/SE (Scottish Office?)

A C Haldayne (US Consulate?)

Mensung (?? — not in phonebook)

Gyle Park West (industrial estate)

He knew about Gyle Park West because he’d driven out there that morning. It was a low-rise sprawl of smallish industrial and commercial units, sited next to the imposing PanoTech electronics company. At the entrance to the estate there was a sign listing the various companies on the site, including Deltona. He remembered that Salty Dougary worked for Deltona, and that Deltona provided microchips for PanoTech, the PanoTech factory being more of an assembly line, constructing computers from components sourced elsewhere.

None of which seemed to tie Councillor Gillespie to Wee Shug McAnally. None of which was in itself suspicious. The councillor was on an industrial planning committee, which was excuse enough for owning files on the SDA and Scottish Enterprise and on Gyle Park West. But then why the panic, the hurry to destroy those files? That was what interested Rebus.

As he drove out of Gyle, an area of the city he didn’t really know, he realised something else. Gyle itself had boomed in the eighties, gaining new homes, industries, even its own railway station. Before then, it had just been a place near the airport. The airport had been its big advantage in the eighties, making for good fast communications. These days Gyle had an identity, and a lot of that was down to the injection of cash into the place. But there was something else in Gyle’s favour.

Its district councillor just happened to be the Lord Provost, Cameron McLeod Kennedy.

The telephone rang, bringing him out of his reverie. He snatched the receiver. ‘Hello?’

‘Hello yourself.’ It was Mairie Henderson.

‘I was beginning to think you’d forgotten me,’ Rebus said.

‘I’ve only finally managed to track down LABarum.’ Rebus picked up his pen and moved the pad closer. ‘The reason I had trouble was, it doesn’t exist.’

‘What?’

‘Not yet at any rate. It’s a PanoTech project. Do you know who they are?’

‘The computer company?’