The Naming Of The Dead (2006) (28 page)

Aldgate.

King’s Cross.

Edgware Road.

And fresh speculation that a bus had also been wrecked. The broadcaster’s face was pale. An emergency number was running along the foot of the screen.

“What do we do?” Siobhan asked quietly as the TV showed live pictures from one of the scenes—medics running pell-mell, smoke billowing, wounded sitting curbside. Glass and sirens and the alarms from cars and nearby offices.

“Do?” Rebus echoed. He was saved from answering by Siobhan’s phone. She put it to her ear.

“Mum?” she said. “Yes, we’re watching it right now.” She paused, listening. “I’m sure they’re fine...Yes, you could call the number. Might take a while to get through though.” Another pause to listen. “What? Today? They might have locked down King’s Cross...” She’d half turned from Rebus. He decided to leave the room, let her say whatever needed saying. In the kitchen, he ran the tap, filled the kettle. Listened to the water running: such a basic sound, he almost never heard it. It was just there...

Normal.

Everyday.

And when he closed the tap, there was a faint gurgle. Funny how he couldn’t remember having caught it before. When he turned, Siobhan was standing there.

“Mum wants to go home,” she said, “make sure the neighbors are okay.”

“I don’t even know where they live.”

“Forest Hill,” she told him. “South of the Thames.”

“No lunch then?”

She shook her head. He handed a strip of paaper towel to her and she blew her nose.

“Puts things in perspective, something like this,” she said.

“Not really. It’s been in the air all week. There were times I could almost taste it.”

“That’s three tea bags,” she said.

“What?”

“You’ve just put three tea bags in that mug.” She handed him the teapot. “This what you were thinking of?”

“Maybe,” he conceded. In his mind he was seeing a statue in the desert, smashed to smithereens...

Siobhan had gone home. She would help her parents, maybe take them to the train if that was still the plan. Rebus watched TV. The red double-decker had been ripped apart, its roof lying in the road in front of it. And yet there were survivors. A small miracle, it seemed to him. His instinct was to open the bottle and pour, but so far he’d resisted. Eyewitnesses were telling their stories. The prime minister was on his way south, leaving the foreign secretary in charge at Gleneagles. Blair had made a statement before leaving, flanked by his G8 colleagues. You could just make out the Band-Aids on President Bush’s knuckles. Back on the news, people were talking about crawling over body parts to get out of the trains. Crawling through smoke and blood. Some had used their camera phones to capture the horror. Rebus wondered what instinct had kicked in to make them do that, turning them into war correspondents. The bottle was on the mantelpiece. The tea was cold in his hand. Three bad men had been chosen for death by a person or persons unknown. Ben Webster had fallen to his doom. Big Ger Cafferty and Gareth Tench were squaring up for violence.
Puts things in perspective
—Siobhan’s words. Rebus wasn’t so sure. Because now more than ever he wanted answers to questions, wanted faces and names. He couldn’t do anything about London or suicide bombers or casual carnage on the scale in front of him. All he could do was lock up a few bad people now and then. Results that didn’t seem to change the bigger picture. Another image came to mind: Mickey as a kid, maybe Kirkcaldy Beach or some holiday in St. Andrews or Blackpool. Frantically scooping up lines of damp sand, creating a barrier against the creeping sea. Working as if his life depended on it. And big brother John, too, using the small plastic shovel to pile the sand on, Mickey patting it down. Twenty, thirty feet long, maybe six inches high...But the first flecks of foam would be arriving before they had a chance, and they’d have to watch their edifice melt, becoming one with its surroundings. Squealing in defeat, stamping their feet and waving their tiny fists at the lapping water and the treacherous shore and the unmoved sky.

And God.

God above all else.

The bottle seemed to be swelling in size, or maybe it was that
he
was growing smaller. He thought of some lines in a Jackie Leven song:
But my boat is so small, and your sea is so immense
. Immense, yes, but why did it have to be so full of bloody sharks? When the phone started ringing, he considered not answering. Considered for all of ten seconds. It was Ellen Wylie.

“Any news?” he asked. Then he barked out a short laugh and squeezed the bridge of his nose. “Apart from the obvious, I mean.”

“State of shock here,” she told him. “Nobody’s about to figure out that you copied all that stuff and took it home. I doubt anyone’s going to look twice at anything until this week’s over. I thought I might head back to Torphichen, see how my team is doing.”

“Good idea.”

