A Question of Blood (2003) (40 page)

The teenager shrugged. “Because the chance presented itself maybe. Do we really know why we do what we do . . . in the heat of the moment?” He turned to his father. “Instincts sometimes get the better of us. Those dark little thoughts . . .”

Which was when his father lunged at him, grabbing him around the neck, the two of them falling backwards over the sofa, crashing to the floor.

“You little bastard!” Jack Bell was yelling. “Do you know what you’ve done? I’m ruined now! In tatters! Absolute fucking tatters!”

Rebus and Hogan separated them, the father still snarling and swearing, the son almost serene by comparison and studying his father’s incoherent ire as though it was a memory he would treasure in the years to come. The door had opened, Kate standing there. Rebus wanted to make James Bell fall down at her feet, beg forgiveness. She was taking in the scene, trying to make sense of it.

“Jack?” she asked softly.

Jack Bell looked at her, as if she was a stranger to him. Rebus was still holding the MSP in a bear hug from behind.

“Get out of here, Kate,” he pleaded. “Just go home.”

“I don’t understand.”

James Bell, passive in Hogan’s grasp, looked across to the doorway, then over to where his father and Rebus stood. A smile spread slowly across his face.

“Will you tell her, or shall I . . . ?”

25

I
can’t believe it,” Siobhan said, not for the first time. Rebus’s phone call to her had lasted almost the whole of her drive from St. Leonard’s to the airfield.

“I’m having a hard time taking it in myself.”

She was on the A8, heading west out of the city. Looked in her mirror, then signaled, moving out to pass a taxi. Businessman in the back of it, calmly reading a newspaper on his way to his flight. Siobhan felt like she needed to pull over on to the hard shoulder, bolt from her car and do some screaming, just to release whatever it was she was feeling. Was it the rush of getting a result? Two results really: the Herdman case and Fairstone’s murder. Or was it the frustration of not being around at the time?

“He couldn’t have shot Herdman, too, could he?” she asked.

“Who? Young Master Bell?” She could hear Rebus turning from his phone to relay her question to Bobby Hogan.

“He leaves the note, knowing Herdman will follow him,” Siobhan was saying, mind rushing. “Kills all three and turns the gun on himself.”

“It’s a theory,” Rebus’s voice crackled, sounding unconvinced. “What’s that noise?”

“My phone. It’s telling me it needs a recharge.” She took the airport access road, the taxi still visible in her mirror. “I could cancel, you know.” Meaning the flying lesson.

“What’s the point? Nothing doing here.”

“You’re heading for Queensferry?”

“Already there. Bobby’s driving in through the school gates as I speak.” He turned away from the phone again, said something to Hogan. Sounded like he was saying he wanted to be there when Hogan explained everything to Claverhouse and Ormiston. Siobhan caught the words “especially that the drug-running’s a non-starter.”

“Who put the drugs on his boat?” she asked.

“Didn’t catch that, Siobhan.”

She repeated the question. “You think Whiteread did it to keep the inquiry active?”

“I’m not sure even she has the clout for that sort of sting. We’re rounding up the small fry. Cars are already out looking for Rab Fisher and Peacock Johnson. Bobby’s just about to deliver the news to Claverhouse.”

“I wish I could be there.”

“Catch us afterwards. We’ll be adjourning to the pub.”

“Not the Boatman’s, though?”

“I thought maybe we’d try the place next door . . . just for a change.”

“I should only be an hour or so.”

“Take your time. I don’t suppose we’ll be going anywhere. Bring Brimson with you, if you like.”

“Should I tell him about James Bell?”

“That’s up to you . . . papers will have it by the close of play.”

“Meaning Steve Holly?”

“Reckon I owe the sod that much. At least then Claverhouse doesn’t get the pleasure of breaking the news.” He paused. “Did you manage to put the frighteners on Rod McAllister?”

“He still denies writing the letters.”

“It’s enough that you know . . . and that he knows you do. Feeling okay about the flying lesson?”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Maybe I should alert air traffic control.” She could hear Hogan saying something in the background, and Rebus chuckling.

