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
The 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.”