“London contingent are being sent home. Could be we’ll need all available hands.”

“I won’t be holding my breath.”

“Actually, even the anarchists seem to be stunned. Word from Gleneagles is, it’s all gone quiet. A lot of them just want to go home.”

Rebus had risen from his chair. He was standing by the mantelpiece. “Time like this, you want to be near your loved ones.”

“John, are you all right?”

“Just dandy, Ellen.” He drew a finger down the bottle’s length. It was Dewar’s, pale gold in color. “You get yourself back to Torphichen.”

“Do you want me to drop by later?”

“I don’t think we’ll have accomplished much.”

“Tomorrow then?”

“Sounds good. Talk to you then.” He cut the connection, leaned both hands against the edge of the mantelpiece.

Could have sworn the bottle was staring back at him.

20

T
here were buses heading south, and Siobhan’s parents had decided to catch one of them.

“We’d have been leaving tomorrow anyway,” her father had said, giving her a hug.

“You never did get to Gleneagles,” she’d told him. He’d pecked her on the cheek, right on the line of her jaw, and for a few seconds she’d been a kid again. Always the same spot, be it Christmas or a birthday, good grades at school, or just because he was feeling happy.

And then another embrace from her mother, and whispered words: “It doesn’t matter.” Meaning the damage to her face; meaning finding the culprit. And then, pulling free of the embrace but still holding her at arm’s length: “Come see us soon.”

“Promise,” Siobhan had said.

The apartment seemed empty without them. She realized that she lived most of her time there in silence. Well, not silence—there was always music or the radio or TV. But not many visitors, nobody whistling as they walked down the hall, or humming as they washed up.

Nobody but her.

She’d tried calling Rebus, but he wasn’t answering. The TV was on; she couldn’t bring herself to switch it off. Thirty dead...forty dead...maybe fifty. The mayor of London had made a good speech. Al-Qaeda had claimed responsibility. The queen was “deeply shocked.” London’s commuters were starting the long march home from work. Commentators were asking why the terror alert had been downgraded from severe general to substantial. She wanted to ask them: What difference would it have made?

She went to the fridge. Her mother had been busy at the local shops: duck fillets, lamb chops, a slab of cheese, organic fruit juice. Siobhan tried the freezer compartment and hauled out a frosted tub of Mackie’s vanilla ice cream. Got herself a spoon and went back through to the living room. For want of anything else to do, she booted up her computer. Fifty-three e-mails. A quick glance told her she could delete the vast bulk of them. Then she remembered something, reached into her pocket. The CD-ROM. She slotted it into her hard drive. A few clicks of the mouse and she was studying a screen’s worth of thumbnails. Stacey Webster had taken a few of the young mother and her pink-clad baby. Siobhan had to smile. The woman was obviously using her child as a prop, enacting the same diaper-changing scenario in different locations, always directly in front of police lines. A great photo op, and a potential flash point. There was even an image of the various press cameramen, Mungo included. But Stacey had been concentrating on the demonstrators, putting together a nice little dossier for her masters at SO12. Some of the cops would be from the Met. They’d be on their way south now, to help in the aftermath, to check on loved ones, maybe eventually to attend the funerals of colleagues. If her mother’s attacker turned out to be from London...she didn’t know what she’d do.

Her mother’s words:
It doesn’t matter
...

She shook the notion away. It was fifty or sixty pictures in before Siobhan spotted her mum and dad—Teddy Clarke trying to drag his wife away from the front line. A complete melee around them. Batons raised, mouths open in a roar or a grimace. Trash bins flying. Dirt and uprooted flowers flying.

And then the stick connecting with the front of her mother’s face. Siobhan almost flinched, but forced herself to look. A stick, looked like something picked up off the ground. Not a baton. And swung from the protesters’ side of the trouble. The person holding it, he retreated fast. And suddenly Siobhan knew. It was just like she’d been told by Mungo the photographer: you strike out at the cops, and when they retaliate you make sure innocent civilians are in the firing line. Maximum PR, make the cops look like thugs. Her mother flinched as contact was made. Her face was blurred with movement, but the pain was evident. Siobhan rubbed her thumb over the screen, as if to take away the hurt. Followed the stick back to its owner’s bare arm. His shoulder was in the shot, but not his head. She went back a few frames, then forward a few past the actual blow.

There.