“What did he say?” she asked.

“Bobby reckons we might be better off warning the coast guard.”

“That’s him crossed off my dinner list.”

She listened as Rebus relayed her message to Hogan. Then: “Okay, Siobhan, that’s us at the car park. Got to go deliver the news to Claverhouse.”

“Any chance of you keeping your composure?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be cool, calm and collected.”

“Really?”

“Just as soon as I’ve rubbed his nose in the shit.”

She smiled, ended the call. Decided she might as well switch her phone off. Wouldn’t be making calls at five thousand feet . . . Glanced at the dashboard clock and saw that she was going to be early. Didn’t suppose Doug Brimson would mind. She tried to shake her head clear of everything she’d heard.

Lee Herdman didn’t kill those kids.

John Rebus didn’t torch Martin Fairstone’s house.

She felt bad about having suspected Rebus, but it was his own fault . . . always so secretive. And Herdman, too, with his secret life, his daily fears. The media would be forced to eat humble pie and would turn their fury on the easiest target available: Jack Bell.

Which almost counted as a happy ending . . .

As she arrived at the airfield gates, a car was just leaving. Brimson got out of the passenger side, offered a cautious smile as he undid the lock, pulled the gate open. Waited there as the car drove through, passing Siobhan at speed, a scowling face in its front seat. Brimson beckoned for Siobhan to drive in. She did so, then waited while the gate was locked again. Brimson opened the passenger-side door, got in.

“Wasn’t expecting you quite yet,” he said.

Siobhan eased her foot from the clutch. “Sorry about that,” she said quietly, staring through the windshield. “Who was your visitor?”

Brimson screwed up his face. “Just someone interested in flying lessons.”

“Didn’t seem the type somehow.”

“You mean the shirt?” Brimson laughed. “Bit loud, wasn’t it?”

“A bit.” They’d arrived at the office, Siobhan pulling on the hand brake. Brimson got out. She stayed where she was, watching him. He came around to her side of the car, opened the door, as if this was what she’d been waiting for. Avoiding eye contact.

“There’s some paperwork,” he was saying. “Liability waiver . . . stuff like that.” He made towards the open doorway.

“Did your customer have a name?” she asked, following him in.

“Jackson . . . Jobson . . . something like that.” He’d entered his office, falling into his chair, hands sifting through paperwork. Siobhan kept on her feet.

“It’ll be on the paperwork,” she said.

“What?”

“If he was here for lessons, I assume you’ve got his details?”

“Oh . . . yes . . . here somewhere.” He shuffled the sheets of paper. “Time I got a secretary,” he said, attempting a grin.

“His name’s Peacock Johnson,” Siobhan said quietly.

“Is it?”

“And he wasn’t here for flying lessons. Did he want you to fly him out of the country?”

“You know him, then?”

“I know he’s a wanted man, responsible for the death of a petty criminal named Martin Fairstone. And now Peacock’s panicking because he can’t find his trusted lieutenant and probably knows we’ve got him.”

“All of which comes as news to me.”

“But you know who Johnson is . . . and what he is.”

“No, I told you . . . he just wanted flying lessons.” Brimson’s hands were busier than ever, sorting through the paperwork.

“I’ll let you in on a secret,” Siobhan said. “We’ve tied up the Port Edgar case. Lee Herdman didn’t kill those kids; it was the MSP’s son.”

“What?” Brimson didn’t seem to be taking the news in.

“James Bell did it, then turned the gun on himself, after Lee had committed suicide.”

“Really?”

“Doug, are you looking for anything in particular, or trying to dig your way out of here through the desk?”

He looked up at her and grinned.

“I was telling you,” she went on, “that Lee didn’t kill those two boys.”

“Right.”

“Which means the only puzzle left is the drugs found on his boat. I’m assuming you knew about the yacht he kept moored shoreside?”

He could no longer hold her gaze. “Why would I know anything about that?”

“Why wouldn’t you?”

