Finally he saw her. Late-afternoon trains into Edinburgh weren’t busy; the traffic was all the other way. She was walking against the crowds as she came off the platform. He got into step beside her before she’d noticed him.
‘Needing a taxi?’ he said.
She looked surprised, then bemused. ‘John,’ she said. ‘What brings you here?’
For answer, he took the video out and held it in front of her.
‘A peace offering,’ he said, leading her back to his car.
They sat in the CID suite. It too was quiet. Most people had gone home for the day. Those who were left were trying to finish reports or catch up with themselves. No one was in the mood to dawdle. The video monitor sat in one corner. Rebus pulled two chairs over. He’d fetched them coffee. Janice was looking excited and fearful at the same time. Again, he was reminded of Alan Archibald on the hillside.
‘Look, Janice,’ he warned her, ‘if it’s not him...’
She shrugged. ‘If it’s not him, it’s not him. I won’t blame you.’ She flashed him a momentary smile. He started the tape. Miss Georgeson had explained that the camera was motion-sensitive, and would only begin recording when someone approached the machine. Back at the bank, Rebus had taken a look at the cash machine. The camera was above it, shooting from behind one of the bank’s glass windows. When the first face came on the tape, Rebus and Janice were looking at it from above. The time-counter said 08.10. Rebus used the remote to fast forward.
‘We’re looking for one forty,’ he explained. Janice was sitting on the edge of her chair, the coffee cup held in both hands.
This, Rebus thought, was the way it had started: with security footage, grainy pictures. Towards the middle of the day, more people were using the machine. There was a lot of tape to get through. Lunchtime queues built up, but by one thirty it was a little quieter.
The time-counter said 13.40.
‘Oh, dear Lord, there he is,’ Janice said. She’d placed her cup on the floor, clapped her hands to her face.
Rebus looked. The face was angled down, looking at the machine’s keypad. Then it turned away, as if staring down the street. Fingers were tapped impatiently against the screen of the cash machine. The card was retrieved, a hand went to the slot to extract the notes. Didn’t linger; didn’t wait for a receipt. The next customer was already moving forward.
‘Are you sure?’ he asked.
A tear was falling from Janice’s cheek. ‘Positive,’ she said, nodding.
Rebus found it hard to tell. All he had were photos of Damon and the footage from Gaitano’s; he’d never met him. The hair looked similar... maybe the nose too, the shape of the chin. But it wasn’t as though they were unusual. The person on view now, they looked much like the customer who’d just left. But Janice was blowing her nose. She was satisfied.
‘It’s him, I’d swear to it.’ She saw uncertainty on his face. ‘I wouldn’t say it was if it wasn’t.’
‘Of course not.’
‘It’s not just the face or hair or clothes... it’s the way he stood, the way he held himself. And those little twitches of impatience.’ She used a corner of the hankie to wipe her eyes. ‘It was him, John. It was him.’
‘OK,’ Rebus said. He rewound the tape, played the minutes leading up to 13.40. He was studying the background to see if he could spot Damon making for the machine. He wanted to know if he’d been alone. But he entered the picture suddenly, and from the side. That look again, towards where he’d just come from. Was there a slight nod of the head... some signal to another person just out of shot...? Rebus rewound and watched again.
‘What are you looking for?’ Janice asked.
‘Anyone who might have been with him.’
But there was nothing. So he let the tape play on, and was rewarded a minute or two later by legs moving across the top of the picture, just behind the person at the machine. Two pairs, one male, one female. Rebus pressed freeze-frame, but couldn’t get the picture to stay absolutely still and focused. So instead, he rewound and played it again, following the feet with his finger.
‘Recognise the trousers, the shoes?’
But Janice shook her head. ‘They’re just a blur.’
And so they were.
‘Could be anybody,’ she added.
And so it could.
She got to her feet. ‘I’m going to George Street.’ He made to say something but she cut him off. ‘I know he won’t be there, but there are shops, pubs — I can show them his picture at least.’
Rebus nodded. She gripped his forearm.
‘He’s still here, John. That’s something.’
As she left, she held the door open to someone just coming in: Siobhan Clarke.
‘Any sign of him?’ Rebus asked.
Siobhan slumped into a chair. ‘Billy Horman?’
Rebus shook his head. ‘Cary Oakes.’
She stretched her neck. He heard the snap. ‘Another day down,’ he told her.
She nodded. ‘I’m not working Oakes. I’m on Billy Boy.’
‘No progress?’
She shook her head. ‘We need another dozen officers. Maybe a couple of dozen.’
‘I can see the budget stretching to that.’
‘Maybe if we got rid of a few of the bean-counters.’
‘Careful, Siobhan. That’s anarchist talk.’
She smiled. ‘How are you? I hear Oakes was ready to kill the pair of you.’
‘The tremors have stopped,’ he told her. ‘Buy you a drink?’
‘Not tonight. I’ve a date with a hot bath and a takeaway. What about you?’
‘Straight home, same as yourself.’
‘Well...’ She stood up as though the effort was costing her. ‘See you tomorrow.’
‘Night, Siobhan.’
She waved fingers over her shoulder as she left.
Rebus was almost as good as his word — just the one stop-off to make beforehand. He climbed the stairwell of Cragside Court. Darkness was falling, but there were still children out playing, albeit supervised by a member of GAP. They’d had T-shirts printed up with a logo on the front, getting more organised by the day. The woman in the T-shirt had studied Rebus, knowing she’d seen him somewhere before, but not recognising him as a resident.
He stood looking out over Greenfield. On one side, Holyrood Park; on the other, the Old Town, and the site of the new Parliament. He wondered if the estate would be allowed to survive. He knew that if the council wanted it run down, they would work by stealth. Repairs would not be carried out, or would be botched. Flats would be found to be uninhabitable, tenants rehoused, windows and doors blocked and padlocked. Things would slowly deteriorate, causing residents to rethink their options. More of them would move out. The state of the high-rises would become a ‘cause for concern’. There’d be a media outcry about conditions. The council would move in with offers of help — meaning relocation: cheaper than shoring up the estate. And eventually it would be deserted, a demolition site from which new buildings could rise. Expensive pieds-à-terre for parliamentarians, perhaps. Or offices and select shops. It was a prime site, no doubt about it.
As for Salisbury Crags... he didn’t doubt there’d be people who would build on it too, given the chance. But that chance would be a long time coming. All the centuries of change, and the park was much as it ever had been. It made no judgements on the work around it, but merely sat there, above it all. And the people who tramped over it were minor irritations, dead by the age of seventy if not before. They made no impression on it, not when measured in millennia.
Rebus was outside Darren Rough’s flat now. Darren had come home to give evidence against two evil men. As recompense, he’d been harried, cursed and eventually killed. Rebus didn’t feel proud that he’d been the first player. He hoped Darren might one day forgive him. He almost said as much to the ghostly shape at the end of the walkway, but when it came towards him, he saw it was flesh and blood, very much alive.