A Question of Blood (2003) (24 page)

Music was leaking from the headphones James Bell wore. He still hadn’t looked up from his reading. Rebus guessed he thought his mother had come in, and was studiously ignoring her. The facial similarity between son and father was remarkable. Rebus bent down a little, angling his face, and James finally looked up, eyes widening in surprise. He slipped off the headphones, turned the music off.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Rebus said. “Your mum said we should just come up.”

“Who are you?”

“We’re detectives, James. Wondered if you could give us a moment of your time.” Rebus was standing by the bed, being careful not to kick over the large bottle of water by his feet.

“What’s going on?”

Rebus had lifted the magazine from the bed. It was about gun collecting. “Funny subject,” he said.

“I’m trying to find the one he shot me with.”

Siobhan had taken the magazine from Rebus. “I think I can understand that,” she said. “You want to know all about it?”

“I didn’t get much of a look at it.”

“You sure about that, James?” Rebus asked. “Lee Herdman collected gun stuff.” He nodded towards the magazine, which Siobhan was now flicking through. “That one of his?”

“What?”

“Did he let you borrow it? We hear you knew him a bit better than you’ve been letting on.”

“I never said I didn’t know him.”

“‘We’d met socially’—your exact words, James. I heard them on the tape. You make it sound like you’d bump into him in the pub or the newsagent’s.” Rebus paused. “Except that he’d told you he was ex-SAS, and that’s more than just a casual comment, isn’t it? Maybe you were talking about it at one of his parties.” Another pause. “You used to go to his parties, didn’t you?”

“Some. He was an interesting guy.” James glared at Rebus. “I probably said that on the tape, too. Besides, I told the police all this already, told them how well I knew Lee, and that I went to his parties . . . even about that time he showed me the gun . . .”

Rebus’s eyes narrowed. “He showed you?”

“Christ, haven’t you listened to the tapes?”

Rebus couldn’t help but glance towards Siobhan. Tape
s,
plural . . . they’d only bothered listening to the one. “Which gun was this?”

“The one he kept in his boathouse.”

“Did you think it was real?” Siobhan asked.

“It looked real.”

“Anyone else there at the time?”

James shook his head.

“You never saw the other one, the pistol?”

“Not until he shot me with it.” The teenager looked down at his injured shoulder.

“You and two others,” Rebus reminded him. “Am I right to say that he didn’t know Anthony Jarvies and Derek Renshaw?”

“Not that I know of.”

“But he left you alive. Are you just lucky, James?”

James’s fingers hovered just above his wound. “I’ve been wondering about that,” he said quietly. “Maybe he recognized me at the last moment . . .”

Siobhan cleared her throat. “And have you been wondering why he did it in the first place?”

James nodded slowly but didn’t say anything.

“Maybe,” Siobhan continued, “he saw something in you he didn’t see in the others.”

“They were both pretty active in the CCF, could be it had something to do with that,” James offered.

“How do you mean?”

“Well . . . Lee was in the army half his life . . . and then they kicked him out.”

“He told you that?” Rebus asked.

James nodded again. “Maybe he had this grudge. I’ve said he didn’t know Renshaw and Jarvies, but that doesn’t mean he hadn’t seen them around . . . maybe in their uniforms. Some kind of . . . trigger?” He looked up, smiled. “I know—I should leave the hack psychology to the hack psychologists.”

“You’re being very helpful,” Siobhan said, not because she believed it necessarily but because she thought he was looking for some sliver of praise.

“The thing is, James,” Rebus said, “if we could understand why he’d left you alive, we’d maybe know why the others had to die. Do you see?”

James was thoughtful. “Does it really matter, in the end?”

“We think it does.” Rebus straightened up. “Who else did you see at these parties, James?”

“You’re asking for names?”

“That’s the general idea.”

“It wasn’t always the same people.”

“Teri Cotter?” Rebus hinted.

“Yes, she was there sometimes. Always brought a few Goths with her.”

“You’re not a Goth yourself, James?” Siobhan asked.

He gave a short laugh. “Do I look like one?”

She shrugged. “The music you listen to . . .”

“It’s just rock music, that’s all.”

