Exit Music (2007) (12 page)

15

R
ebus had only called because he was bored. But within a minute of Clarke answering his call, a black VW Golf was roaring to a curbside stop outside the car park. The woman who emerged had to be Cath Mills, so Rebus cut the call short.

“Miss Mills?” he said, taking a step towards her. With late afternoon darkness had come biting gusts of wind, scudding in from the North Sea. He didn’t know what he’d been expecting “the Reaper” to be wearing—a full-length cape maybe. But in fact her coat was more like a parka with fur-trimmed hood. She was in her late thirties, tall, with red hair in a pageboy cut and black-rimmed spectacles. Her face was pale and rounded, lips reddened with lipstick. She looked nothing like the picture in his pocket.

“Inspector Rebus?” she assumed, giving a short-lived shake of the hand. She wore black leather driving gloves, which she plunged into her pockets afterwards. “I hate this time of year,” she muttered, checking the sky. “Dark when you get up, dark when you go home.”

“You keep regular hours?” Rebus asked.

“Job like this, there’s always something needs dealing with.” She glowered at the Out of Order sign next to the nearest exit barrier.

“So were you out and about on Wednesday night?”

She was still looking at the barrier. “Home by nine, I seem to think. Problem at our facility in Canning Street—shift hadn’t turned up. I got the attendant to pull a double, so that was that.” Slowly, she turned her attention to Rebus. “You’re asking about the night the man was killed.”

“That’s right. Pity your CCTV’s worse than useless . . . might’ve given us something to work with.”

“We didn’t install it with slaughter in mind.”

Rebus ignored this. “So you didn’t happen to pass here around ten o’clock on the night it happened?”

“Who says I did?”

“No one, but we’ve a woman matching your description . . .” Okay, so he was stretching it, but he wanted to see how she would react. All she did was raise an eyebrow and fold her arms.

“And how,” she asked, “did you happen to get my description in the first place?” She glanced towards the car park. “Boys been telling tales out of school? I’ll have to see to it they’re disciplined.”

“Actually, all they said was that you sometimes wear a hood. A pedestrian happened to spot a woman hanging around, and she was wearing a hood, too . . .”

“A woman with her hood up? At ten o’clock on a winter’s night? And this is your idea of narrowing the field?”

All of a sudden, Rebus wanted the day to be over. He wanted to be seated on a bar stool with a drink before him and everything else left far behind. “If you weren’t here,” he said with a sigh, “just say so.”

She thought this over for a moment. “I’m not sure,” she said at last, drawing the words out.

“What do you mean?”

“Might liven things up, being a suspect in a police case . . .”

“Thanks, but we get quite enough time wasters as it is. The worst offenders,” he added, “we might even prosecute.”

Her face opened into a smile. “Sorry,” she apologized. “Been a long, grueling day; I probably picked the wrong person to tease.” Her attention was back on the barrier. “I suppose I should talk to Gary, make sure he’s reported that.” She peeled back a glove to look at her wristwatch. “Just about see me through to the end of play . . .” She brought her eyes back to Rebus’s. “After which I dare say I can be located in Montpelier’s.”

“Wine bar in Bruntsfield?” It had taken Rebus only a couple of seconds to place it.

Her smile widened. “Thought you looked the kind who’d know,” she said.

In the end, he stayed for three drinks—blame the “Third Glass Free” promotion. Not that he was drinking glasses of anything: three small bottles of imported lager, keeping his wits about him. Cath Mills was a pro, her own three drinks adding up to a whole bottle of Rioja. She’d parked her car around the corner, since she lived in a flat nearby and could leave it there overnight.

“So don’t think you can have me for drunk driving,” she’d said with a wag of the finger.

“I’m walking, too,” he’d answered, explaining that his own flat was in Marchmont.

When he’d entered the bar, assailed by loudspeaker music and office chatter, she’d been waiting in a booth at the back.

“Hoping I wouldn’t find you?” he’d speculated.

“Don’t want to seem too easy, do I?”

