‘Now you think different?’
‘He came back to Edinburgh to settle old scores. There’s none older than his uncle.’ He looked up at Davidson. ‘I think he’ll try to kill him.’
Davidson rubbed a palm over his jaw. ‘And Jim Stevens?’
‘Was in the wrong place at the wrong time. If Oakes thought Jim was on to his plan, he’d have to deal with him. Oakes took the tape from Jim’s recorder, only Jim had switched tapes. Then Oakes tore out the pages from Jim’s notebook. He didn’t want us knowing.’
‘But we were bound to find out where Stevens had been.’
‘Eventually, yes.’ Rebus tapped the tape machine. ‘But without this, it would have taken a while.’
Davidson was starting to rise. ‘Long enough to let him carry out his plan?’
‘Which means it’s got to be soon.’ Rebus was on his feet too.
As Davidson reached for the phone, Rebus sprinted from the room.
47
They had undercover officers on the scene. It was difficult to blend in: most of the staff were middle-aged women. Young, wary-looking men with CID haircuts looked out of place. The officers came from the Scottish Crime Squad. Andrew Castle was confined to his room. There were two men in there with him: one participating in a game of cards — twopenny bets — while the other sat in the corner, affording the best view of door and window. The window was curtained. There was another man in a parked car outside.
‘Would he try a sniper shot?’ had been one of the questions at the briefing. Rebus had doubted it: he’d no known access to guns, and besides, it was personal with him. His uncle would have to know the why and the who before any killing could be done.
One of the other officers was pushing a mop up and down the corridor outside. Rebus and Davidson were satisfied.
Another question from the briefing: ‘What if all we do is scare him off?’
Rebus’s response: ‘Then we’ve saved an old man’s life... for now.’
He’d listened once more to the whole tape, and didn’t doubt that Oakes’s uncle had been — and probably still was — rotten to the marrow, despite his senility and frailty. Now he had questions.
If Cary had ended up in a home where he’d been loved, would everything have been changed? Were people programmed from birth to become killers, or did other people — and sets of circumstances — conspire to make killers of them, turning the potential that was in most people into something more tangible?
They weren’t new questions, certainly not to him. He thought of Darren Rough, the abused becoming abuser. Not all abuse victims took that road, but plenty did... And what about Damon Mee? What had made him leave home? His parents’ failing marriage? Fear of getting married himself? Or had he been coerced away, forcibly stopped from returning?
And why had Jim Margolies died?
And would Cary Oakes walk into the trap?
My, my, my, said the spider to the fly...
Oakes had been the spider for far too long.
Rebus dropped into hospital to check on Alan Archibald. There was nothing for him to do at the nursing home. In fact, as one of the Crime Squad officers had succinctly put it, he was ‘a positive hindrance’. Meaning that because Oakes knew Rebus, his presence on the scene could spoil everything.
‘Soon as anything happens, we’ll call.’
Rebus had made the officer write his mobile number on the back of his hand. Then had handed him a business card anyway: ‘Just in case you wash it off by mistake.’
Archibald was at the far end of an open ward, with a screen around his bed. Bobby Hogan from Leith CID was sitting bedside, flicking through a copy of Mass Hibsteria.
‘Your team’s going down, Bobby,’ Rebus told him.
Hogan looked up. ‘It’s not mine.’ He waved the football fanzine at Rebus. ‘Someone left it on the ward.’
The two men shook hands, and Rebus went to fetch another chair. Alan Archibald was snoring gently, head propped up on three pillows.
‘How is he?’ Rebus asked. Archibald’s head was bandaged and there was a gauze compress taped to one ear.
‘Thumping headache.’
‘Well, his head did take a thumping.’
‘They did some tests, say he’ll be fine.’ Hogan smiled. ‘They tried testing his memory, but as Alan said, at his age he’s lucky to remember which day it is, dunt on the heid or no’.’
Rebus smiled too. ‘You know him then?’
‘Worked together years ago. That’s why I asked for this detail.’
‘Were you with him when his niece was murdered?’
Hogan stared at the sleeping figure. ‘It took all the juice out of him, like his batteries were flat after that.’
‘He wanted it to be Cary Oakes.’
Hogan nodded. ‘I think anyone would have done as far as Alan was concerned, but Oakes was the obvious choice.’
‘Still could be.’
Hogan looked at him. ‘Not according to Alan.’
‘I wouldn’t trust anything Oakes said. Everything in his world has to be twisted round.’
‘But he thought he was going to kill Alan... why bother lying to him?’
‘To amuse himself.’ Rebus crossed one leg over the other. ‘That seems to be what he’s been doing ever since he hit town, spinning stories...’ And now Rebus was surplus to requirements; other officers would bring in Cary Oakes.
‘Did you ever get anywhere with Jim’s suicide?’
Rebus looked at Hogan. ‘I was beginning to. I got sidetracked.’
‘So what can you tell me?’
Alan Archibald grunted, and his lips started moving as though savouring something. Slowly his eyes opened. He looked to his left and saw his two visitors.
‘Any sign of him?’ he asked, voice dry and brittle. Hogan poured him some water.
‘Do you want any more tablets, Alan?’
Archibald made to shake his head, then screwed shut his eyes with the sudden pain. ‘No,’ he said instead. As Hogan trickled the water into his mouth, it dribbled either side of the plastic cup and down his chin. Hogan dabbed it with a napkin.
‘He’d make a great nurse.’ Archibald winked at Rebus. His eyes looked unfocused; Rebus wondered what kind of painkillers they had him on. ‘They haven’t caught him?’
‘Not yet,’ Rebus admitted.
‘But he’s been busy, hasn’t he?’
Rebus didn’t know if it was pure instinct or whether something in his voice had alerted Archibald. He nodded, told Archibald about Jim Stevens, about the nursing home and Oakes’s uncle.
‘I remember the uncle,’ Archibald said. ‘I interviewed him a while back. I think he hated Oakes almost more than I did.’
‘You didn’t happen to mention him to Oakes, did you?’
Archibald was thoughtful for a moment. ‘Not for a while. He might have been in one of the letters I sent.’ His eyes widened. ‘How did Oakes know where he was? You think I...?’ Pain coursed across his face. ‘I should have twigged. But I wasn’t thinking like a copper, that’s the bottom line. I had my own motives. I wasn’t really interested in the uncle, only in what he could tell me about Oakes. There was that one question always at the back of my mind... that one question I needed the answer to.’
‘Yes,’ Rebus agreed.
‘Everything I’d learned went out the window.’ Tears were welling in Archibald’s eyes.
‘Don’t blame yourself,’ Hogan said, touching his shoulder.
Archibald was looking past him, towards the seated figure of John Rebus. ‘Whether he killed her or not... I’ll never know for sure, will I?’