She lifted the small machine attached to his headphones. “MP3 player,” she commented, sounding impressed. “What about Douglas Brimson, ever see him at the parties?”

“Is he the guy who flies planes?” Siobhan nodded. “I spoke to him one time, yes.” He paused. “Look, these weren’t really ‘parties,’ not like the organized sort. It was just people dropping in, having a drink . . .”

“Doing drugs?” Rebus asked casually.

“Sometimes, yes,” James admitted.

“Speed? Coke? A bit of E?”

The teenager snorted. “A couple of joints passed round if you were lucky.”

“Nothing harder?”

“No.”

There was a knock at the door. It was Mrs. Bell. She looked at the two visitors as though she’d forgotten all about them. “Oh,” she said, confused for a moment. Then: “I’ve made some sandwiches, James. What would you like to drink?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“But it’s lunchtime.”

“Do you want me puking up, Mum?”

“No . . . of course not.”

“I’ll tell you when I’m hungry.” His voice had hardened: not because he was angry, Rebus thought, but because he was embarrassed. “But I’ll have a mug of coffee, not too much milk in it.”

“Right,” his mother said. Then, to Rebus: “Would you like a . . . ?”

“We’re just on our way, thanks all the same, Mrs. Bell.” She nodded, stood for a moment as though forgetting what she’d been about to do, then turned and left, her feet making no sound on the carpet.

“Your mother’s all right, is she?” Rebus asked.

“Are you blind?” James shifted position. “A lifetime with my dad . . . it’s no wonder.”

“You don’t get on with your father?”

“Not particularly.”

“You know he’s started a petition?”

James screwed up his face. “Fat lot of good it’ll do.” He was silent for a moment. “Was it Teri Cotter?”

“What?”

“Was she the one who told you I went to Lee’s flat?” The detectives stayed silent. “Wouldn’t put it past her.” He shifted again, as if trying to get comfortable.

“Want me to help you?” Siobhan offered.

James shook his head. “I think I need some more painkillers.” Siobhan found them by the other side of the bed, sitting in their silver strip of foil on a readied chess board. She gave him two tablets, which he washed down with water.

“One more question, James,” Rebus said, “then we’ll leave you to it.”

“What?”

Rebus nodded towards the foil. “Mind if I nick a couple of tabs? I’ve run out . . .”

Siobhan had half a bottle of flat Irn-Bru in her car. Rebus took a mouthful after each tablet.

“Careful they don’t turn into a habit,” Siobhan said.

“What did you reckon to back there?” Rebus asked, changing the subject.

“He could be on to something. Combined Cadet Force . . . kids running around in uniforms.”

“He also said Herdman was kicked out of the army. Not true, according to his file.”

“So?”

“So either Herdman lied to him or young James made it up.”

“Active fantasy life?”

“You’d need one in a room like that.”

“It was certainly . . . tidy.” Siobhan started the engine. “You know what he was saying about Miss Teri?”

“He was right: it
was
her who told us.”

“Yes, but more than that . . .”

“What?”

She put the car in gear and started off. “Just the way he spoke . . . You know that old thing about someone protesting too much?”

“Making out he doesn’t like her because he really likes her?” Siobhan nodded. “Reckon he knows about her little website?”

“I don’t know.” Siobhan finished her three-point turn.

“Should have asked him.”

“What’s this?” Siobhan asked, peering through the windshield. A patrol car, its blue light flashing, was blocking the entrance to the driveway. As Siobhan put the brakes on, the back door of the patrol car opened and a man in a gray suit got out. He was tall, with a shiny bald dome of a head and large, heavy-lidded eyes. He held his hands together in front of him, feet apart.

“Don’t worry,” Rebus told Siobhan. “It’s just my twelve o’clock appointment.”

“What appointment?”

“The one I never got round to making,” Rebus told her, opening his door and stepping out. Then he leaned back in. “With my own personal executioner . . .”

14

T
he bald man was named Mullen. He was from the Professional Standards Unit of the Complaints. Up close, his skin had a slightly scaly quality, not, Rebus thought, unlike that of his own blistered hands. His elongated earlobes had probably brought him a few Dumbo-sourced nicknames at school, yet it was his fingernails that fascinated Rebus. They were almost too perfect: pink and shiny and unridged, with just enough white cuticle. During the hourlong interview, Rebus was tempted more than once to add a question of his own and ask if Mullen ever visited a manicurist.

