window.
‘Maybe we’d better hire a winch.’
It took them four trips to transfer the boxes from the car to Rebus’s living-room. Rebus put the binbags behind the sofa to make room on the floor.
‘Sign here,’ the DS said. He had a typed chitty: RECEIPT OF ALL CASE-NOTES (8 BOXES) CONCERNING DERWOOD CHAR TERS. Rebus signed.
‘Date and time, too,’ said the DS.
‘You’ll be wanting a tip next,’ Rebus muttered.
‘If you’re offering.’
‘Well, here’s one for you: when lifting, bend your knees, not your back.’
He phoned Siobhan Clarke.
‘Why me?’ she said.
‘Because Brian Holmes has a home life.’
‘That could be construed as discrimination. When do you want me there?’
‘Say an hour.’
He tidied the living room a bit, depositing the bin bags in the hall and setting the file boxes in a row on the floor. Then he collected up all the dirty mugs, glasses and dishes and took them through to the kitchen. He emptied the coffee-jar and put it back under the radiator, and opened the living-room window an inch to air the place. The sun was out, showing that the windows hadn’t been cleaned since the autumn. Rebus decided enough was enough.
‘She’s coming here to work,’ he told himself, ‘not for a candlelit supper.’
They got two breaks, both late in the afternoon.
The first was a client’s name: Quinlon.
‘I’ve come across that name before,’ Rebus said. It took him a while to place it. ‘The civil servant, Rory McAllister, he mentioned someone called Quinlon; a building contractor. There’d been some shady business between the SDA and him — it was one of the things held against the SDA when they were deciding its fate.’ Rebus flipped back a page in the notes. ‘And Charters’ client happened to be a building contractor.’
‘So?’
‘So, somehow the media got to hear about the SDA and Quinlon, and that story helped sink the SDA. Who was going to gain by the SDA’s demise?’
‘Charters?’
‘Yes, because the financial slate was going to be wiped clean, and there’d be no possibility of a future investigation into where the SDA millions had gone.’
‘You think Charters grassed on his client?’
‘I wouldn’t put anything past him.’
The second break came soon after.
It was clear from the case-notes that the Fraud Unit had been focusing on Charters. When his ‘associates’ were mentioned, they were dismissed as fronts or moneymen. Nobody thought the directors had anything to do with whatever swindles Charters was perpetrating.
Which was why they weren’t mentioned often, and in the case of Mensung, not at all. But then Rebus picked up the photocopy of a letter sent by Charters to the SDA. The Mensung logo was at the top, together with the non-existent Leith Walk address — referred to as ‘Mensung House’. At the foot of the letter was the company’s registration number.
‘You couldn’t find Mensung in Companies House, right? ’
‘Right,’ said Clarke. ‘I had their archivist take a good look.’
‘Well, either they were registered, or this is a phony number.’
‘The records could have been mislaid.’
‘Now wouldn’t
Because he knew what he was looking for, he could pick out the name Charters quite easily; the others were more difficult. It took real effort to decipher J Joseph Simpson’s name.
‘Figures,’ Rebus said. He wanted another word with Simpson anyway, but this explained why he’d lied about Mensung’s address: the company had been dodgy, under investigation, and Simpson had been a director. It wasn’t the kind of thing you wanted to publicise when you were still in business.
As for the third and last name …
‘Can you make that out?’ Rebus asked, passing the sheet to Siobhan Clarke.
‘Starts with an M,’ she suggested. ‘Murchieson?’
‘Murchieson?’
‘I don’t know, maybe Matthews, something like that.’
Rebus took the sheet back from her. Matthews … Murchieson … ‘Mathieson,’ he said, staring at the slewed writing. ‘Could it be Mathieson?’
She shrugged. ‘As in …?’
‘I met a man yesterday called Robbie Mathieson. He runs PanoTech.’
‘Silicon Glen’s homegrown success story?’
Rebus nodded. ‘We’ve all just been supplied with PanoTech computers, haven’t we?’
‘Everybody from the chief constable down.’
Which meant that Allan Gunner would have one, too. ‘Who do you suppose would decide something like that?’
‘Like what?’
‘Like which manufacturer was going to supply us?’
‘It would be the director of Corporate Services, wouldn’t it?’
‘But the DCC would have a say.’
‘Probably. Is it relevant?’
Rebus wondered. PanoTech put the computers together in Gyle Park West, and Gyle Part West was one of Councillor Gillespie’s files. Mensung was another. There was the story that Derry Charters had something to do with the early financing of PanoTech. And PanoTech’s boss just happened to be at Sir Iain Hunter’s, looking worried about something. And Allan Gunner was there too …
Wheels within wheels, he thought. Scotland was a machine, a big machine if you looked at it from the outside. But from the inside, it assumed a new form — small, intimate, not that many moving parts, and all of them interconnected quite intricately. Rebus knew he was still outside the machine, but he knew now that one reason why he’d been invited to the shooting party was that Sir Iain Hunter was inviting him
After that, anything could happen.
They worked solidly till five-thirty.
‘I hope I’m being treated to dinner,’ Clarke said, stretching her spine.
‘Who’s taking you?’
‘You are,’ she said.
Rebus shook his head. ‘I’ve other plans tonight, sorry.’
‘Well, thanks a lot. I give up my precious Sunday to help you, and then you boot me out.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘Got a date?’
She was attempting a peculiarly Scottish tactic: being serious while pretending levity.
‘I’m working,’ Rebus said.
‘Working?’
‘I’ve got to talk to someone.’
‘Anyone I know?’
Rebus shook his head. ‘But don’t think I don’t appreciate your help.’ He saw her to the door.