He’d placed a hand behind his back, hiding the stick, but it was still there. And Stacey had caught him full-face, caught the glee in his eyes, the crooked grin. A few more frames and he was up on his toes, chanting. Baseball cap low down on his forehead, but unmistakable.

The kid from Niddrie, the leader of the pack. Heading down to Princes Street like many of his kind—just for the pure hell of it.

Last seen by Siobhan emerging from the sheriff court, where Councilman Gareth Tench waited. Tench’s words:
A couple of my constituents got caught up in all that trouble
...Tench returning the culprit’s salute as he walked free from court. Siobhan’s hand was trembling slightly as she tried Rebus again. Still no answer. She got up and walked around the apartment, in and out of every room. The towels in the bathroom had been neatly folded and left in a pile. There was an empty soup carton in the bin in the kitchen. It had been rinsed out so that it wouldn’t smell. Her mother’s little touches...She stood in front of her bedroom’s full-length mirror, trying to see any resemblance. She thought she looked more like her father. They’d be on the A1 by now, making steady progress south. She hadn’t told them the truth about Santal, probably never would. Back at the computer she went through all the other photos, then started again from the beginning, this time on the lookout for just the one figure, one skinny little troublemaker in his baseball cap, T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers. Tried printing some of them off, but got a warning that her ink levels were low. There was a computer shop on Leith Walk. She grabbed her keys and purse.

The bottle was empty and there was no more in the house. Rebus had found a half bottle of Polish vodka in the freezer, but its contents had been reduced to a single measure. Couldn’t be bothered walking to the shops, so he made himself a mug of tea instead and sat down at the dining table, skimming through the case notes. Ellen Wylie had been impressed by Ben Webster’s CV, and so was Rebus. He went through it again. The world’s trouble spots: some people were drawn to them—adventurers, newsmen, mercenaries. Rebus had been told a while back that Mairie Henderson’s boyfriend was a cameraman and had traveled to Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, Iraq...But Rebus got the feeling Ben Webster hadn’t gone to any of these places from the need for a thrill, or even because he’d felt them particularly worthy causes. He’d gone because that was his job.

“It is our most basic duty as human beings,” he’d said in one of his parliamentary speeches, “to aid sustainable development wherever and whenever possible in the poorest and harshest regions of the world.” It was a point he’d hammered home elsewhere—to various committees, on public platforms, and in media interviews.

My brother was a good man
...

Rebus didn’t doubt it. Nor could he think of any reason that someone would have pushed him from those ramparts onto the rocks below. Hardworking as he was, Ben Webster still hadn’t posed much of a threat to Pennen Industries. Rebus was coming back round to the suicide option. Maybe Webster had been made depressed by all those conflicts and famines and catastrophes. Maybe he’d known in advance that little progress would be made at the G8, his hopes of a better world stalled once again. Leaping into the void to bring attention to the situation? Rebus couldn’t really see that. Webster had sat down to dinner with powerful and influential men, diplomats and politicians from several nations. Why not voice his concerns to
them?
Make a fuss, kick up a stink. Shout and scream...

That scream flying into the night sky as he launched himself into the dark.

“No,” Rebus said to himself, shaking his head. It felt to him as though the jigsaw was complete enough for him to make out the image, but with some of the pieces wrongly placed.

“No,” he repeated, going back to his reading.

A good man
...

After a further twenty minutes, he found an interview from one of the Sunday supplements of twelve months back. Webster was being questioned about his early days as an MP. He’d had a mentor of sorts, another Scottish MP and Labor highflier called Colin Anderson.

Rebus’s own member of parliament.

“Didn’t see you at the funeral, Colin,” Rebus said quietly, underlining a couple of sentences.

Webster is quick to credit Anderson for the help he gave the tyro MP: “He made sure I avoided the obvious pratfalls, and I can’t thank him enough for that.” But the sure-footed Webster is more reticent by far when questioned about the allegation that it was Anderson who propelled him into his current role as parliamentary private secretary, placing him where he could be of future assistance to the minister for trade in any leadership contest...

“Well, well,” Rebus said, blowing across the surface of his cup, even though the liquid within was tepid at best.

“I’d completely forgotten,” Rebus said, dragging a spare chair over to the table, “that my own member of parliament was minister for trade. I know you’re busy, so I’ll keep this short.”

He was in a restaurant on Edinburgh’s south side. Early evening, but the place was busy. The staff were making up a place setting for him, trying to hand him a menu. The Right Honorable Colin Anderson, MP, was seated across from his wife at a table meant for two.