“Look, Siobhan . . .” Brimson made a show of checking his watch. “Maybe we can leave the paperwork. Wouldn’t do to miss our slot . . .”

She ignored this. “The yacht looked good because Lee sailed to Europe, but now we know he was selling diamonds.”

“And buying drugs at the same time?”

She shook her head. “You knew about his boat, and probably knew he went to the Continent.” She’d taken a step towards the desk. “It’s the corporate flights, isn’t it, Doug? Your own little trips to the Continent, taking businessmen to meetings and on jollies . . . that’s how you bring the drugs in.”

“It’s all going to hell,” he said, almost too calmly. He’d leaned back in the chair, hands smoothing his hair, eyes staring ceilingwards. “I told that stupid bastard never to come here.”

“You mean Peacock?”

He nodded slowly.

“Why plant the drugs?” Siobhan asked.

“Why not?” He gave another burst of laughter. “Lee was dead. Way I saw it, it would focus attention on him.”

“Taking the heat off you?” She decided to sit down. “Thing was, there was no heat
on
you.”

“Charlotte thought there was. You lot were sniffing into every nook and cranny, talking to Teri, talking to me . . .”

“Charlotte Cotter’s involved?”

Brimson looked at her as though she were stupid. “It’s a cash business . . . all needs to be laundered.”

“Through the tanning salons?” Siobhan nodded, letting him know she understood. Brimson and Teri’s mother: business partners.

“Lee wasn’t squeaky clean, you know,” Brimson was saying. “He was the one who introduced me to Peacock Johnson in the first place.”

“Lee knew Peacock Johnson? Is that where the guns came from?”

“That’s one thing I was going to give you, only I couldn’t see how . . .”

“What thing?”

“Johnson had these decommissioned guns, needed someone to put the firing pins back, that sort of thing.”

“And Lee Herdman did it?” She thought of the well-stocked workshop at the boatyard. Yes, a simple enough job, with the tools and the know-how. Herdman had had both.

Brimson was quiet for a moment. “We could still go for that flight; shame to miss the slot.”

“I’ve not brought my passport.” She reached out a hand towards his phone. “I need to make a call now, Doug.”

“I’d cleared our path, you know . . . cleared it with the flight tower. I was going to show you so much . . .” She’d risen to her feet, lifted the receiver.

“Maybe another time, eh?”

The two of them knowing there would be no other time. Brimson’s palms were flat against the desktop. Siobhan was holding the receiver to her ear, halfway through punching in the numbers. “I’m sorry, Doug,” she said.

“Me too, Siobhan. Believe me, I’m as sorry as hell.”

He pushed up from the desk, lunged across it, sending all the paperwork flying as he came. She dropped the phone and took a step back, colliding with the chair behind her, tripping over it and hitting the floor, hands outstretched to cushion the blow.

Doug Brimson’s whole weight landing on her, pinning her down, punching all the breath from her chest.

“Got to fly, Siobhan,” he snarled, gripping her by the wrists. “Got to fly . . .”

26

H
appy, Bobby?” Rebus asked. “Deliriously so,” Bobby Hogan replied. They were entering the bar on South Queensferry’s waterfront. The meeting at the school could hardly have been better timed. They’d managed to interrupt a meeting between Claverhouse and Assistant Chief Constable Colin Carswell, Hogan taking a deep breath before stating that everything Claverhouse was saying was nonsense before going on to explain why.

At the end of the meeting, Claverhouse had walked out without any comment, leaving his colleague Ormiston to shake Hogan’s hand, telling him he deserved the credit.

“Which doesn’t mean you’ll get it, Bobby,” Rebus had said. But he’d patted Ormiston’s arm, to let him know the gesture was appreciated. He’d even asked him to join them for a drink, but Ormiston had shaken his head.

“I think you’ve just assigned me to solace duty,” he’d said.

