‘Were you looking to poach him?’ Rebus kept his mouth shut, letting Carswell draw his own conclusions. ‘On the very morning he took a tumble into the canal... strange coincidence?’
Rebus shrugged. ‘These things happen, sir.’ He fixed his eyes on Carswell’s. They stared one another out.
‘Dismissed, Inspector,’ Carswell said.
Rebus didn’t blink until he was back in the corridor.
He phoned St Leonard’s from Fettes, his hand shaking. But Gill wasn’t there, and nobody seemed to know where she was. Rebus asked the switchboard to page her, then asked to be put through to CID. Siobhan answered.
‘Is Brian there?’
‘I haven’t seen him for a couple of hours. Are you two cooking something up?’
‘The only thing cooking around here is my fucking goose. When you see him, tell him to call. And pass the same message along to Gill Templer.’
He broke the connection before she could say anything. Probably she’d have offered to help, and the one thing Rebus didn’t want right now was anyone else involved. Lying to protect himself... lying to protect Gill Templer... Gill... he had questions for her, urgent questions. He tried her home number, left a message on the answering machine, then tried Holmes’s home number: another machine, same message. Call me.
Wait. Think.
He’d asked Holmes to read up on the Spaven case, and that meant going through the files. When Great London Road police station had been burnt to the ground, a lot of files had gone up with it, but not the older stuff, because by then the older files had been shipped out to make space. They were stored with all the other ancient cases, all the clanking old skeletons, in a warehouse near Granton Harbour. Rebus had guessed Holmes would sign them out, but maybe not...
It was a ten-minute drive from Fettes to the warehouse. Rebus did it in seven. He allowed himself a grin when he saw Holmes’s car in the car park. Rebus walked over to the main door, pulled it open, and was in a vast, dark, echoing space. Regimented rows of green metal shelves ran the length of the warehouse, filled with heavy-duty cardboard boxes, inside which lay the mouldering history of the Lothian and Borders force — and the City of Edinburgh force until its demise — from the 1950s to the 1970s. Documents were still arriving: tea-chests with labels hanging from them sat waiting to be unpacked, and it looked like a changeover was taking place — lidded plastic boxes replacing heavy-duty board. A small elderly man, very trim, with a black moustache and jam-jar glasses, was marching towards Rebus.
‘Yes, can I help you?’
The man defined ‘clerical’. When he wasn’t looking at the floor, he was staring off somewhere past Rebus’s right ear. He wore a grey nylon overall over a white shirt with frayed collar and green tweed tie. Pens and pencils protruded from his top pocket.
Rebus showed his warrant card. ‘I’m looking for a colleague, DS Holmes, I think he may be looking through some old casenotes.’
The man was studying the warrant card. He walked over to a clipboard and wrote down Rebus’s name and rank, plus date and time of arrival.
‘Is that necessary?’ Rebus asked.
The man looked like he’d never in his life been asked such a thing. ‘Paperwork,’ he snapped, looking around at the warehouse’s contents. ‘It’s all necessary, or I wouldn’t be here.’
And he smiled, the overhead lighting glinting from his lenses. ‘This way.’
He led Rebus down an alleyway of boxes, then took a right turn and finally, after a moment’s hesitation, a left. They came into a clearing, where Brian Holmes sat at what looked like an old school desk, inkwell intact. There was no chair, so he was using an upturned box. His elbows rested on the desk, head in hands. There was a lamp on the desk, bathing the scene in light. The clerk coughed.
‘Someone to see you.’
Holmes turned, stood up when he saw who it was. Rebus turned quickly to the clerk.
‘Thanks for your help.’
‘No trouble. I don’t get many visitors.’
The little man shuffled away, footsteps receding into the distance.
‘Don’t worry,’ Holmes said. ‘I’ve laid a trail of breadcrumbs so we can find our way back.’ He looked around. ‘Isn’t this the creepiest place you’ve ever been?’
‘It’s straight into the top five. Listen, Brian, there’s a problem.’ He held up his right hand. ‘Fan.’ Then his left. ‘Shit.’ He clapped both hands together. The sound reverberated through the warehouse.
‘Tell me.’
‘The CC Rider’s opening an inquiry into the Spaven case, prior to reopening the case itself. And he’s managed to put in charge someone I recently rubbed up the wrong way.’
‘Silly you.’
‘Silly me. So no doubt they’ll be down here some day soon to lift the casenotes. And I don’t want them lifting you.’
Holmes looked at the bulging files, the faded black ink on each cover. ‘The files could get lost, couldn’t they?’
‘They could. Two problems. One, that would look highly suspicious. Two, I’m assuming Mr Clipboard knows which files you’ve been consulting.’
‘That’s true,’ Holmes conceded. ‘And it went down on his sheet.’
‘Along with your name.’
‘We could try slipping him some cash.’
‘He doesn’t look the type. He’s not in this for money, is he?’
Holmes looked thoughtful. He also looked terrible: unevenly shaven, his hair uncombed and needing a trim. The bags under his eyes could have carried half a hundredweight of coal.
‘Look,’ he said at last, ‘I’m halfway through... more than halfway. If I burn the candle tonight, maybe speed up my reading, I could have it finished by tomorrow.’
Rebus nodded slowly. ‘What do you think so far?’ He was almost scared to touch the files, to flip through them. It wasn’t history, it was archaeology.
‘I think your typing hasn’t improved. Straight answer: there’s something dodgy going on, that much I can read between the lines. I can see exactly where you’re covering up, rewriting the true story to fit your version. You weren’t quite so subtle in those days. Geddes’ version reads better, more confident. He glosses over stuff, he’s not afraid to understate. What I’d like to know is, what was the story with him and Spaven in the first place? I know you told me they served together in Burma or somewhere; how did they come to fall out? See, if we knew that, we’d know how valid the chip on Geddes’ shoulder was, and maybe how far it would take him.’
Rebus clapped his hands again, this time in muffled applause.
‘That’s good going.’
‘So give me another day, see what else I come up with. John, I want to do this for you.’
‘And if they catch you?’
‘I’ll talk my way out, don’t worry.’
Rebus’s pager sounded. He looked to Holmes.
‘Sooner you go,’ Holmes said, ‘sooner I can get back to it.’
Rebus patted him on the shoulder and headed back along the stacks. Brian Holmes: friend. Difficult to equate with the person who had roughed up Mental Minto. Schizophrenia, the policeman’s ally: a dual personality came in handy...
He asked the clerk if he could use a telephone. There was one on the wall. He called in.
‘DI Rebus.’
‘Yes, Inspector, apparently you’ve been trying to reach DCI Templer.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, I have a location for her. She’s in Ratho, at some restaurant.’
Rebus slammed down the phone, cursing himself for not thinking of it sooner.
The wooden walkway where McLure’s body had lain had been blown dry by the wind, leaving nothing to indicate that a death had occurred so recently. The ducks were skimming the water; one of the boats had just left with half a dozen passengers; diners in the restaurant chewed on their food and stared out at the two figures on the canal bank.