“Who the hell are you?” he asked.

Rebus was handing the menu back to the waiter. “I’m not eating,” he explained. Then, to the MP: “My name’s John Rebus. I’m a detective inspector. Did your secretary not say?”

“Can I see some identification?” Anderson was asking.

“Not really her fault,” Rebus was telling him. “I exaggerated a little, said it was an emergency.” He’d opened his ID for inspection. While the MP studied it, Rebus smiled in his wife’s direction.

“Should I...?” She motioned to rise from the table.

“Nothing top secret,” Rebus assured her. Anderson was handing back Rebus’s ID.

“If you don’t mind me saying, Inspector, this isn’t exactly conve nient.”

“I thought your secretary would have told you.”

Anderson lifted his cell from the table. “No signal,” he stated.

“You should do something about that,” Rebus commented. “Lots of the city still like that.”

“Have you been drinking, Inspector?”

“Only when off-duty, sir.” Rebus fussed in his pocket until he found the pack.

“There’s no smoking in here,” Anderson warned him.

Rebus looked at the cigarette pack as though it had crawled unnoticed into his hand. He apologized and put it away again. “Didn’t see you at the funeral, sir,” he told the MP.

“Which funeral?”

“Ben Webster. You were a good friend to him in his early days.”

“I was otherwise engaged.” The MP made a show of checking his watch.

“Ben’s sister told me that once her brother was dead, Labor would soon forget about him.”

“I think that’s unreasonable. Ben was a friend of mine, Inspector, and I
did
want to attend the funeral...”

“But you’ve been busy,” Rebus said, all understanding. “And here you are, trying to catch a quick, quiet meal with your wife, and I come barging in unannounced.”

“It happens to be my wife’s birthday. We managed—God knows how—to keep a window free—”

“And I’ve gone and smudged it.” Rebus turned to the wife. “Many happy returns.”

The waiter was placing a wineglass in front of Rebus. “Maybe some water instead?” Anderson suggested. Rebus nodded.

“Have you been busy with the G8?” the MP’s wife leaned forward to ask him.

“Busy
despite
the G8,” Rebus corrected her. He saw husband and wife exchange a glance, knew what they were thinking. A hungover cop, wired from all the demonstrations and the chaos and now the bombings. Damaged goods, to be handled with care.

“Can this really not wait till morning, Inspector?” Anderson asked quietly.

“I’m looking into Ben Webster’s death,” Rebus explained. His voice sounded nasal, even to his own ears, and there was a creeping mist at the edges of his vision. “Can’t seem to find a reason for him to take his own life.”

“More likely an accident, surely,” the MP’s wife offered.

“Or he was given a hand,” Rebus stated.

“What?” Anderson’s hands stopped arranging the cutlery in front of him.

“Richard Pennen wants to link overseas aid to arms sales, doesn’t he? How’s it going to work—he donates a chunk of money in exchange for looser controls?”

“Don’t be absurd.” The MP allowed his voice to betray his irritation.

“Were you at the castle that night?”

“I was busy at Westminster.”

“Any chance that Webster had words with Pennen? Maybe at your behest?”

“What sort of words?”

“Cutting back the arms trade...turning all those guns into plow-shares.”

“Look, you can’t just go around defaming Richard Pennen. If there’s any evidence, I’d like to see it.”

“Me, too,” Rebus agreed.

“Meaning there’s none? And you’re basing this witch hunt on what exactly, Inspector?”

“On the fact that Special Branch wants me to butt out, or at the very least toe the line.”

“While you’d prefer to cross that same line?”

“Only way of getting anywhere.”

“Ben Webster was an outstanding member of parliament and a rising star in his party.”

“And he’d have supported you to the hilt in any leadership contest,” Rebus couldn’t help adding.

“Now you’re just being bloody scurrilous!” Anderson snarled.

“Was he the sort to get up the nose of big business?” Rebus asked. “The sort who couldn’t be bribed or bought off?” His head was feeling even muzzier.

“You seem exhausted, Officer,” the MP’s wife said, voice sympathetic. “Are you sure this really can’t wait?”

Rebus was shaking his head, aware of its sheer mass. Felt like he might crash through the floor, his body was so heavy...

“Darling,” the MP’s wife was telling her husband, “here’s Rosie.”

A flustered-looking young woman was squeezing her way between the tables. The staff looked worried that they might be asked to sit four at a table intended for two.