So it was just Rebus and Hogan in the bar. As they waited their turn, Hogan seemed to deflate just a little. Usually at the end of a case, the whole team gathered in the murder room while cases of beer were dragged in and opened. Maybe a bottle of fizz from the brass. Whiskey for the more traditionally minded. This didn’t seem the same, just the two of them, the original team already dispersed . . .

“What’ll it be?” Hogan asked, trying to sound breezy.

“Maybe a Laphroaig, Bobby.”

“The measures don’t look generous.” Hogan had run an expert eye over the gantry.

“Better make it a double.”

“And decide right now who’s the designated driver.”

Hogan’s mouth twitched. “I thought you said Siobhan was joining us.”

“That’s cruel, Bobby.” Rebus paused. “Cruel but fair.”

The barman was ready for them. Hogan ordered Rebus’s whiskey and a pint of lager for himself. “And two cigars,” he added, turning towards Rebus, seeming to study him. He rested his arm on the edge of the bar. “Result like this, John, makes me think I want to go out while I’m winning.”

“Christ, Bobby, you’re in your prime.”

Hogan snorted. “Five years ago I’d have agreed with you.” He took a wad of notes from his pocket and extracted a ten. “But this just about does it for me.”

“So what’s changed?”

Hogan shrugged. “A kid who can go and shoot two classmates, no real motive, I mean, none that makes any sense to me . . . It’s a different world from the one I used to know, John.”

“Just means we’re needed more than ever.”

Hogan snorted again. “You really think so? You see yourself as being wanted, do you?”

“I didn’t say ‘wanted’; I said
needed
.”

“And who needs us? People like Carswell, because we make him look good? Or Claverhouse, so he’s not screwing up any more than he already is?”

“They’ll do for a start,” Rebus said, smiling. His glass was placed in front of him, and he dribbled some water into it, just enough to take the edge off. Two thin cigars had arrived, and Hogan was unwrapping his.

“We still don’t really know, do we?”

“Know what?”

“Why Herdman did it . . . topped himself.”

“Did you think we ever would? I had the feeling you brought me in because all the young folk around you were scaring you. You needed another dinosaur in the vicinity.”

“You’re not a dinosaur, John.” Hogan lifted his glass, chinked it against Rebus’s. “Here’s to the two of us.”

“Not forgetting Jack Bell, without whose presence James might have realized he could keep quiet and end up getting away with it.”

“Right enough,” Hogan said with a broad grin. “Families, eh, John?” He started shaking his head.

“Families,” Rebus agreed, lifting the glass to his mouth.

When his phone sounded, Hogan told him to leave it. But Rebus checked the display, wondering if it might be Siobhan. It wasn’t. Rebus motioned to Hogan that he was stepping back outside, where it was quieter. There was a beer garden to the front, just an area of pavement with some tables. Too chill a breeze for anyone to be using them. Rebus lifted the phone to his ear.

“Gill?” he said.

“You wanted to be kept in touch.”

“Young Bob’s still singing, then?”

“I almost wish he’d stop,” Gill Templer said with a sigh. “We’ve had his childhood, bullied at school, the time he wet himself . . . He keeps bouncing backwards and forwards, I never know if something happened last week or last decade. He says he wants to borrow
The Wind in the Willows
. . .”

Rebus smiled. “It’s at my flat. I’ll fetch it for him.” Rebus heard the drone of a light aircraft in the distance. Peered up, shading his eyes with his free hand. The plane was over the Forth Road Bridge, too far away to tell if it was the same one they’d traveled to Jura in. Same sort of size, crawling almost lazily across the sky.

“What do you know about tanning parlors?” Gill Templer was asking.

“Why?”

“They keep cropping up. Some connection with Johnson and the drugs . . .”

Rebus kept watching the plane. It dipped suddenly, engine changing tone. Then it leveled off, wings tilting from side to side. If it was Siobhan up there, she was learning the hard way.

“Teri Cotter’s mother owns a few,” Rebus said into the phone. “That’s about as much as I know.”

“Could they be a front?”

