Gareth’s eyebrows dipped in disbelief. ‘After everything I’ve done.’
‘No, son,’ Rebus corrected him, ‘because of everything you’ve done. You’ve only just started paying for that. Bus stop’s over that way, I think.’ Rebus pointed towards the dual carriageway. ‘Through the subway, if you’re brave enough.’
Gareth looked around him, seeing not one sympathetic face. ‘Thanks a bunch,’ he muttered, stomping off.
‘Back to the station, lads,’ Davidson told the uniforms. ‘Sorry you drew today’s short straw...’
The uniforms nodded and headed for their patrol car.
‘Nice little surprise for them,’ Davidson told Rebus. ‘Someone’s smashed a whole carton of eggs on their windscreen.’
Rebus shook his head in mock disbelief. ‘You mean someone in Knoxland buys fresh food?’ he said.
Davidson didn’t smile this time. He was reaching for his mobile. Rebus recognised the ring-tone: ‘Scots Wha Hae’. Davidson shrugged. ‘One of my kids was mucking around last night... I forgot to change it back.’ He answered the call, Rebus listening.
‘Speaking... Oh yes, Mr Allan.’ Davidson rolled his eyes. ‘Yes, that’s right... He did?’ Davidson locked eyes with Rebus. ‘That’s interesting. Any chance I could speak to you in person?’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Some time today ideally... happens I’m free right now if you can spare... No, I’m sure it won’t take long... we could be there in twenty minutes... Yes, I’m sure of that. Thanks then. Cheers.’ Davidson ended the call and stared at his handset.
‘Mr Allan?’ Rebus prompted.
‘Rory Allan,’ Davidson said, still distracted.
‘The Scotsman editor?’
‘One of his news team’s just told him they took a phone call a week or so back from a foreign-sounding guy calling himself Stef.’
‘As in Stef Yurgii?’
‘Sounds likely... said he was a reporter and had a story he wanted to write.’
‘What about?’
Davidson shrugged. ‘That’s why I’m meeting Rory Allan.’
‘Need some company, big boy?’ Rebus gave his most winning smile.
Davidson thought for a moment. ‘It should be Ellen, really...’
‘Except she’s not here.’
‘But I could call her.’
Rebus tried for a look of outrage. ‘Are you spurning me, Shug?’
Davidson hesitated a few more moments, then put the mobile back into his pocket. ‘Only if you’re on your best behaviour,’ he said.
‘Scout’s honour.’ Rebus gave a salute.
‘God help me,’ Davidson said, as if he already regretted his momentary weakness.
Edinburgh’s daily broadsheet was housed in a new building opposite the BBC on Holyrood Road. There was a good view of the cranes which still dominated the sky above the emerging Scottish Parliament complex.
‘Wonder if they’ll finish it before the cost finishes us,’ Davidson mused, walking into the Scotsman building. The security guard let them through a turnstile and told them to take the lift to the first floor, from where they could look down on to the journalists in their open-plan environment below. To the rear was a glass wall, offering views of Salisbury Crags. Smokers were puffing away on a balcony outside, letting Rebus know that he wouldn’t be able to indulge in this place. Rory Allan came towards them.
‘DI Davidson,’ he said, instinctively homing in on Rebus.
‘I’m actually DI Rebus. Just because I look like his dad doesn’t mean he’s not the boss.’
‘Guilty of ageism as charged,’ Allan said, shaking first Rebus’s hand and then Davidson’s. ‘There’s a meeting room free... follow me.’
They entered a long, narrow room with an elongated oval table at its centre.
‘Smells brand new,’ Rebus commented of the furnishings.
‘Place doesn’t get used much,’ the editor explained. Rory Allan was in his thirties, with rapidly receding hair, prematurely silver, and John Lennon-style glasses. He’d left his jacket back in his own office, and wore a pale blue shirt with red silk tie, sleeves rolled up in workmanlike fashion. ‘Sit down, won’t you? Can I get either of you a coffee?’
‘We’re fine, thanks, Mr Allan.’
Allan nodded his satisfaction with this. ‘To business then... You’ll appreciate that we could have gone to print with this and let you find out for yourselves?’
Davidson bowed his head slightly in acknowledgement. There was a knock at the door.
‘Come!’ Allan barked.
A smaller version of the editor seemed to appear: same hairstyle, similar glasses, sleeves rolled up.
‘This is Danny Watling. Danny’s one of our news staff. I asked him to join us so he could tell you himself.’ Allan gestured for the journalist to sit.
‘Not much to tell,’ Danny Watling said, in a voice so quiet Rebus, seated across the table from him, strained to catch it. ‘I was working the desk... picked up a phone call... guy said he was a reporter, had a story he wanted to write.’
Shug Davidson sat with his fingers pressed together on the table. ‘Did he say what it was about?’
Watling shook his head. ‘He was cagey... and his English wasn’t great. It was like the words had come from a dictionary.’
‘Or he was reading them out?’ Rebus interrupted.
Watling considered this. ‘Maybe reading them out, yes.’
Davidson asked for an explanation. ‘Girlfriend might have written them,’ Rebus replied. ‘Her English is supposed to be better than Stef’s.’
‘He told you his name?’ Davidson asked the reporter.
‘Stef, yes.’
‘No surname?’
‘I don’t think he wanted me to know.’ Watling looked to his editor. ‘Thing is, we get dozens of crank calls...’
‘Danny perhaps didn’t take him as seriously as he might have,’ Allan commented, picking at an invisible thread on his trousers.
‘No, well...’ Watling blushed at the throat. ‘I said we didn’t normally use freelancers, but if he wanted to talk to someone, we might give him a share of the by-line.’
‘What did he say to that?’ Rebus asked.
‘Didn’t seem to understand. That made me a bit more suspicious.’
‘He didn’t know what “freelance” meant?’ Davidson guessed.
‘Or maybe he just didn’t have an equivalent in his own language,’ Rebus argued.
Watling blinked a few times. ‘With benefit of hindsight,’ he told Rebus, ‘I think that may be right...’
‘And he gave you no inkling what this story of his might be?’
‘No. I think he wanted a face-to-face with me first.’
‘An offer you turned down?’
Watling’s back stiffened. ‘Oh no, I agreed to see him. Ten o’clock that night outside Jenner’s.’
‘Jenner’s department store?’ Davidson asked.
Watling nodded. ‘It was about the only place he knew... I tried a few pubs, even the really well-known ones that only tourists would be seen dead in. But he hardly seemed to know the city at all.’
‘Did you ask him to name a meeting place?’
‘I said I’d go anywhere he wanted, but he couldn’t think of a single place. Then I mentioned Princes Street, and he knew that, so I decided on the biggest landmark there.’
‘But he didn’t show up?’ Rebus guessed.
The reporter shook his head slowly. ‘That was probably the night before he died.’
The room was quiet for a moment. ‘Could be something or nothing,’ Davidson felt compelled to spell out.
‘It might give you a motive, though,’ Rory Allan added.
‘Another motive, you mean,’ Davidson corrected him. ‘The papers — including your own, I think, Mr Allan — have been happy till now to focus on it as a race crime.’