But in fact all he’d done was ask if he could get a drink. The aftertaste of James Bell’s painkillers lingered in his mouth. The tablets themselves had done their job—certainly better than the scabby wee pills he himself had been prescribed. Rebus was feeling at one with his world. He didn’t even mind that Assistant Chief Constable Colin Carswell, all haircut and eau de cologne, was sitting in on the interview. Carswell might hate his guts, but Rebus couldn’t find it in himself to blame him for it. Too much history between them for that. They were in an office at Police HQ on Fettes Avenue, and it was Carswell’s turn to have a go at him.

“What the hell did you think you were doing last night?”

“Last night, sir?”

“Jack Bell and that TV director. They’re both demanding an apology.” He wagged a finger at Rebus. “And you’re going to do it in person.”

“Would you rather I dropped my trousers and bent over for them?”

Carswell’s face seemed to swell with rage.

“Once again, DI Rebus,” Mullen interrupted, “we find ourselves returning to the question of what you thought you might hope to gain by going along to a known criminal’s home for a nighttime beverage.”

“I thought I might gain a free drink.”

Carswell expelled a slow hiss of air. He’d uncrossed and recrossed his legs, unfolded and refolded his arms, many dozens of times in the course of the interview.

“I suspect there was more to your visit than that.”

Rebus just shrugged. He wasn’t allowed to smoke, so was playing with the half-empty pack instead, opening and closing it, sending it spinning across the table with the flick of a finger. He was doing this because he could see how much it annoyed Carswell.

“What time did you leave Fairstone’s house?”

“Sometime before the fire broke out.”

“You can’t be more specific?”

Rebus shook his head. “I’d been drinking.” Drinking more than he should have . . . much, much more. He’d been a good boy since, trying to atone.

“So, sometime after you left,” Mullen continued, “someone else arrived—unseen by neighbors—and proceeded to gag and tie Mr. Fairstone before turning on the heat beneath a chip pan and then departing?”

“Not necessarily,” Rebus felt obliged to state. “The chip pan could already have been on.”

“Did Mr. Fairstone say he was going to make some chips?”

“He might have mentioned being a bit peckish . . . I can’t be sure.” Rebus straightened in his chair, feeling vertebrae click. “Look, Mr. Mullen . . . I can see that you’ve got a fair amount of circumstantial evidence sitting here”—he tapped the manila file, not unlike the one that had sat on Simms’s dressing table—“which tells you that I was the last person to see Martin Fairstone alive.” He paused. “But that’s
all
it tells you, wouldn’t you agree? And I’m not denying the fact.” Rebus sat back and waited.

“Except the killer,” Mullen said, so softly he might have been speaking to himself. “What you should have said was: ‘I was the last person to see him alive, except his killer.’” He glanced up from beneath his drooping eyelids.

“That’s what I meant to say.”

“It’s not what you said, DI Rebus.”

“You’ll have to excuse me, then. I’m not exactly a hundred percent . . .”

“Are you on drugs of some kind?”

“Painkillers, yes.” Rebus held up his hands to remind Mullen of why.

“And you took the most recent dose when?”

“Sixty seconds before clapping eyes on you.” Rebus let his eyes widen. “Maybe I should have mentioned at the start . . . ?”

Mullen slapped the desk with both palms. “Of course you should have!” He wasn’t talking to himself anymore. He let his chair fall backwards as he got to his feet. Carswell had risen, too.

“I don’t see . . .”

Mullen leaned across the desk to switch off the tape recorder. “You can’t hold an interview with someone who’s under the influence of prescribed drugs,” he explained, for the ACC’s benefit. “I thought everyone knew that.”

Carswell started muttering something about how he’d just forgotten, that was all. Mullen was glaring at Rebus. Rebus gave him a wink.

“We’ll talk again, Detective Inspector.”

“Once I’m off the medication?” Rebus pretended to guess.

“I’ll need the name of your doctor, so I can ask when that’s likely to be.” Mullen had opened the file, his pen poised over an empty sheet.