“I wouldn’t have thought so. I mean, where would she be getting . . . ?” Rebus broke off. Brimson’s car, parked in Cockburn Street where Teri’s mum had one of her shops. Teri admitting to him that her mother was having an affair with Brimson . . .

Doug Brimson, friend of Lee Herdman. Brimson with his planes. Where the hell had he got the money for them? Millions, Ray Duff had said. It had struck a nerve at the time, but Rebus had become distracted by James Bell. Millions . . . the kind of money you could make from a few legitimate businesses, and dozens of illegal ones . . .

Rebus remembered what Brimson had said on the way back from Jura, with the Forth and Rosyth beneath:
I often think about the damage . . . even with something as small as a Cessna . . . dockyard . . . ferry . . . road and rail bridges . . . airport
. . . Rebus’s hand fell. He squinted into the light.

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered.

“John? You still there?”

By the time she had the words out, he wasn’t.

Ran back into the bar, dragged Hogan out. “We need to get to the airfield!”

“What for?”

“No time!”

Hogan unlocking the car, Rebus getting behind the wheel. “I’m driving!” Hogan not about to argue. Rebus sending the car screaming out of the car park, but then screeching to a halt, staring from the driver’s-side window.

“Jesus, no . . .” Stumbling from the car, standing in the middle of the road, looking up. The plane had gone into a dive but was coming out of it.

“What’s going on?” Hogan yelled from the passenger seat.

Rebus got back behind the wheel, set off again. Following the plane’s progress as it passed over the rail bridge, made a steep arc as it neared the Fife coastline and started back towards the bridges again.

“That plane’s in trouble,” Hogan stated.

Rebus stopped the car again to watch. “It’s Brimson,” he hissed. “He’s got Siobhan with him.”

“Looks like it’s going to hit the bridge!” Both men were out of the car. They weren’t alone. Other drivers had stopped to watch. Pedestrians were pointing and muttering. The drone of the engine had grown louder, more discordant.

“Jesus,” Hogan gasped, as the plane flew underneath the rail bridge, mere feet from the surface of the water. It climbed steeply, almost vertically, leveled off, and then dived again. This time it went below the central span of the road bridge.

“Is he showing off, or trying to scare the wits out of her?” Hogan said.

Rebus shook his head. He was thinking of Lee Herdman, the way he would try to scare his teenage water-skiers . . . testing them.

“Brimson’s the one who planted those drugs. He’s bringing them into the country on his plane, Bobby, and I get the feeling Siobhan knows that.”

“So what the hell is he doing now?”

“Scaring her maybe. I hope to hell that’s all it is . . .” He thought of Lee Herdman, lifting a gun to his temple, and the ex-SAS man who jumped to his death from an airplane . . .

“Will they have parachutes?” Hogan was asking. “Could she get out?”

Rebus didn’t answer. His jaw was locked tight.

The plane was looping the loop now, but still far too close to the bridge. One wing clipped a suspension cable, sending the plane into a spiraling dive.

Rebus took an involuntary step forwards, yelled out the word “no!” stretching it for the length of time it took the machine to hit the water.

“Hell’s fucking bells,” Hogan cried. Rebus was staring at the spot . . . the plane already reduced to wreckage, wisps of smoke rising from it as the pieces began to disappear beneath the surface.

“We’ve got to get down there!” Rebus shouted.

“How?”

“I don’t know . . . get a boat! Port Edgar . . . they’ve got boats!” They got back into the car and did a squealing U-turn, drove to the boatyard, where a siren was sounding, regular sailors already heading for the scene. Rebus parked, and they ran down to the jetty, past Herdman’s boathouse, Rebus aware of movement at the corner of his eye, a flash of color. Dismissing it in the urgency to reach the water’s edge. Rebus and Hogan showed their ID to a man who was untying his speedboat.

“We need a lift.”

The man was in his late fifties, bald-headed with a silver beard. He looked them up and down. “You need life jackets,” he protested.

“No, we don’t. Now just get us out there.” Rebus paused. “Please.”