The conversation had mostly been about his job, plus the usual Edinburgh rants: the traffic, the roadworks, the council, the cold. She’d warned him that there wasn’t much of a story to her own life.

“Married at eighteen, divorced by twenty; tried again at thirty-four, and it lasted all of six months. Should have known better by then, shouldn’t I?”

“You can’t always have been a parking supervisor, though?”

Indeed not: office job after office job, then her own little consulting business, which had plummeted to earth after two and a half years, not helped by Husband Two hoofing it with the savings.

“I was a PA after that but couldn’t hack it . . . bit of time on the dole and trying to retrain, then this came along.”

“My line of work,” Rebus had said, “I hear people’s stories all the time—they always hold back the interesting stuff.”

“Then take me in for questioning,” she’d replied, stretching her arms wide.

Eventually, he’d got her to say a little about Gary Walsh and Joe Wills. She, too, suspected Wills of drinking on the job, but had yet to catch him.

“Being a detective, you could find out for me.”

“It’s a private eye you need. Or set up a few more CCTV cameras without him knowing about it.”

She’d laughed at that, before telling the waitress she was ready for her free drink.

After an hour, they were checking their watches and giving little smiles across the table to each other. “What about you?” she’d asked. “Found anyone who’ll put up with you?”

“Not for a while. I was married, one daughter—in her thirties now.”

“No office romances? High-pressure job, working in a team . . . I know how it is.”

“Hasn’t happened to me,” he’d confirmed.

“Bully for you.” She sniffed and gave a twitch of the mouth. “I’ve given up on one-night stands . . . more or less.” The twitch becoming another smile.

“This has been nice,” he’d said, aware of how awkward it sounded.

“You won’t get into trouble for consorting with a suspect?”

“Who’s going to tell?”

“Nobody needs to.” And she’d pointed towards the bar’s own CCTV camera, trained on them from a corner of the ceiling. They’d both laughed at that, and as she shrugged back into her parka he’d asked again: “
Were
you there that night? Be honest now . . .” And she’d shaken her head, as much of an answer as he was going to get.

Outside, he’d handed her a business card with the number of his mobile on it. No peck on the cheek or squeeze of the hand: they were two scarred veterans, each respectful of the other. On his way home, Rebus had stopped for fish and chips, eating them out of the little cardboard box. They didn’t come wrapped in newspaper anymore, something to do with public health. Didn’t taste the same either, and the portions of haddock had been whittled away. Blame overfishing in the North Sea. Haddock would soon be a delicacy; either that or extinct. He’d finished by the time he arrived at his tenement, pulling himself up the two flights of stairs. There was no mail waiting, not even a utility bill. He switched on the lights in the living room and selected some music, then called Siobhan.

“What’s up?” she asked.

“Just wondered where we go from here.”

“I was thinking of going to the fridge for a can of something.”

“Time was, that would have been
my
line.”

“The times are a-changing.”

“And
that’s
one of mine, too!”

He could hear her laughing. Then she asked how his interview with Cath Mills had gone.

“Another dead end.”

“Took long enough to drive down it.”

“Didn’t see the point of coming back to base.” He paused. “Thinking of reporting me for bad timekeeping?”

“I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. What’s the music you’re playing?”

“It’s called
Little Criminals
. There’s a track on it called ‘Jolly Coppers on Parade.’”

“Not someone au fait with the police then . . .”

“It’s Randy Newman. There’s another title of his I like: ‘You Can’t Fool the Fat Man.’”

“And would the fat man be yourself, by any chance?”

“Maybe I’ll keep you guessing.” He let the silence linger for a moment. “You’re starting to side with Macrae, aren’t you? You think we should be concentrating on the mugger file?”

“I’ve put Phyl and Colin on it,” Clarke conceded.

“You’re losing your bottle?”

“I’m not losing
anything
.”

“Okay, I put that badly . . . It’s good to be cautious, Shiv. I’m not about to blame you for it.”

