‘You okay?’ he asked.
‘I’m fine,’ she assured him. ‘I called a reporter on the Evening News. The story might make the final edition this evening.’
‘What’s been happening?’
‘A lot of comings and goings...’ She broke off. ‘Is this another interrogation?’
‘Sorry if it looks that way.’
She paused. ‘Do you want to come round later on? To the flat, I mean.’
‘What for?’
‘So my team of highly trained anarcho-syndicalists can start the indoctrination process.’
‘They like a challenge then?’
She managed a short laugh. ‘I’m still wondering what makes you tick.’
‘Apart from my wristwatch, you mean? Best be careful, Caro. I’m the enemy, after all.’
‘Don’t they say it’s best to know your enemy?’
‘Funny, someone told me that just recently...’ He paused. ‘I could buy you dinner.’
‘Thus propping up the masculine hegemony?’
‘I’ve no idea what that means, but I’m probably guilty as charged.’
‘It means we split the bill,’ she told him. ‘Come to the flat at eight o’clock.’
‘See you then.’ Rebus ended the call, and almost at once wondered how she would get home from Whitemire. He hadn’t thought to ask. Did she hitch? He was halfway through calling her number again when he stopped himself. She wasn’t a kid. She’d been holding her vigil for months. She could get home without his help. Besides, she would only accuse him of propping up the masculine hegemony.
Rebus went back into Maybury’s office and took a cup of coffee from Wylie. They sat at opposite ends of the table.
‘Weren’t you ever a student, John?’ she asked.
‘Could never be bothered,’ he answered. ‘Plus I was a lazy sod at school.’
‘I hated it,’ Wylie said. ‘Never seemed to know what to say. I sat in rooms much like this one, year after year, keeping my mouth shut so nobody’d notice I was thick.’
‘How thick were you exactly?’
Wylie smiled. ‘Turned out the other students thought I never spoke because I already knew it all.’
The door opened and Dr Maybury shuffled in, squeezing behind Wylie’s chair. She muttered an apology and reached the safety of her own desk. She was tall and thin and seemed self-conscious. Her hair was a mass of thick dark waves, pulled back into something resembling a ponytail. She wore old-fashioned glasses, as if these could disguise the classical beauty of her face.
‘Can I get you a coffee, Dr Maybury?’ Wylie asked.
‘I’m awash with the stuff,’ Maybury said briskly. Then she uttered another apology, thanking Wylie for the offer.
Rebus remembered this about her: that she was easily flustered, and she always apologised more than was necessary.
‘Sorry,’ she said again, for no apparent reason, as she shuffled together some of the papers in front of her.
‘What was happening downstairs?’ Wylie asked.
‘You mean reeling off those lists?’ Maybury’s mouth twitched. ‘I’m doing some research into elision...’
Wylie held up a hand, like a pupil in class. ‘While you and I know what that means, Doctor, maybe you could explain it for DI Rebus?’
‘I think, when you came in, the word I was interested in was “properly”. People have started pronouncing it with part of its middle missing — that’s what elision is.’
Rebus had to stop himself from asking what the point of such research was. Instead, he tapped the table in front of him with his fingertips. ‘We’ve got a tape we’d like you to listen to,’ he said.
‘Another anonymous caller?’
‘In a manner of speaking... It was a 999 call. We need to establish nationality.’
Maybury slid her glasses back up the steep slope of her nose and held out a hand, palm upwards. Rebus rose from his seat and gave her the tape. She slid it into a cassette deck on the floor beside her and pressed ‘play’.
‘You might find it a bit distressing,’ Rebus warned her. She gave a nod, listened to the message all the way through.
‘Regional accents are my field, Inspector,’ she said after a few moments’ silence. ‘Regions of the United Kingdom. This woman is non-native.’
‘Well, she’s a native of somewhere.’
‘But not these shores.’
‘So you can’t help? Not even a guess?’
Maybury tapped her finger against her chin. ‘African, maybe Afro-Caribbean.’
‘She probably speaks some French,’ Rebus added. ‘Might even be her first language.’
‘One of my colleagues in the French department might be able to say with more certainty... Hang on a minute.’ When she smiled, the whole room seemed to light up. ‘There’s a postgraduate student... she’s done a bit of work on French influences in Africa... I wonder...’
‘We’ll settle for anything you can give us,’ Rebus said.
‘Can I keep the tape?’
Rebus nodded. ‘There is a certain amount of urgency...’
‘I’m not sure where she is.’
‘Maybe you could try calling her at home?’ Wylie asked.
Maybury peered at her. ‘I think she’s somewhere in south-west France.’
‘That could be a problem,’ Rebus offered.
‘Not necessarily. If I can contact her by phone, I could play the tape down the line to her.’
It was Rebus’s turn to smile.
‘Elision,’ Rebus said, leaving the word to hang there.
They were back at Torphichen Place. The police station was quiet, the Knoxland squad wondering what the hell to do next. When a case wasn’t solved within the first seventy-two hours, it started to feel as if everything slowed down. The initial adrenalin rush was long gone; the doorstepping and interviews had come and gone; everything conspiring to wear down appetite and application both. Rebus had cases that still weren’t closed twenty years after the fact. They gnawed away at him because he couldn’t shrug off the man-hours spent labouring on them to no effect whatsoever, knowing throughout that you were one phone call — one name — away from a solution. The culprits might have been interviewed and dismissed, or ignored altogether. Some clue might be loitering amidst the mouldering pages of each case file... And you were never going to find it.
‘Elision,’ Wylie agreed, nodding. ‘Good to know research is being done into it.’
‘And done “proply”.’ Rebus snorted to himself. ‘You ever study geography, Ellen?’
‘I did it at school. You reckon it’s more important than linguistics?’
‘I was just thinking of Whitemire... some of the nationalities there — Angola, Namibia, Albania — I couldn’t point to them on a map.’
‘Me neither.’
‘Yet half of them are probably better educated than the people guarding them.’
‘What’s your point?’
He stared at her. ‘Since when does a conversation need a point?’
She gave a long sigh and shook her head.
‘Seen this?’ Shug Davidson asked. He was standing in front of them, holding up a copy of the city’s daily evening newspaper. The front-cover headline was WHITEMIRE HANGING.
‘Nothing if not direct,’ Rebus said, taking the paper from Davidson and starting to read.
‘I’ve had Rory Allan on the blower, asking for a quote for tomorrow’s Scotsman. He’s planning a spread about the whole problem — Whitemire to Knoxland and all points between.’