“It was the infirmary,” Rebus stated blithely. “I can’t remember the doctor’s name.”

“Well, then, I’ll just have to find out.” Mullen closed the file again.

“Meantime,” Carswell piped up, “I don’t need to remind you about making that apology, or that you’re still on suspension?”

“No, sir,” Rebus said.

“Which rather begs the question,” Mullen said quietly, “of why I found you in the company of a fellow officer at Jack Bell’s house.”

“I was hitching a lift, that’s all. DS Clarke had to stop off at Bell’s place to talk to the son.” Rebus gave a shrug, while Carswell expelled more air.

“We
will
get to the bottom of this, Rebus. You can be sure of that.”

“I don’t doubt it, sir.” Rebus was the last of the three to rise to his feet. “Well, I’ll leave you to it, then. Enjoy the bottom when you get there . . .”

Siobhan, as he’d guessed, was waiting with her car outside. “Nicely timed,” she said. The back of the car was full of shopping bags. “I waited ten minutes to see if you’d tell them straight off.”

“And then went to do some shopping?”

“Supermarket at the top of the road. I was going to ask if you fancied coming round for dinner tonight.”

“Let’s see how the rest of the day pans out.”

She nodded agreement. “So when did the question of the painkillers arise?”

“About five minutes ago.”

“You left it a while.”

“Wanted to see if they’d anything new to tell me.”

“And did they?”

He shook his head. “Doesn’t look like they consider you a suspect, though,” he told her.

“Me? Why should they?”

“Because he was stalking you . . . because every cop knows the old chip-pan trick.” He shrugged.

“Any more of that and the dinner invite’s canceled.” She started driving them out of the car park. “Next stop Turnhouse?” she asked.

“You think I need to be on the next plane out of here?”

“We were going to talk to Doug Brimson.”

Rebus shook his head. “You talk to him. Drop me off somewhere first.”

She looked at him. “Where?”

“Anyplace on George Street will do.”

She was still looking. “Suspiciously close to the Oxford Bar.”

“That wasn’t what I had in mind, but now that you come to mention it . . .”

“Drink and tranqs don’t mix, John.”

“It’s an hour and a half since I took those pills. Besides, I’m on suspension, remember? I’m allowed to misbehave.”

Rebus was waiting for Steve Holly in the back room of the Oxford Bar.

It was one of the city’s smaller pubs: just the two rooms, neither much bigger than the living room of a normal house. The front room was usually busy, in that three or four bodies could make it seem so. The back room had tables and chairs, and Rebus had positioned himself in the darkest corner, farthest from the window. The walls were the same jaundiced color they’d been when he’d first found the place, three decades back. The stark, old-fashioned interior had the power to intimidate newcomers, but Rebus wasn’t betting on it having any such effect on the journalist. He’d called the tabloid’s Edinburgh office—only a ten-minute walk from the bar. His message had been curt: “I want to talk to you. Oxford Bar. Now.” Cutting the connection before Holly could start a conversation. Rebus knew he would come. He’d come because he would be intrigued. He’d come because of the story he’d broken. He’d come because that was his job.

Rebus heard the door open and close. He wasn’t worried about the occupants of the other tables. Anything they happened to overhear, they would keep to themselves. It was that kind of place. Rebus hoisted what was left of his pint. His grip was improving. He could pick up a glass one-handed, flex his wrist without the pain becoming unbearable. He was steering clear of whiskey: Siobhan had given him good advice, and for once he would heed it. He knew he needed his wits about him. Steve Holly wasn’t going to want to play on Rebus’s terms.

Feet on the steps, a shadow preceding Holly’s entrance into the back room. He peered into the afternoon gloom, squeezing between chairs as he approached the table. He was carrying what looked like a glass of lemonade, maybe with vodka added for good measure. He gave a slight nod, stayed standing until Rebus gestured for him to sit. Holly did so, checking to the left and right, unhappy about sitting with his back to the bar’s other denizens.

“Nobody’s going to leap from the shadows and head-butt you,” Rebus reassured him.

“I suppose I should be congratulating you,” Holly said. “I hear you’re managing to get right up Jack Bell’s nose.”

