Exit Music

'Is that all?' Macfarlane sounded irritated. 'I thought maybe you'd arrested someone.'

'Did you just meet Mr Todorov that one time?' Clarke persisted.

Tea.'

'So you met at the studio?'

'The Hub,' Macfarlane corrected. 'Yes, we were all due to rendezvous there an hour before recording.'

'I thought it went out live,' Goodyear interrupted.

'Not quite,' the MSP insisted. 'Of course, Jim Bakewell, being a Labour minister, had to turn up fashionably late – floor staff didn't like that, which might explain why he got so little screen time.'

She perked up again at the memory, and gave Liddle a blessing as he arrived with her black coffee and a single espresso for himself.

He dragged a chair over so he could be part of the company, and shook hands with Goodyear.

'Think we'll start to hear rumours, Roddy?' Macfarlane asked, pouring a first sachet of sugar into her drink. The being seen with a uniformed police officer?'

“Very likely,' Liddle drawled, lifting the tiny cup to his mouth.

Tou were saying about Mr Todorov,' Clarke prompted.

'She wants to know about Question Time,' Macfarlane explained to her assistant. 'Thinks I must be hiding something.'

'Just wondering,' Clarke interrupted, 'why you didn't think to mention it.'

'Tell me, Sergeant, have any of the other politicos who shared the stage with the victim come forward with their reminiscences?'

The question didn't seem to require an answer. 'No, because they'd have said much the same as me – our Russian friend necked some wine, crammed a few sandwiches into his face, and said nary a word to us. I rather got the impression he wasn't a great fan of politicians as an overall species.'

'What about after the show?'

'Taxis were waiting… he grunted his goodbyes and left, tucking a spare bottle of wine under his jacket.' She paused. 'How any of this aids your inquiry is a mystery to me.'

“That was the only time you met him?'

'Didn't I just say so?' She looked to her assistant for confirmation. Clarke decided to look at him, too.

'What about you, Mr Liddle?' she asked. 'Did you talk to him at The Hub?'

'I introduced myself – “surly”, I'd have called him. There's usually a non-politician on the show, and there's always a rigorous pre-interview. The researcher who'd talked with Todorov didn't sound too thrilled – you could tell by her notes that he hadn't been forthcoming. To this day, I don't know why they had him on.'

Clarke thought for a moment. Charles Riordan had said that Todorov liked to chat to people, yet the drinker in Mather's had said he hardly uttered a word. And now Macfarlane and Liddle were saying much the same. Did Todorov have two sides to his personality? 'Whose idea would it have been to book him on the show?' she asked Liddle.

'Producer, presenter, one of the crew… I dare say anyone can propose a guest.'

'Could it have been,' Goodyear interrupted, 'a case of sending a message to Moscow?'

'I suppose so,' Macfarlane conceded, sounding impressed.

'How do you mean?' Clarke asked Goodyear.

'There was a journalist killed there a while back. Maybe the BBC wanted people to know you can't stifle free speech so easily.'

'Someone stifled it eventually, though, didn't they?' Liddle added.

'Or we wouldn't be having this conversation. And look at what happened to that poor bloody Russian in London…'

Macfarlane was scowling at him. 'That's exactly the kind of rumour we want to clamp down on!'

'Of course, of course,' he mumbled, busying himself with his already empty cup.

'So, just to recap,' Clarke announced into the silence, 'the two of you saw Mr Todorov at the Question Time recording, but didn't get much of a conversation going. You hadn't met him before, and you didn't see him again afterwards – is that the way you'd like me to phrase it in my report?'

'Report?' Macfarlane fairly barked the word.

'Not for public consumption,' Clarke reassured her. Then, after a moment's beat, she delivered her coup de grace: 'Until the trial, of course.'

'I've already stressed, Sergeant, that we have some influential investors in town, and it might not take much to spook them.'

'But you'd agree, wouldn't you,' Clarke countered, 'that we need to show them how scrupulous and thorough our police force is?'

Macfarlane seemed about to say something to that, but her phone was trilling. She turned away from the table as she answered.

'Stuart, how are things?'

Clarke guessed 'Stuart' might be the banker, Stuart Janney.

'I hope you got them all a booking at Andrew Fairlie?' Macfarlane had got to her feet and was on the move. She headed outside, glancing through the window as she continued her conversation.

'It's the restaurant at Gleneagles,' Liddle was explaining.

'I know,' Clarke told him. Then, for Goodyear's benefit: 'Our economic saviours are staying the night there – nice big dinner and a round of golf after breakfast.' She asked Liddle who would be picking up the tab. 'The hard-pressed taxpayer?' she guessed.

He gave a shrug and she turned back to Goodyear. 'Still reckon the meek will inherit the earth, Todd?'

'Psalm 37, Verse 11,' Goodyear intoned. But now Clarke's own phone was ringing. She picked it up and held it to her ear. John Rebus wanted a progress report.

'Just getting a bit of scripture from PC Goodyear,' she told him.

'The meek inheriting the earth and all of that.'

15

Rebus had only called because he was bored. But within a minute of Clarke answering his call, a black VW Golf was roaring to a kerbside stop outside the car park. The woman who emerged had to be Cath Mills, so Rebus cut the call short.

'Miss Mills?' he said, taking a step towards her. With late afternoon darkness had come biting gusts of wind, scudding in from the North Sea. He didn't know what he'd been expecting 'the Reaper' to be wearing – a full-length cape maybe. But in fact her coat was more like a parka with fur-trimmed hood. She was in her late thirties, tall, with red hair in a pageboy cut and black-rimmed spectacles. Her face was pale and rounded, lips reddened with lipstick. She looked nothing like the picture in his pocket.

'Inspector Rebus?' she assumed, giving a short-lived shake of the hand. She wore black leather driving gloves which she plunged into her pockets afterwards. 'I hate this time of year,' she muttered, checking the sky. 'Dark when you get up, dark when you go home.'

'You keep regular hours?' Rebus asked.

'Job like this, there's always something needs dealing with.' She glowered at the OUT OF ORDER sign next to the nearest exit barrier.

'So were you out and about on Wednesday night?'

She was still looking at the barrier. 'Home by nine, I seem to think. Problem at our facility in Canning Street – shift hadn't turned up. I got the attendant to pull a double, so that was that.'

Slowly, she turned her attention to Rebus. “You're asking about the night the man was killed.'

'That's right. Pity your CCTVs worse than useless… might've given us something to work with.'

'We didn't install it with slaughter in mind.'

Rebus ignored this. 'So you didn't happen to pass here around ten o'clock on the night it happened?'

'Who says I did?'

'No one, but we've a woman matching your description…' Okay, so he was stretching it, but he wanted to see how she would react.

All she did was raise an eyebrow and fold her arms.

'And how,' she asked, 'did you happen to get my description in the first place?' She glanced towards the car park. 'Boys been telling tales out of school? I'll have to see to it they're disciplined.'

'Actually, all they said was that you sometimes wear a hood. A pedestrian happened to spot a woman hanging around, and she was wearing a hood, too…'

'A woman with her hood up? At ten o'clock on a winter's night?