“Think about it for a second, John. Was Todorov followed from the Caledonian Hotel? Not according to your CCTV wizard. Did a prostitute proposition him? Maybe, and maybe her pimp jumped in with a length of lead pipe. Whatever happened, the poet was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“That much we agree on.”

“And getting up the noses of MSPs, Russian tycoons, and First Albannach Bank isn’t going to get us anywhere.”

“But it’s fun, isn’t it? What’s the point of a job if you’re not having fun?”

“It’s fun for
you
, John . . . it’s always been fun for you.”

“So humor me, my last week at work.”

“I thought that’s what I
was
doing.”

“No, Shiv, what you’re doing is writing me off. That’s what Todd Goodyear is about—he’s your number two, same way you used to be mine. You’re already starting to train him up, and probably enjoying it, too.”

“Now hang on a sec . . .”

“And I’m guessing he’s also a means to an end—as long as you’ve got him with you, you don’t have to choose between Phyl and Col.”

“With insights like that, it’s a wonder you never got farther up the ladder.”

“Thing about that ladder, Shiv, each rung you climb there’s another arse waiting to be licked.”

“What a lovely image.”

“We all need some poetry in our lives.” He told her he’d see her tomorrow—“always supposing I’m needed”—and ended the call. Sat there another five minutes wondering if she’d call back, but she didn’t. There was something too cheery about Randy Newman’s delivery, so Rebus turned off the album. Plenty of darker stuff he could play—early King Crimson or Peter Hammill, for example—but instead he walked around the silent flat, going from room to room, and ended up in the hallway with the keys to the Saab in his hand.

“Why the hell not?” he told himself. It wasn’t as if it would be the first time, and he doubted it would be the last. Wasn’t drunk enough for it to be a problem. He locked the flat and headed down the stairwell, out into the night. Unlocked the Saab and got in. It was only a five-minute drive, and took him past Montpelier’s again. A right-hand turn off Bruntsfield Place, then one more right and he was parking in a quiet street of detached Victorian-era houses. He’d been here so often, he’d started to notice changes: new lampposts or new pavements. Signs had gone up warning that come March the parking would be zoned. It had already happened in Marchmont; hadn’t made it any easier to find a space. A few rubbish dumpsters had come and gone. He’d heard the Polish accents of the workmen. Extensions had been added to some homes, and the garages dismantled in two separate gardens. Plenty of comings and goings during the day, but much quieter in the evening. Practically every house had its own driveway, but cars from neighboring streets would park up overnight. No one had ever paid attention to Rebus. In fact, one dog walker had started to mistake him for a local, and would nod and smile or offer a hello. The dog itself was small and wiry and looked less trusting, turning away from him the one time he’d tried crouching down to pat it.

That had been a rare occurrence: mostly he stayed in the car, hands on the steering wheel, window rolled down, and a cigarette between his lips. The radio could be playing. He wouldn’t even be watching the house necessarily, but he knew who lived there. Knew, too, that there was a coach house in the back garden, which was where the bodyguard lived. One time, a car had stopped when it was halfway through the driveway gates. The bodyguard was in the front, but it was the back window that had slid soundlessly down, the better for the passenger to make eye contact with the watching Rebus. The look was a mixture of contempt, frustration, and maybe even pity—though this last would have been imitation.

Rebus doubted Big Ger Cafferty had ever in his adult life felt an emotion like pity for another human being.

DAY FIVE

Tuesday 21 November 2006

16

T
he air still smoldered, the charred smell almost overpowering. Siobhan Clarke held a handkerchief to her mouth and nose. Rebus stubbed out his breakfast underfoot.

“Bloody hell” was all he could think to say.

Todd Goodyear had heard the news first and had phoned Clarke, who was halfway to the scene before she decided to call Rebus. They now stood on a roadway in Joppa while the fire crew gathered up the spent coils of hose. Charles Riordan’s house was a shell, the windowpanes gone, roof collapsed.

“Can we go in yet?” Clarke asked one of the firemen.

“What’s the rush?”

“I’m just asking.”

“Talk to the boss . . .”

