But not Cary Oakes, who now cleared his throat.
‘Aren’t you curious about what Rebus wanted?’
Stevens looked at him. ‘I just want this finished.’
‘Lost the old vigour and vim, eh, Jim?’
‘You have that effect on people.’
‘Tracked down any of my old teenage gang?’ Oakes laughed at the look on Stevens’ face. ‘Thought not. Probably scattered to the four winds by now.’
‘Last time we broke off,’ Stevens said coldly, checking the spools were turning, ‘you were crossing America.’
Oakes nodded. ‘I got to a place called, believe it or not, Opportunity, a ratty little truck-stop on the Washington-Idaho border. That’s where I met the trucker, Fat Boy. I never learned his real name; I think even the ID he carried was fake.’
‘What name was on the ID?’
Oakes ignored the question. ‘Fat Boy had these notions about a government conspiracy, told me he kept his home booby-trapped whenever he was working long-distance. He said truckers got a real good view of the world — by which he meant the USA; that’s as far as his world stretched — a real good view from behind the wheel of a truck. He knew a trucker would make a damned good President.
‘So that was Fat Boy. My introduction to him. Opportunity, Washington. Lots of names like that in the States. Lots of Fat Boys, too. We got talking about murder. The radio was on, and every other station had news flashes about unlawful killing. He said the word “unlawful” was a misnomer. There was “wrong” killing and “right” killing, and which was which was down to the individual, not the lawmakers.’
‘And what kind did you do?’
Oakes didn’t like his flow being interrupted. ‘I’m talking about Fat Boy, not me.’
‘How long did you travel with him?’ Stevens was trying to keep the chronology right.
‘Three, four days. We headed south to make a delivery, then back up on to 1-90.’
‘What was he carrying?’
‘Electrical goods. He worked for General Electric. Meant he travelled all over. He said that was good, considering his hobby. His hobby was killing people.’ Oakes looked to Stevens. ‘It was supposed to unnerve me, him saying something like that while we’re travelling fifty-five on an interstate. Maybe if it had, that would have been it: he’d have tried skinning me. But I just looked at him, told him that was interesting.’ A laugh. ‘Mild understatement, right? Someone tells you they’re a serial killer and you say “Mm, that’s interesting.”’
‘But you believed him?’
‘After a while, yes. And I thought: all this stuff he’s telling me, no way is he letting me go. Every time we stopped, I thought he was about to whack me.’
‘You were ready for him?’ Stevens was staring at Oakes, trying to gauge how much of the story was true. Did it relate in some way to the relationship between Oakes and the reporter himself?
‘You know the strange part? I just let myself relax into it. Like, if he was going to kill me, OK, that’s what was going to happen. It was as if I didn’t care; I could have died right then, and it would have been poetic justice or something.’
‘Did he kill anyone while you were on the road?’
‘No.’
‘But he convinced you he wasn’t lying?’
‘You think he was lying, Jim?’
‘When they arrested you, did you tell the police about him?’
‘Why the hell would I do that?’
‘Might have scored you some points.’
‘Truth is, I never thought about it.’
‘But he made you think about killing?’
‘He knew what he was talking about. I mean, you can always tell when someone’s making it up, can’t you?’ Oakes beamed a smile. ‘“Can the world really be like this?” I remember asking myself that as I listened to him. And the answer came back: yes, of course. Why should it be any different?’
‘You’re saying Fat Boy made you feel all right about killing?’
‘Am I?’
‘Then what are you saying?’
‘Just telling you my story, Jim. It’s up to you how you read it.’
‘What about in jail, Cary? All that time to yourself, thoughts that you’re thinking...?’
‘Jim, you get no time to yourself. There’s always noise, disruption, routine. You sit there trying to think, they send you for psychiatric evaluation.’ Oakes took a final sip of orange juice. ‘But I see what you’re getting at.’ He examined his empty glass. ‘How’s the background check going, by the way? Spoken to anyone at Walla Walla?’ Turned the empty glass in his hand. ‘Take away the juice and the ice, you’re left with a lethal weapon.’ He pretended to smash the glass against the edge of the table, and then laughed a laugh which sent a shiver right along Jim Stevens’ arms.
Climbing back up Salisbury Crags, Rebus kept his hands in his pockets and his thoughts to himself. He knew what the Farmer was thinking. This morning, Darren Rough had been in Rebus’s flat. As far as they knew, Rebus was the last person to have seen him alive.
And Rebus had been his tormentor, his nemesis. The Farmer wouldn’t make anything of it, but others might: Jane Barbour; Rough’s social worker.
Radical Road was a stony footpath which led around the Crags. You could start near the student residences at Pollock Halls and end up at Holyrood. Along the way, you had the city skyline for company, stretching from the south and west to the city centre and beyond. All spires and crenellations. Manfred Mann: ‘Cubist Town’. With Greenfield almost directly below.
‘You picked him up here, didn’t you?’ the Farmer asked as they walked.
Rebus shook his head. ‘St Margaret’s Loch.’ Which lay around a long curve in the rock and down an impossibly steep bank. ‘Tell you what, though,’ he added. ‘Jim Margolies jumped from up there.’ And he pointed with his finger, way up to where the rock-face ended in something akin to a clifftop. People took their dogs for walks across the plateau, not straying too close to the edge. Edinburgh was prone to sudden, malevolent gusts, any one of which could have you over the side.
The Farmer was breathing hard. ‘You still see a connection between Rough and Jim Margolies?’
‘Now more than ever, sir.’
The body lay a little further along the path, cordoned off by warning tape. A few walkers, wrapped up against the weather, had gathered at the cordon, stretching their necks for a view. A white plastic contraption like a windbreak had been placed around the body, so that only those who needed to see it would. A woman with a black springer spaniel was being interviewed: she’d been the one to find the body. Out walking the dog, a daily ritual which both had looked forward to. From now on, she’d find another route, a long way from Salisbury Crags.
‘Hard to believe they’re putting our Parliament there,’ the Farmer commented, looking down towards Holyrood Road. ‘A real old backwater. Traffic’s going to be a nightmare.’
‘And it’s on our patch.’
‘Not my problem, thank God.’ The Farmer sniffed. ‘I’ll have that gold watch on one hand and a golfing glove on the other.’
They passed through the cordon. The scene-of-crime team was at work, securing the locus and ensuring what they liked to call its ‘purity’. This meant Rebus and the Farmer had to don coveralls and overshoes, so they’d leave no trace elements at the scene.
‘The wind up here will probably have scattered them to the four corners anyway,’ Rebus said. But it was a half-hearted grouch: he knew the worth of scene-of-crime work, knew that science and forensics were his friends. A police doctor had declared the victim deceased. Dr Curt was the usual pathologist, but he was in Miami to give a paper at some convention. His superior, Professor Gates, had stepped in, and was examining the body in situ. He was a large man with thick brown hair slicked back from his forehead. He carried a hand-held tape recorder, talking into it as he moved around. He was forced to jostle for space: a photographer and video cameraman both wanted shots of the corpse.