The man took another look at him, and nodded agreement. Rebus and Hogan clambered aboard, holding on as the owner raced out of the harbor. Other small boats had already congregated around the slick of oil, and the lifeboat from South Queensferry was approaching. Rebus scanned the surface of the water, knowing it was futile.

“Maybe it wasn’t them,” Hogan said. “Maybe she didn’t go.”

Rebus nodded in the hope that his friend might shut up. What debris there was, was already spreading out, the tide and the swell from the various craft dispersing it. “We need divers, Bobby. Frogmen . . . whatever it takes.”

“It’ll be taken care of, John. Somebody else’s job, not ours.” Rebus realized that Hogan’s hand was squeezing his arm. “Christ, and I made that stupid crack about the coast guard . . .”

“Not your fault, Bobby.”

Hogan was thoughtful. “Nothing we can do here, eh?”

Rebus was forced to admit defeat: there was nothing they could do. They asked the skipper to take them back, which he did.

“Terrible accident,” he yelled above the noise of the outboard engine.

“Yes, terrible,” Hogan agreed. Rebus just stared at the choppy surface of the water. “We still going to the airfield?” Hogan asked as they climbed back onto dry land. Rebus nodded, started striding towards the Passat. But then he paused outside Herdman’s boathouse, and turned his head to look at the much smaller shed next door, the one with the car parked in front. The car was an old 7-series BMW, tarnished black. He didn’t recognize it. Where had the flash of color come from? He looked at the shed. Its door was closed. Had it been open when they’d arrived? Had the flash of color flitted across the doorway? Rebus walked up to the door, gave it a push. It bounced back: someone behind it, holding it closed. Rebus stood back and gave the door an almighty kick, then shouldered it. It flew open, sending the man behind it sprawling.

Red short-sleeved shirt with palm trees on it.

Face turning to meet Rebus’s.

“Holy shit,” Bobby Hogan was muttering, studying the blanket on the ground, the array of weapons laid out on it. Two lockers stood gaping, emptied of their secrets. Pistols, revolvers, submachine guns . . .

“Thinking of starting a war, Peacock?” Rebus said. And when Peacock Johnson scrambled forwards, making towards the nearest gun, Rebus took a single step, swung back a foot, and kicked him straight in the middle of his face, throwing him back onto the floor again.

Johnson lay unconscious, spread-eagled. Hogan was shaking his head.

“How the hell did we miss this lot?” he was asking himself.

“Maybe because it was right under our noses, Bobby, same as everything else in this damned case.”

“But what does it mean?”

“I suggest you ask our friend here,” Rebus said, “just as soon as he wakes up.” He turned to walk away.

“Where are you going?”

“The airfield. You stay here with him, call it in.”

“John . . . what’s the point?”

Rebus stopped. He knew what Hogan meant: what’s the point of going to the airfield? But then he started walking again, couldn’t think of anything else to do. He punched Siobhan’s number into his mobile, but a recording told him the number wasn’t available and he should try again later. He punched it in again, same response. Dropped the tiny silver box onto the ground and stamped on it, hard as he could, with the heel of his shoe.

It was dusk by the time Rebus arrived at the locked gates.

He got out of the car and tried the entry phone, but no one was answering. He could see Siobhan’s car through the fence, parked next to the office. The office door was standing open, as though someone had been in a hurry.

Or maybe struggling . . . not bothering to close it after them.

Rebus pushed at the gate, put his shoulder to it. The chain rattled but wasn’t going to yield. He stood back and kicked it. Kicked it again and again. Shouldered it, smashed his fists against it. Pressed his head to it, eyes squeezed shut.

“Siobhan . . .” His voice breaking.

He knew what he needed: bolt cutters. A patrol car could bring some, if Rebus had any way of calling one.

Brimson . . . he knew it now. Knew Brimson was running drugs, had planted them on his dead friend’s boat. He didn’t know why, but he’d find out. Siobhan had discovered the truth somehow, and had died as a result. Perhaps she’d wrestled with him, explaining the erratic flight path. He opened his eyes wide, blinking back tears.