Some of the firemen were sweating, rubbing smudges of soot across their foreheads. They’d taken off their oxygen tanks and masks. They were talking among themselves, like a gang after a rumble, debating their roles in the action. A neighbor had brought them water and juice. More neighbors were standing in their doorways or gardens, while onlookers from farther afield shuffled and whispered. It was a D Division call and two suits from Leith CID had already asked Clarke what Gayfield Square’s interest was.

“Witness in a case” was all she’d told them: no point giving away anything more. The suits hadn’t been happy about it and were now keeping their distance, phones held to their ears.

“Reckon he was at home?” Rebus asked Clarke.

She shrugged. “Remember what we were talking about last night?”

“You mean the argument we were having? Me reading way too much into Todorov’s death?”

“Don’t rub it in.”

Rebus decided to play devil’s advocate. “Could be an accident, of course. And hey, maybe we’ll find him alive and well at his studio.”

“I’ve tried calling—no answer as yet.” She nodded towards a curbside TVR. “Woman two doors down says that’s his car. He parked it last night—she knows it was him because of the noise it makes.” The TVR’s windscreen was shrouded in ash. Rebus watched two more firemen step gingerly over some timbers on their way into what was left of the house. Some of the shelves were still visible in the hallway, though most had been destroyed.

“Fire investigator on his way?” Rebus asked.

“On
her
way,” Clarke corrected him.

“The march of progress . . .” An ambulance crew had turned up, too, but were now checking their watches, unwilling to waste much more time. Todd Goodyear came bounding forward, dressed in a suit rather than a uniform. He nodded a greeting at Rebus and started leafing back through his notebook.

“How many of those do you get through a month?” Rebus couldn’t help asking. Clarke gave him a warning look.

“I’ve talked to the neighbors either side of him,” Goodyear reported to Clarke. “They’re in a state of shock, of course—terrified their own houses might be about to explode. They want to get back in and save a few bits and pieces, but the brigade’s not having it. Seems Riordan came home at eleven thirty. After that, not a peep from him.”

“The way he’d soundproofed the house . . .”

Goodyear nodded enthusiastically. “Unlikely they’d have heard anything. One of the fire officers says the acoustic baffling was probably part of the problem—it can be incredibly flammable.”

“Riordan didn’t have any visitors in the night?” Clarke asked.

Goodyear shook his head. He couldn’t help glancing towards Rebus, as if expecting some sort of praise or appraisal.

“You’re in mufti” was all Rebus said.

The constable’s eyes swiveled between the two detectives. Clarke cleared her throat before speaking.

“If he’s working with us, I thought he’d look less conspicuous . . .”

Rebus tried staring her out, then nodded slowly, though he knew she was lying. The suit had been Goodyear’s idea, and now she was covering for him. Before he could say anything, a red car with flashing light roared into view, stuttering to a halt.

“The fire inspector,” Clarke announced. The woman who emerged from the car was elegant and businesslike and seemed straight off to have the brigade’s attention and respect. Officers started pointing at parts of the smoke-streaked building, obviously giving their side of the story, while the two detectives from Leith hovered nearby.

“Think we should introduce ourselves?” Clarke asked Rebus.

“Sooner or later,” he told her. But she’d already decided and was striding towards the cluster of bodies. Rebus followed, indicating for Goodyear to hang back. The constable seemed reluctant, hopping from pavement to roadway and back again. Rebus had attended plenty of house fires, including one he’d ended up being accused of starting. There’d been a fatality that time, too. . . . Not much fun for the pathologists, when there were victims to be identified. He’d almost burned his own flat down once, as well, falling into a stupor on the sofa with the cigarette hanging from his mouth. He’d woken to smouldering fabric and a plume of sulfurous smoke.

Easily done . . .

Clarke was shaking hands with the FI. Not everyone looked happy: the firefighters reckoned CID should leave them to get on with it. Natural reaction, and one Rebus could sympathize with. All the same, he started lighting another cigarette, reckoning it might get him noticed.

