Another trick from prison. Maybe his fellow inmates hadn’t been so stupid after all.
On the way back into town, he stopped in a deserted supermarket car park, threw the tape into a bin.
Then he was on his way. Knew he had at least one night before the body was found. One night when he’d have some shelter, courtesy of Jim Stevens’ car.
46
Anything out west was a Torphichen call, but news travelled fast. Roy Frazer drove Rebus out to the scene. The whole drive, Rebus only said one thing to the young man.
‘You screwed up about Eddie Mearn. It happens. Best to have it happen young when you can still learn from it. Otherwise you get intimations of infallibility, which translates to your colleagues as “smart-arse”.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Frazer said, frowning as though trying to memorise the advice. Then he reached into his pocket. ‘Message from DS Clarke.’ He handed over the note. Rebus unfolded the piece of paper. At first he didn’t take it in. His brain was overloaded as it was. But eventually the words hit him with the force of electricity.
I did a bit of digging. Joseph Margolies wasn’t just a doctor. He worked for the council for a time, had special responsibility for children’s homes. Don’t know if it means anything, but I get the feeling you had him down as a GP. Cheers, S.
He read the note half a dozen times. He wasn’t sure if it did mean anything. But he could see definite connections beginning to appear. And connections could always be exploited...
The DI from Torphichen was Shug Davidson. He offered a brief smile as Rebus got out of the car.
‘They say the culprit always returns to the scene of the crime.’
‘That’s not funny, Shug.’
‘Way I hear it, you and the deceased weren’t exactly bosom buddies.’
‘Maybe towards the end,’ Rebus said. ‘Have they moved him yet?’
Davidson shook his head. Work on the construction site had stopped. There were faces at the portakabin windows. Other workers milled around outside, wearing hard hats, drinking tea from their flasks. Their gaffer was complaining that work was a fortnight behind as it was.
‘Then a few more hours isn’t going to make much of a dent, is it?’ Davidson said.
Rebus had ducked beneath the locus tape. The victim had been pronounced dead. They were photographing the body. Forensics had already completed taping it. Uniforms were spreading out from the locus, seeking clues. Davidson had the whole situation under control.
‘Any ideas?’ Davidson asked Rebus.
‘One fairly big one.’
‘Oakes?’ Rebus looked at Davidson, who smiled. ‘I read the papers too, John. Friend of a friend told me Oakes had dumped on Stevens. Next thing, Oakes is on the run after the attack on Alan Archibald.’ He broke off. ‘How is he, by the way?’
‘Doing better than this poor bugger,’ Rebus said, moving closer to the body. Professor Gates was crouched — or as Gates himself liked to say, on his ‘cuddy-hunkers’ — at Stevens’ head. He nodded a greeting towards Rebus, but carried on with his initial appraisal of the scene. One of the forensics team held out a clear plastic bag, into which Jim Stevens’ possessions were being dropped.
‘No car keys?’ Rebus asked. The forensics woman shook her head.
‘No car either,’ Davidson added.
‘Stevens drives a Vauxhall Astra.’
‘I know, John. It’s being hunted.’
‘Must have been brought here in a car. Oakes doesn’t have one.’
‘Probably lost a lot of blood en route,’ Gates said. ‘His shirt and trousers are soaked, but there’s not that much lying beneath him.’
‘You think he was stabbed somewhere else?’
‘That would be my guess.’ Gates turned to the forensics officer. ‘Let Inspector Rebus see the machine.’
She lifted a small metal box from the bag. Rebus looked at it closely, but knew better than to touch.
‘It’s his recorder.’
‘Yes,’ Gates said. ‘And in his right-hand pocket, well away from the wounds and the blood.’
‘But there’s blood on it,’ Rebus said.
Gates nodded. ‘And no tape inside.’
‘The killer took the tape?’
‘Or it was important enough for the deceased to take time to remove it, even though by that time he’d already been stabbed and was probably entering a state of shock.’
Rebus turned to Davidson. ‘Any sign of it?’
‘That’s what they’re looking for.’ Davidson motioned towards the uniforms. ‘John, have you any idea what Stevens was up to?’
‘Last time I spoke to him, he was going to look into Oakes’s past.’
‘Wonder what he found.’
Rebus shrugged. ‘Bringing in Oakes has to be the priority.’
‘After his attack on you, it already was.’
Rebus stared down at the lifeless body of Jim Stevens. Stevens, who had been Rebus’s shadow for so long, and who had come back into his life only recently.
‘I’d only just started liking him,’ Rebus said. ‘That’s the funny thing.’ He looked at Davidson. ‘I get the feeling the game’s not over, Shug. Not by a long chalk.’
One of Davidson’s officers sprinted towards them. ‘Car’s been found,’ he called.
‘Where?’ Rebus was first to ask.
The officer blinked, shook his head. ‘You’re not going to like it...’
Jim Stevens’ Astra sat on a single yellow line on a street called St Leonard’s Bank, just round the corner from St Leonard’s cop shop. St Leonard’s Bank boasted a single row of higgledy-piggledy houses, all of them facing a wrought-iron fence behind which sat Holyrood Park and Salisbury Crags. The car was parked outside a double-fronted three-storey house painted a vivid pink. The key was in the ignition. This was what had first alerted one of the neighbours. They’d gone next door to ask if anyone there had left their keys in their car. Heading out to investigate, they’d found the doors to be unlocked. On opening the driver’s side, they’d noticed how wet and stained the seat seemed to be. Pressing fingers down into the fabric, lifting them away to find them stained viscous red...
‘Is he taking the piss or what?’ Roy Frazer said. A crowd from St Leonard’s had gathered, though more, it seemed, out of curiosity than from a desire to help. Rebus started shooing most of them away. He’d brought three of the forensics team with him; the rest would follow when they’d finished at the construction site. Chief Superintendent Watson came to gawp, and to make sure everything was ‘under control’.
‘It’s Shug Davidson’s call really, sir,’ Rebus informed him. ‘He’s on his way.’
The Farmer nodded. ‘Fair enough, John. But let’s get the car moved ASAP, even if only into our car park. It’s already been on Lowland Radio. Leave it much longer, we can start selling tickets.’
It was true that the crowd around the car was swelling. Rebus recognised a few faces from Greenfield. The estate was only a short walk away.
Roy Frazer was repeating his question.
‘He’s taunting us,’ Rebus answered. He went to see how the forensics team was doing.
‘Found this on the floor under the driver’s seat,’ one of them said. Inside a plastic bag he had a cassette tape, unlabelled. There was a single bloody thumb print clearly visible on its casing.
‘I need this,’ Rebus said.
‘We need to print it.’
Rebus shook his head. ‘The print belongs to the victim.’ He was managing to smile. You clever bugger, Jim, he was thinking. He didn’t get your tape...