“Apart from the parents, you mean?”
Rebus nodded. “Maybe… I don’t know.” He sighed.
“What?”
“Maybe I just want to go through it to get a sense of the lad.” He was thinking of Allan, perhaps even now switching the TV back on and settling down with the video remote, bringing his son back to life in color and sound and movement. But only a facsimile, contained by the tight confines of the box.
Siobhan nodded and bent down to slide the laptop onto the backseat of the car. “I can understand that,” she said.
But Rebus wasn’t so sure that she could.
“You keep up with your family?” he asked her.
“A phone call every other weekend.” He knew both her parents were alive, lived down south. Rebus’s mother had died young; he’d been in his mid-thirties when his father had joined her.
“Did you ever want a sister or brother?” he asked.
“Sometimes, I suppose.” She paused. “Something happened to you, didn’t it?”
“How do you mean?”
“I don’t know exactly.” She thought about it. “I think at some point you decided that a family was a liability, because it could make you weak.”
“As you’ve already surmised, I was never one for hugs and kisses.”
“Maybe so, but you hugged your cousin back there…”
He got into the passenger seat and closed his door. The painkillers were coating his brain in bubble wrap. “Just drive,” he said.
She put the key in the ignition. “Where?”
Rebus remembered something. “Get your mobile out and call the Portakabin.” She pushed the numbers and relinquished the phone to his outstretched hand. When it was answered, Rebus asked to speak to Grant Hood.
“Grant, it’s John Rebus. Listen, I need a number for Steve Holly.”
“Any particular reason?”
“He’s been hassling one of the families. I thought I’d have a quiet word.”
Hood cleared his throat. Rebus remembered the same sound from the tape, and wondered if it was becoming a regular thing with Hood. When the number came, Rebus repeated it so Siobhan could note it down.
“Hold on a minute, John. Boss wants a word.” Meaning Bobby Hogan.
“Bobby?” Rebus said. “News on that bank account?”
“What?”
“The bank account… any big deposits? Jog your memory at all?”
“Never mind that.” There was urgency in Hogan’s voice.
“What is it?” Rebus prompted.
“Seems Lord Jarvies put away one of Herdman’s old pals.”
“Oh, aye? When was this?”
“Just last year. Guy by the name of Robert Niles-ring any bells?”
Rebus furrowed his brow. “Robert Niles?” he repeated. Siobhan nodded, made a slashing motion across her neck.
“The guy who cut his wife’s throat?”
“That’s the one,” Hogan said. “Found fit to plead. Guilty verdict, and life from Lord Jarvies. I got a call, seems Herdman’s been a regular visitor to Niles ever since.”
“What was it… nine, ten months back?”
“They put him in Barlinnie, but he flipped, went for another prisoner, then started cutting at himself.”
“So where’s he now?”
“Carbrae Special Hospital.”
Rebus was thoughtful. “You think Herdman was after the judge’s son?”
“It’s a possibility. Revenge and all that…”
Yes, revenge. That word now hung over both the dead boys…
“I’m going to see him,” Hogan was saying.
“Niles? Is he fit to see anyone?”
“Seems like. Want to tag along?”
“Bobby, I’m flattered. Why me?”
“Because Niles is ex-SAS, John. Served alongside Herdman. If anyone knows the inside of Lee Herdman’s head, it’s him.”
“A killer locked up in a psycho ward? My, aren’t we lucky.”
“The offer’s there, John.”
“When?”
“I was thinking first thing tomorrow. It’s a couple of hours by car.”
“Count me in.”
“Good man. Who knows, you might get stuff out of Niles… empathy and all that.”
“You think so?”
“Way I see it, one look at your hands, and he’ll take you for a fellow sufferer.”
Hogan was chuckling as Rebus handed the phone to Siobhan. She ended the call.
“I got most of that,” she said. Her phone chirruped immediately. It was Gill Templer.
“How come Rebus never answers his phone?” Templer bellowed.
“I think he has it switched off,” Siobhan said, eyes on Rebus. “He can’t push the buttons.”
“Funny, I’ve always taken him for an expert at pushing buttons.” Siobhan smiled: Especially yours, she thought.
“Do you want him?” she asked.
“I want the pair of you back here,” Templer said. “Pronto, with no excuses.”
“What’s happened?”
“You’ve got trouble, that’s what. The worst kind…” Templer let her words hang in the air. Siobhan saw what she must mean.
“The papers?”
“Bingo. Someone’s on to the story, only they’ve added some bells and whistles that I’d like John to explain to me.”
“What sort of bells and whistles?”
“He was spotted leaving the pub with Martin Fairstone, walking home with him, in fact. Spotted leaving, too, a good while later, and just before the house went up in flames. The paper in question is getting ready to lead with it.”
“We’re on our way.”
“I’ll be waiting.” The phone went dead. Siobhan started the car.
“We’ve to go back to St. Leonard’s,” she informed Rebus, going on to explain why.
“Which paper is it?” was all Rebus said at the end of a lengthy silence.
“I didn’t ask.”
“Call her again.”
Siobhan looked at him but made the call.
“Give me the phone,” Rebus ordered. “Don’t want you going off the road.”
He took the phone and held it to his ear, asked to be put through to the chief super’s office.
“It’s John,” he said when Templer answered. “Who’s got the story?”
“Reporter by the name of Steve Holly. And the sod’s like a terrier at a lamppost convention.”
6
I knew it would look bad,” Rebus explained to Templer. “That’s why I didn’t say anything.” They were in Templer’s office at St. Leonard’s. She was seated, Rebus standing. She held a sharpened pencil in one hand, manipulating it, studying its tip, maybe weighing it as a weapon. “You lied to me.”
“I just left out a few details, Gill…”
“A few details?”
“None of them relevant.”
“You went back to his house!”
“We had a drink together.”
“Just you and a known criminal who’d been threatening your closest colleague? Who’d made an allegation of assault against you?”
“I had a word with him. We didn’t argue or anything.” Rebus began to fold his arms, but this served to increase the blood pressure in his hands, so he unfolded them again. “Ask the neighbors, see if they heard raised voices. I’ll tell you right now, they didn’t. We were drinking whiskey in the living room.”
“Not the kitchen?”
Rebus shook his head. “I wasn’t in the kitchen all night.”
“What time did you leave?”
“No idea. Gone midnight, easy.”
“Not long before the fire, then?”
“Long enough.”
She stared at him.
“The man had had a skinful, Gill. We’ve all seen it: they get the munchies, turn on the chip pan, and fall asleep. It’s either that or the lit cigarette down the side of the sofa.”
Templer tested the pencil’s sharpness against her finger.
“How much trouble am I in?” Rebus asked, the silence getting to him.
“Depends on Steve Holly. He makes a song and dance, we have to be seen to be doing something about it.”
“Like putting me on suspension?”
“It had crossed my mind.”
“I don’t suppose I could blame you.”
“That’s awfully magnanimous, John. Why did you go to his house?”
“He asked me. I think he liked playing games. That’s all Siobhan was to him. Then I came along. He sat there feeding me drinks, spouting on about his adventures… I think it gave him a buzz.”
“And what did you think you were going to get out of it?”