“Bloody menace,” one of the brigade dutifully muttered. Mission accomplished. The FI’s name was Katie Glass, and she was telling Clarke what happened next: locating any victims, securing breached gas sources, checking the obvious.

“Meaning anything from a chip pan left on the heat to an electrical fault.”

Clarke nodded along until Glass had finished, then explained about the homeowner’s role in an ongoing investigation, aware of Leith CID listening in.

“And that makes you suspect something?” Glass guessed. “So be it, but I always like to enter a scene with an open mind—preconceptions mean you can miss things.” She moved towards the garden gate, flanked by firefighters and watched by Rebus and Clarke.

“There’s a café back in Portobello,” Rebus said, giving a final glance towards the gutted house. “Fancy a fry-up?”

Afterwards, they headed to Gayfield Square, where Hawes and Tibbet, feeling abandoned, welcomed them with frowns. They soon perked up at news of the fire and asked if it meant they could put the HMF away. Goodyear asked what that was.

“Habitual Mugger File,” Hawes explained.

“Not an official term,” Tibbet added, slapping a hand against the pile of box files.

“Thought they’d all be on computer,” Goodyear commented.

“If you’re applying for the job . . . ?”

But Goodyear waved the offer aside. Clarke was seated at her desk, tapping it with a pen.

“What now, boss?” Rebus asked, receiving a glare for his efforts.

“I need to talk to Macrae again,” she said at last, though she could see his office was empty. “Has he been in?”

Hawes shrugged. “Not since we got here.”

“Travel in together?” Rebus asked, all innocence. It was Colin Tibbet’s turn to glower at him.

“This changes everything,” Clarke was saying quietly.

“Unless it was an accident,” Rebus reminded her.

“First Todorov, now the man he spent his final evening with . . .” It was Goodyear who had spoken, but Clarke was nodding her agreement.

“Could all be a horrible coincidence,” Rebus argued. Clarke stared at him.

“Christ, John,
you
were the one seeing conspiracies! Now it looks like we’ve got a connection, you’re pouring cold water on it!”

“Isn’t that what you do with a fire?” When he saw the blood shooting up Clarke’s neck, he knew he’d gone too far. “Okay, say you’re right—you still need to run it past Macrae. And meantime, we wait to hear if they find a body. And supposing they do, we then wait to see what Gates and Curt make of it.” He paused. “That’s what’s called ‘procedure’—you know it as well as I do.” Clarke knew he was right, and he watched as her shoulders relaxed a little and she dropped the pen onto the desk, where it rolled and settled.

“For once John’s not wrong,” she told the room, “much as it galls me to say it.” She smiled, and he smiled back with a little bow from the waist.

“Had to happen once in my career,” he said. “Better late than never, I suppose.” There were more smiles, and Rebus felt it at that moment. The inquiry had been on the go for days, but only now had everything changed.

Despite the scowls and the sniping, they really were a team.

Which was how Macrae found them when he walked into the CID suite. Even he seemed to sense a change of atmosphere. Clarke gave him her report, keeping everything simple. The phone rang on Hawes’s desk, and Rebus wondered if it was another response to their public appeal. He thought again of the prostitute, trying to do business on a no-through-road, and of Cath Mills, stoking up on Rioja. Todorov was attractive to women—and attracted by them, no doubt. Could a stranger have lured him to his doom with an offer of sex? It was straight out of le Carré . . .

Hawes was off the phone and advancing towards Rebus’s desk. “They found the body” was all she needed to say.

Rebus knocked on Macrae’s door, relaying the message with a look and a nod. Clarke asked the boss if she could be excused. Back in the main body of the kirk, she asked Hawes for details.

“Male, they think. Under a collapsed section of ceiling in the living room.”

“Meaning the studio room,” Goodyear interrupted, reminding them all that he, too, had been to the producer’s home.

“They’ve got their own team taking photographs and the like,” Hawes went on. “Body is on its way to the mortuary.”

To be placed in the Decomposing Room, Rebus didn’t doubt. He wondered how Todd Goodyear would react to seeing a crispy one.

“We should go there,” Clarke told him. But Rebus was shaking his head.