“And I notice your paper’s supporting his campaign.”

Holly’s mouth twitched. “Doesn’t mean he’s not a prick. You lot should have stuck to your guns, that time you caught him with the prossie. Better yet, you should have phoned my paper, we’d have come down and got some snaps of him
in flagrante.
Have you met the wife?” Rebus nodded. “Bananas, she is,” the reporter continued. “Nervous wreck by all accounts.”

“She stood by him, though.”

“That’s what MPs’ wives do, isn’t it?” Holly said dismissively. Then: “So, to what do I owe the honor? Decided to put your side of the story?”

“I need a favor,” Rebus said, placing his gloved hands on the table.

“A favor?” Rebus nodded. “In return for what exactly?”

“Special relationship status.”

“Meaning?” Holly lifted his glass to his mouth.

“Meaning whatever I get on the Herdman case, you get first shout.”

Holly snorted. Had to wipe some of his drink from around his mouth. “You’re on suspension, as far as I know.”

“Doesn’t stop me from keeping my ear to the ground.”

“And what exactly is it you can tell me about Herdman that I can’t get from a dozen of my other sources?”

“Depends on that favor. It’s one thing I’ve got that they haven’t.”

Holly rolled some more of his drink around the inside of his mouth. Then he swallowed, smacked his lips.

“Trying to throw me off the scent, Rebus? I’ve got you by the short and curlies over Marty Fairstone. Everyone knows it. And now
you
’re asking favors?” He chuckled, but there was no humor in his eyes. “You should be begging me not to rip your gonads right off.”

“Think you’ve got the balls for it?” Rebus said, finishing his own drink. He slid the empty glass across the table towards the journalist. “Pint of IPA, when you’re ready.” Holly looked at him, then smiled with half his mouth and rose to his feet, maneuvering his way back through the chairs. Rebus lifted the lemonade glass and sniffed: vodka, definitely. He managed to light a cigarette, had smoked half of it by the time Holly returned.

“Barman’s got an attitude, hasn’t he?”

“Maybe he doesn’t like what you said about me,” Rebus explained.

“So go to the Press Complaints Commission.” Holly handed the pint over. He’d brought another vodka and lemonade for himself. “Only I don’t see you doing that,” he added.

“That’s because you’re not worth the effort.”

“And this is the guy who wants a favor doing?”

“A favor you haven’t bothered listening to yet.”

“Well, here I am . . .” Holly opened his arms wide.

“A salvage operation of some kind,” Rebus said quietly. “It happened on Jura, June of ’ninety-five. I need to know what it was for.”

“Salvage?” Holly frowned, his instincts aroused. “A tanker? Something like that?”

Rebus shook his head. “On land. The SAS were brought in.”

“Herdman?”

“He might have been involved.”

Holly chewed on his bottom lip as if trying to dislodge the hook Rebus had landed there. “What’s it got to do with anything?”

“We won’t know that till we take a look.”

“And if I agree, what do I get out of it?”

“Like I said, first go at any story.” Rebus paused. “I might also have access to Herdman’s army files.”

Holly’s eyebrows rose perceptibly. “Anything good in them?”

Rebus shrugged. “At this stage, I couldn’t possibly comment.” Reeling the reporter in . . . knowing full well there was little in the file to interest any tabloid reader. But then how was Steve Holly to know that?

“Well, we could have a look-see, I suppose.” Holly was rising to his feet again. “No time like the present.”

Rebus studied his beer glass, still three-quarters full. Holly had yet to start on his own second drink. “What’s the rush?” he said.

“You don’t think I came here to pass the time of day with you?” Holly said. “I don’t like you, Rebus, and I certainly don’t trust you.” He paused. “No offense.”

“None taken,” Rebus said, rising to follow the reporter out of the bar.

“By the way,” Holly said, “something that’s been bugging me . . .”

“What?”

“I was talking to a guy, and he said he could kill someone with a newspaper. You ever heard of that?”

Rebus nodded. “A magazine’s better, but a paper might just do it.”

Holly looked at him. “So how does it work? Smothering or what?”

Rebus shook his head. “You roll it up, tight as you can, then you use it on the throat. Enough force, you’ll crush the windpipe.”