“Take Todd,” he offered. “Part of that CID learning curve . . .”

Hawes was on the phone to CR Studios, giving them the news while confirming that Riordan himself hadn’t actually turned up so far that day. Colin Tibbet’s task was to chase up Richard Browning at the Caledonian Hotel. How long did it take to go through an evening’s worth of bar tabs? If Rebus didn’t know better, he’d have said Browning was chancing his arm, hoping CID would forget all about it. When a face appeared around the door, Rebus was the only one not doing anything.

“There’s someone downstairs,” the desk sergeant said. “Looking to hand in a list of Russians. . . . Could it be the Hearts first team for Saturday?”

But Rebus knew who and what it was: Nikolai Stahov from the consulate; Russian nationals based in Edinburgh. Again, Stahov had taken his time, and Rebus doubted they’d have much use for the list—the landscape had changed since they’d first asked for it. All the same, and for want of anything better to do, he nodded and said he’d be down straightaway.

But when he opened the door to the reception area, the man studying the posters on the walls was not Stahov.

It was Stuart Janney.

“Mr. Janney,” Rebus said, holding out a hand and trying not to show his surprise.

“It’s Detective Inspector . . . ?”

“Rebus,” he reminded the banker.

Janney nodded, as if in apology for not having remembered. “I’m just handing in a message.” He’d lifted an envelope from his pocket. “Didn’t expect someone of your caliber to be on the receiving end.”

“Likewise, I didn’t know you ran errands for the Russian consulate.”

Janney managed a smile. “I ran into Nikolai at Gleneagles. He happened to find the envelope in his pocket . . . mentioned he was supposed to bring it in.”

“You told him you’d save him the trouble?”

Janney gave a shrug. “No big deal.”

“How was the golf?”

“I didn’t play. FAB was giving a presentation, which happened to coincide with the visit by our Russian friends.”

“That
is
a coincidence. Anyone would think you were stalking them.”

Now Janney laughed, head back. “Business is business, Inspector, and, lest we forget, good for Scotland.”

“True enough—that why you’re keeping in with the SNP, too? Reckon they’ll be running the show next May?”

“As I said at our first encounter, the bank has to stay neutral. On the other hand, the Nats are making a strong showing. Independence may be a ways off, but it’s probably inevitable.”

“And good for business?”

Janney gave a shrug. “They’re pledging to drop the rate of corporation tax.”

Rebus was examining the sealed envelope. “Did Comrade Stahov happen to mention what’s in here?”

“Russian nationals living locally. He said it’s to do with the Todorov case. I can’t really see the connection myself . . .” Janney let the sentence hang, as if ready for Rebus’s explanation, but all Rebus did was tuck the envelope inside his jacket.

“How about Mr. Todorov’s bank statements?” he asked instead. “Any further forward with them?”

“As I said, Inspector, there are procedures. Sometimes, without the benefit of an executor, the wheels grind slow . . .”

“So have you done any deals yet?”

“Deals?” Janney seemed not to understand.

“With these Russians I’m supposed to be tiptoeing around.”

“It’s nothing to do with tiptoeing—we just don’t want them getting the wrong idea.”

“About Scotland, you mean? A man’s dead, Mr. Janney—not much we can do to change that.”

The door next to the reception desk opened, and DCI Macrae appeared. He was dressed in coat and scarf, ready to leave.

“Any news on the fire?” he asked Rebus.

“No, sir,” Rebus told him.

“Nothing from the postmortem?”

“Not yet.”

“But you still think it ties to the poet fellow?”

“Sir, this is Mr. Janney. He works for First Albannach Bank.”

The two men shook hands. Rebus hoped his boss would take the hint, but just in case, he added the information that Janney was going to provide details of Todorov’s bank account.

“Am I to understand,” Janney said, “that someone else has died?”

“House fire,” Macrae barked. “Friend of Todorov’s.”

“Gracious me.”

Rebus had extended his own hand towards the banker. “Well,” he interrupted, “thanks again for dropping by.”